the roaring twenties cultural conflicts scopes trial sacco and vanzetti prohibition kkk red scare...

The Roaring TwentiesCultural Conflicts

Scopes Trial

Sacco and Vanzetti

Prohibition

KKK

Red Scare

Election of 1928

Scopes Trial

• Butler Act passed in Tennessee 1925 prohibited “the teaching of any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible”.

• ACLU finds a willing challenger-Scopes• Clarence Darrow city lawyer for Scopes• William Jennings Bryant former Populist

joins prosecution as expert on the Bible

Scopes Trial continued

• Turning point was Bryant’s position on literal interpretation of the Bible-”six days”

• Jury finds Scopes guilty• Supreme Court eventually overturns

conviction on a technicality• Fundamentalism the law in Tenn. until 1967• Case shows divide between rural and urban

Sacco and Vanzetti

• Two anarchists accused of robbery and murder

• Trial was characterized by a lack of fairness

• Convicted and sentenced to death

• Committee reviews trial: declares judge acted improperly- “Dagos” commnet

Sacco and Vanzetti continued

• Committee refuses new trial

• Sacco and Vanzetti executed

• Sacco’s last words: “Long live anarchy!”

• Protests in the U.S. and Worldwide

• Convicted for beliefs or evidence?

• Today historians believe: Sacco possibly guilty, Vanzetti probably innocent

Prohibition• Intended as a reform: target was the

working class saloon• Religious motive: WCTU• Anti “German” feelings during WWI• Actually did reduce working class

consumption• Middle Class drank illegally• Bootleggers• Speakeasies

Prohibition continued

• More women drank

• Big City Organized Crime

• Millions in profits

• Fights over turf

• Al Capone and his gang ran Chicago

• Result: disregard for the law

• Cities seen as dens of vice and sin

KKK

• 1920s was peak of Klan membership

• Started in rural areas, eventually spread to cities like Detroit, Indiana and Pittsburgh

• Anti-black, Catholic, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Asians-whatever the minority

• Similar to Fascist Movements in Italy and Germany

KKK continued

• Peaked in Indiana with half million members

• Declined when leader David Stephenson convicted for rape and murder of a white woman

• Idea of Pure-American still alive after decline of the Klan

The Red Scare

• Anti-Communism panic sweeps through the United States in 1919-1920

• Communism established in Russia 1917 by Bolsheviks

• Two small parties form in the United States. Total membership 70,000

• .001 percent of the population

• Communist regimes were established in Hungary and Bavaria

• Many believed a communist revolution was brewing in the United States

• Many people begin transferring their hate to anyone born outside the country

• A. Mitchell Palmer directed the Red Scare

• Palmer asks Congress for $500,000 “to tear our the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories.”

• General Intelligence established• Russians deported on the “The Soviet Ark”• Arrested 4000 people in one night many of

whom were American citizens

• Public generally approved of Palmer’s raids even though many of the prisoners were released because they had nothing to do with radical politics

• Organized labor and strikes seen as tools of Bolshevism

1928 election: Country v. City

• Republican Hoover: Iowa farm boy• Democrat: Al Smith NY Governor, Catholic• 2/3rds of eligible voters turnout• Hoover wins big• Smith carries the 12 largest cities• Though Hoover’s victory is a vote for more of

the same its:

Another example of the cultural divide!

Herbert Hoover