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diff --git a/smith/08_reactionary_20s b/smith/08_reactionary_20s new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c59a553 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/08_reactionary_20s @@ -0,0 +1,144 @@ +Republican party fragmenting +Small-town America feared changes in cities: +- Secular modernism eroding conservative Christianity +- Red Scare, immigrants + +An age of "disillusionment": +- Crime pervaded society +- Corrupt politics +- Nativism, Racism + +Americans questioned new technologies and big government from WWI. + +Questions: +How did the "Red Scare" shape American poltiical culture after WWI? +How did nativism influence immigration laws? +Why did the KKK resurge during the 1920s? +How did the "Scopes Trial" reflect broader cultural changes between + Christian Fundamentalists and Modernists? +How did Americans respond to Prohibition? +What was "The Crime of the Century"? + +The war caused a loss of faith in institutions and government +- "What was it all for?" +- Progressivism curtailed by fear that government infringes on rights +- Postwar layoffs (~9million people) --> postwar depression in 1920-21 + +Bolshevik revolution happened during WWI +- Communist/Leninist state developing (single party system) +- Americans scared of labor unionizers, radicals of potential revolution +- Dynamite bombs mailed to prominent politicians, businessmen. + - Justice Department claimed this was a radical attempt to takeover + - But it was actually an anarchist organization + +Jan 2, 1920 +- Justice Department arrests, without warrants, 1600 anarchists, aliens +- Detained without bail and didn't allow to contact employers +- Justified with guilt by association +- Although peaks here, persists throughout 1920s + +Italian and Mexican Immigrants +- 1/2 of white men and 1/3 of white women were immigrants + - Had more radical ideas about labor organization + - Nativism wanted to exclude foreign radicals + - Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 + - Limits to 3% of population of each country + - Immigration Act of 1924 + - Ceiling of 2% of population on other countries + - Banned Asian immigrants + - Wanted to keep out Jews, Italians, Turks, Russians + - And wanted to favor Brit, French, German + HL Mencken criticizes Act for treating new immigrants as + domestic enemies despite their benefit to America + - Didn't convince nativist Calvin Coolidge + "America must be kept for Americans" + - No quotas for Western hemisphere + - Wanted Cuban/Mexican/Latin cheap labor + +- Sackel and Vans-Eddy's "Crime" + - Arrested with pistols, lied to police + - But people gave them alibis + - Italian immigrants and labor organizers + - Criticized for stealing from a shoe factory and killing guards + - Electrified 6 years after arrest, still claiming innocence + - Debated guilt + +"The Birth of a Nation," shown at White House endorsed by W. Wilson + - Most popular movie due to the endorsement + - Rewrote Southern history portraying Klansmen as heroes and slaves + as unscrupulous collaborators. + - Surgeon in Atlanta founds new KKK. Only allowed "natives" (white + Anglo-Sax non-alien) to join. + - Sponsored baseball teams, beauty pageants, frats + - Preached hatred against Blacks, atheists, prostitutes, + immigrants, Jews + - 40% of members were in three midwestern states + - Most clan members were farmers but also attracted pillars of + community: teachers, doctors, accountants + - David C Stevenson, grand Dragon of Indiana bought off state and + local politicians with merch sales and Klan donations + - Kidnapped, raped, and mutilated a 29yo woman on his staffu + - When not pardoned, implicates the polits he bribed + - Klan membership dwindles to 100K mostly southerners + - And anti-Klan laws are passed + - Fun fact: Fred C Trump, DJT's father, detained at a rally + +Fundamentalism and The "Scopes-Monkey" Trial +- Fundamentalism = Radical Protestantism + - Anti-Modernist Sect. Modernism is integration of science w/ Christ + - Literal belief in the Bible + - Williams Jennings Bryan, "the Great Commoner", uses fundamentalism + as a popular talking point + - Passed state laws banning teaching of Darwinian evolution. + - These laws only passed in the South + - Tennessee state legislature bans teaching of evolution + - In Dayton, John Scopes becomes a test case to raise publicity + for the depressed Daytonian economy. + - William Jennings Bryan called as an expert witness in biblical + interpretation + - Darrow quizzes Bryan on various biblical stories, asking + him if he "really believes" in, for ex., Eve being Adam's + rib + - Conflict erupted between Darrow and Bryan. + - Scopes is declared guilty but fine not counted + +Prohibition and Al Capone +- Temperance became a test of American patriotism + - Brewers were discriminated against for being German + - Many wanted to police African-Americans & foreign-born + - Initially cut drinking in half + - But quickly, floating saloon boats and bootleggers circumvented + - 700 million gallons of home-brewed beer, bathtub gin, and + stockpiling work around the law. + - These liquors were dangerous + - Very few Americans respected it + - Pres. Warren G Harding served bootleg liquor in White House + - Skyrocketing alcohol imprisonments + - Increased income for organized crime (Al Capone) + - Al Capone scarred by man in bar, "Scarface" + - $60 million dollars in revenues + - Hundreds of unsolved murders + - Soup kitchen, good tipper, hero to many + - Convicted on charges of tax evasion. Dies behind bars + +"Crime of the Century" +Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb +- Intelligent and wealthy +- Homosexual partners +- Engaged in petty crimes: robberies, +- Believed they were exempt from the law and want to commit a "perfect + crime" of murder + - Kill Bobby Franks + - Send ransom to Franks + - Dump body of boy in marsh; it's discovered + - Leopold's special glasses left next to the boy and the ransom + typewrite style corresponds to his typewriter + - Both confess and blame eachother but also blame Nietzche's + "superman theory" (some people above the law). +- Viewed as a feature of breakdown in American morals +- Clarence Darrow defends Leopold and Loeb + - Has them plead guilty + - Uses Freud's theory: senseless acts of aggression led by desires + out of their control + - Trauma as young boys and basically mentally ill + - Saves them from death sentence and gets them life |