assignment 5 the golden twenties

The Golden Twenties

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Golden Twenties

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How did the Golden Twenties lead to more freedom, more equality and more culture?

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The Roaring 20s started in the USA.It was a golden age.

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Golden Twenties  

From the art and popular culture encyclopedia.

Golden Twenties is a term, mostly used in Europe , to describe the 1920s , in which most of the continent had an economic boom following the First World War and the severe economic downturns that took place between 1919-1923 before the Wall Street Crash in 1929.

It is often applied to Germany , which during the early 1920s, experienced, like most of Europe, record-breaking levels of inflation of one trillion percent between January 1919 and November 1923. The inflation was so severe that printed currency was often used for heating and other uses, and everyday requirements like food, soap, electricity cost a wheelbarrow full of bills. Such events triggered the rise of fascism in Italy , as well the ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch , masterminded by a young Adolf Hitler .

Before long, the Weimar Republic under Chancellor Gustav Stresemann managed to tame the extreme levels of inflation by the introduction of a new currency, the Rentenmark , with tighter fiscal controls and reduction of bureaucracy, leading to a relative degree of political and economic stability.

• Années Folles
• 1920s Berlin
• 1920s Paris
• Roaring Twenties , the equivalent in North America

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Roaring Twenties

In the Roaring Twenties, a surging economy created an era of mass consumerism, as Jazz-Age flappers flouted Prohibition laws and the Harlem Renaissance redefined arts and culture.

The Roaring Twenties

The Roaring Twenties were a Jazz Age burst of prosperity and freedom for flappers and others during the Prohibition era, until the economy crashed in 1929.

Women’s Independence Multiple factors—political, cultural and technological—led to the rise of the flappers. During World War I, women entered the workforce in large numbers, receiving higher wages that many working women were not inclined to give up during peacetime. In August 1920, women’s independence took another step forward with the passage of the 19th Amendment, […]

Teapot Dome Scandal

The Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s shocked Americans by revealing an unprecedented level of greed and corruption within the federal government.

Tulsa Race Massacre

Tulsa’s Black Wall Street In much of the country, the years following World War I saw a spike in racial tensions, including the resurgence of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, numerous lynchings and other acts of racially motivated violence, as well as efforts by African Americans to prevent such attacks on their […]

Warren Harding’s presidency was rocked by scandal, including one that didn’t come to light until after he left office.

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The Golden Twenties

• Feature-length compilation of 1920s newsreel footage, with commentary about news, sports, lifestyles, and historical figures.
• At the New York Public Library, a young boy decides to write a school paper about the 1920s. To help him, historian Frederick Lewis Allen announces that he will cover manners and customs of the period; comedian Robert Q. Lewis will talk about Broadway, movies, theater and nightclubs; radio commentator Allen Prescott will point out the lighter moments of history; sports announcer Red Barber will discuss sports; and news commentator Elmer Davis will look at politics. As the United States celebrates the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson meets with European leaders, hoping to make the world "safe for democracy." Meanwhile, Americans watch baseball and "human flies," people who climb tall buildings. Skirts are shortened; traffic jams are seen for the first time; airplanes fly across the ocean; and the post office starts airmail service. Prohibition begins. War heroes Sergeant Alvin York, General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing and Admiral William Sims are honored, and the American Legion is formed by war veterans. In some cities, there are race riots and the Ku Klux Klan spreads through the country. Prolonged and savage strikes are led by people like Mother Jones, William Green of the A.F.L. and Phil Murray and John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers. In Boston, a police strike is ended by Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge. Communist organizations are raided, and Emma Goldman and others are deported. The Sacco and Vanzetti case raises controversy around the world. Vaudeville stars such as Harry Houdini and Gallagher and Shean are so popular that they are mobbed after every performance. Beauty parades and marathon dances are held. Ruth St. Denis starts a dance troupe, and artists Anna Pavlova and Feodor Chaliapin leave Russia after the Bolshevik takeover. Pole Ignace Paderewski scores as a politician as well as renowned pianist, while operatic tenor Enrico Caruso enjoys immense popularity. Despite Wilson's efforts, the U.S. Senate, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. keeps the country out of the League of Nations. Women win the right to vote. After he is elected president, Warren G. Harding pardons socialist leader Eugene V. Debs and calls a conference to limit naval armaments. The jazz age begins, signaled by short hair and no corsets for women. The increasingly accessible automobile makes sex easier for young people. Movie producers hire Will Hays to keep sex and violence out of films. Famous stars of the times are Rudolph Valentino, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Will Rogers, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Al Jolson makes the first full-length sound movie. Gangsters such as Al Capone are supported by wealthy bootleggers. Looking for moral leadership, people turn to evangelists like former baseball player Billy Sunday. Dr. Adolf Lorenz develops a bloodless surgery technique. After educator John Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, Clarence Darrow defends him against William Jennings Bryan's prosecution, but Scopes is found guilty. Harding dies in 1923 and Vice-President Calvin Coolidge becomes President. Soon after, irregularities in the Harding administration are revealed. The biggest scandal, known as the Teapot Dome Scandal, concerns the secret lease of government-owned oil fields to millionaire Harry F. Sinclair's oil company. In 1924, Coolidge is elected president. A boom in Florida real estate sales ends after a hurricane destroys much land there. In sports, Babe Ruth breaks home run records and helps the Yankees win the 1927 World Series against the Pirates in four straight games. American Bobby Jones wins the British Open, the British Amateur, the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur golf tournaments. Man O'War wins nine out of his ten horse races as a two-year-old and all eleven as a three-year-old. Resd Grange and Knute Rockne are football stars. Johnny Weismuller earns accolades as the fastest swimmer in the world, and Gertrude Ederle swims the English Channel in fourteen and a half hours to set a new record. Bill Tilden, Molla Mallory and Suzanne Lenglen are tennis champions, but Helen Wills is the best of all. Jack Dempsey, known as the Manassa Mauler, is boxing champion for seven years until his loss to Gene Tunney. Michael Arlen, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells and John Galsworthy are popular writers of the period. Radios broadcast new jazz bands and news about the sensational Halls-Mills murder. Floyd Collins is trapped in a cave and dies before rescue workers reach him eighteen days later. In music, Lawrence Tibbett, Rosa Ponsell, Madam Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Grace Moore, Marion Talley, George Gershwin and Irving Berlin are well-known names. Music hall star Harry Lauder visits from England. Earl Carroll's Vanities shows display the beauty of American women. Rudolph Valentino's funeral draws thousands. Automobile racing is popular and advances in aviation lead to Charles Lindbergh's solo crossing of the Atlantic. The automobile industry booms. In politics, The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlaws war as an instrument of national policy. Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic nominee for president, is defeated by Herbert Hoover. Prosperous Americans vacation in Florida and frequent nightclubs, until the 1929 stock market crash ushers in the Depression.

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Germany’s Golden Twenties

The period between hyperinflation and the stock market crash of 1929 were Germany’s golden years.

• Post date March 1, 2011
• By Marcus Rauchfuss

The Roaring Twenties, or Goldenen Zwanziger Jahre , as they were known in Germany, were very likely Germany’s happiest time in the first half of the twentieth century. They can also be considered Berlin’s Golden Age.

The time between the end of the hyperinflation and hardships of the post-Great War period and the stock market crash of 1929 were a comparatively stable period for the troubled Weimar Republic. The largely French-driven dictates of the Versailles Treaty were modified and relieved by the implementation of the Dawes Plan and later the Young Plan (although the latter would not come into effect until 1930). In 1926, the Weimar Republic joined the League of Nations, another sign of normalization.

Fueled by American dollars, the German economy stabilized and expanded, leading to increased wealth. This credit-financed economy would later prove highly vulnerable to the effects of the Great Recession of the early 1930s, but, for the moment, the Weimar Republic enjoyed prosperity, stability and good times.

Germany in the late 1920s was a very dynamic and almost hedonistic country. Among other things, it had the largest number of cinemas in Europe and the second largest movie industry in the world, second only to the United States.

During the Goldene Zwanziger , many internationally renowned films, including The Last Laugh and Metropolis , were produced. Also, some of the most renowned German actors, Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings (the first person to receive an Academy Award for Best Actor) come to mind.

The Roaring Twenties in Germany saw the first widespread availability of radios in private homes. Since assembled radios were almost prohibitively expensive to everyone except the upper middle class, it was relatively common to buy the parts in a prepacked kit and assemble the set at home.

Music and radio dramas were very popular during the late twenties in Germany. Political broadcasts were few and far between.

Berlin’s golden years

The Goldene Zwanziger also saw a remarkably lively and culturally diverse Berlin, a stark contrast to what would become of it in the years to follow.

In the 1920s, Berlin was the world’s largest industrial city, the largest city between the English Channel and the coast of the Pacific and, after New York and London, the third largest metropolis in the world by population.

Berlin’s cultural significance, both for Germany and the world, also reached a level unparalleled since. It was arguably Germany’s only true cosmopolitan city, with Hamburg trailing a long way behind and Cologne and Munich being rather provincial towns still. The concentration of so much power in just one city may actually have had an adverse effect on Germany’s economy, but the jury is still out on that one.

Fact is, Berlin was a major metropolis in a country that was nowhere near as urbanized as it is today. Berlin was the industrial, artistic and financial center of the country. At no time before nor since has the city had such significance.

Today, cultural centers are Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich, heavy industry is in decline and the financial center is firmly placed in Frankfurt.

Germany as a whole made leaps in several areas outside industry and commerce.

Returning to the aforementioned hedonism, the late 1920s are noteworthy for their liberal views on gender roles and sexuality. This liberalism stands out compared to the years of the German Empire and the Third Reich and even the Federal Republic up until the 1970s.

Homosexuality in particular was seen as far less abhorrent as it had been viewed before or after. There were even specialized magazines in circulation, catering to the homosexual community. One of these was Die Freundin (“The Girlfriend”), a magazine aimed, obviously, at lesbians.

Women in general enjoyed a good deal more freedom. It was perfectly normal to see women smoking in public (this would have caused a scandal only a few years earlier) and many also learned to drive a car.

Transportation

It was during this time that a plan for the general improvement of Germany’s infrastructure was conceived: the massive construction of Autobahnen . Although the Nazi regime is often credited with the expansion of the German motorways, the plans for it were already there when the Nazis came to power. They did not plan it; they just took over and took credit for it.

On a happier note, Germany’s Goldene Zwanziger also were the beginning of the golden age of zeppelin travel. After the initial difficulties, mainly financial, were overcome, LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin , sister ship to the ill-fated Hindenburg , took to the air on September 18, 1928. In August 1929, the Graf Zeppelin flew around the globe, a feat no other zeppelin or airship has completed since.

Today, the images conjured by the term Goldene Zwanziger are people dancing Charleston or Foxtrot and the scenes from Der Blaue Engel . I guess relatively few people are still aware of the liberties enjoyed by women and homosexuals during this time.

This story first appeared in Gatehouse Gazette 17 (March 2011), p. 5-6, with the headline “Germany’s Golden Twenties”.

• Tags Decodence Gatehouse Gazette History

Very interesting information I did not know. Thank you!

Good article! The HINDENBURG’s sister ship was the second GRAF ZEPPELIN (LZ130), though they really should be called brother ships since they were both named after men. The first GRAF ZEPPELIN (LZ127) was much smaller.

“In the 1920s, Berlin was the world’s largest industrial city, the largest city between the English Channel and the coast of the Pacific and, after New York and London, the third largest metropolis in the world by population.” But wasn’t Shanghai the world’s largest city by then?

The Goldene Zwanziger was really en incredible time in history, and not ust for Germany, I believe. Advancement occured in all fields, and some where so ‘advanced’ that after the war it took decades to get back were we left off.

Great article.

Good article thank you.

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THE GOLDEN TWENTIES 1920s AMERICA DOCUMENTARY FILM PART #2 30274

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5.2: Immigration and Closing the Golden Door

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Learning Objectives

• Analyze the significance of the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s. Explain why the Klan was able to attract a mainstream following only to lose its members by the end of the decade.
• Evaluate the influence of nativism on America’s immigration policy during the 1920s.
• Explain the way that immigrant groups were discriminated against by Americans and how many Americans could deny that the conditions recent immigrants and nonwhite Americans faced were inspired by prejudice.

The Second Klan

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) reemerged in 1915 as a nativist organization based on white supremacy. Similar to the original Klan that emerged during Reconstruction, the new Klan sought to return African Americans to a condition resembling slavery. The new Klan also sought to prevent the immigration of nonwhite and non-Protestant families to the US. The emergence of the new Klan coincided with the release of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation , a film that debuted in 1915 and presented the late nineteenth-century Klan in a heroic light. The next year, the eugenicist Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race warned white Americans that new immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe threatened to fill the United States with inferior races. Influenced by this and other eugenicist works that blended racism with pseudoscience, some Klan members even believed that nonwhites should be sterilized.

The new Klan officially shunned violence and attracted a mainstream following, even if Klan beliefs often led to acts of violence against minority communities. The new Klan emerged during a period of anti-immigrant and antiblack hysteria, as evidenced by the Red Summer of 1919. In that year, mob violence was perpetrated against black communities in both the North and South. The same year, whites on the West Coast attacked Chinese neighborhoods, Midwesterners participated in riots that destroyed black and Hispanic neighborhoods, and whites on the East Coast sought to halt Jewish migration altogether.

The new KKK grew rapidly during the 1920s, spreading a message that nonwhites and non-Protestants were not “100 percent Americans.” The new Klan attracted a large number of followers, many of whom paraded openly without masks. Leading public figures usually hid their identity when participating in Klan rallies, but it was hardly a secret that a substantial number of the members of state legislatures in Colorado, Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and Oregon were also members of the secret order. Oregon lawmakers sanctioned a referendum that voters approved, outlawing private schools—a blatantly unconstitutional attack on the Catholic Church. Klan members held rallies in neighboring Washington State that were attended by 20,000 to 70,000 participants. More sinister indications of West Coast Klan activity were the violent intimidation campaigns against Japanese Americans from the Yakima Valley of Washington to San Diego.

The Klan was especially powerful in Indiana, with an estimated membership of 350,000. The Klan soon became so influential throughout the Midwest that journalist William Allen White of Emporia, Kansas, entered the 1924 race for the governorship and made opposition to the Klan the leading issue of his platform. White became a national figure during the 1890s with his conservative attack on the Populists he feared were creating an antibusiness climate in his beloved state. That White and most other conservatives would speak so forcefully against the Klan was an important factor in the Klan’s decline.

Many historians have been tempted to discount the Second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s as a reactionary element of lower-class whites alienated by the growth, prosperity, and increasing acceptance of nonwhite and non-Protestant Americans. However, the Klan had more than 4 million members at its peak in 1925 and attracted middle-class men and women as equally as it attracted other groups. The Klan was also a fraternal organization complete with a women’s auxiliary that gave many members a sense of identity and belonging with its social gatherings, rituals, and honorary titles. Its rallies were steeped in hypernationalistic worship of the flag and celebration of a mythical past where old-time religion and family values guided America.

Because it did not need to unify its members behind a specific platform or policy, the Klan could represent many things to its members. The Klan could be mainstream and extremist. It could be reactionary and hateful at one moment, only to warmly embrace tradition and family values the next. The hollowness of its rhetoric and the willingness of its members to surrender critical thinking allowed its leaders to express hatred toward unions, impoverished strikebreakers, and big business in the same sitting. It could speak to legitimate social concerns such as crime and government corruption. It could even advocate progressive causes before scapegoating the nation’s problems on a particular ethnic or religious group. Most importantly, the Klan’s restrictive membership meant that venomous accusations against immigrants, Jews, Catholics, minorities, Socialists, or any other group that fell short of their 100 percent Americanism reminded its members of the commonalities they shared.

The Klan grew in membership because of this sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. Equally important, most whites in the 1920s shared some of the basic assumptions of the Klan even if they recoiled from the ways Klansmen expressed their intolerance. Mainstream religious leaders called for Protestant solidarity, while most native-born whites demonstrated assumptions of racial superiority, intolerance for immigrants, distrust of government, and suspicion regarding the loyalties of Jews and Catholics. Klansmen spoke the language of the disaffected and those who felt their way of life was under attack. They also spoke to religious communities by appealing to the preservation of traditional family values. The Klan also demonstrated the ease with which reactionary politics could enter mainstream society during a time of anxiety about rapid social change and the growth of a nonwhite and non-Protestant population.

The significant growth of the Klan’s female auxiliary, the Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), challenges the notions of many historians who suggest, at least by implication, that reactionary politics was an exclusively male domain. In states such as Indiana, women were equally attracted to the Klan’s message and joined in roughly equal numbers. One historian estimates that as many as one-third of native-born, white Indiana women joined the WKKK. For these women, the WKKK provided a source of community that was ideologically consistent with many of their political and social beliefs. Many of these women had been active in relatively progressive organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association. Others were veterans of the fight for women’s suffrage. Because the Klan taught that the rights of white Americans were under assault by foreigners, Jews, and nonwhites, Klan activism was viewed by these women as a continuation of their earlier efforts promoting the welfare of the disaffected.

The WKKK often acted like any other women’s organization, organizing charitable fundraisers for schools, hosting picnics, and joining parades. However, the WKKK also organized boycotts of Jewish businesses, ran attorneys who defended minorities out of town, and devised strategies to unseat school board members who supported integration. Some women even joined secret organizations such as the Queens of the Golden Mask, which conducted some of the Klan’s dirty work. The Indiana Klan leader David Stephenson referred to these women as his “poison squad” and counted on them to spread malicious falsehoods against the families of anyone who dared oppose him or the Klan. However, the WKKK was not merely an adjunct to male leadership. Despite the tendency of Klansmen to celebrate their “protection” of white women, women and men in the Klan sustained female suffrage as a weapon that could help them restore and preserve the values they espoused.

The Klan’s blatant celebration of white supremacy might have led to official condemnation from presidents, but these men generally avoided any action that could leave them open to criticism by white voters. Warren Harding was an avowed segregationist, at least when speaking to white Southerners. Calvin Coolidge argued that the federal government should not interfere with “local issues” involving race and religion. He did little to support antilynching legislation and tolerated the continued segregation of federal government employees. Herbert Hoover spoke out against lynching but did little to support antilynching legislation. Instead, he supported the creation of an all-white Republican Party in the South. By preventing black membership, some members of the Republican Party hoped that they could finally end the association between their party and memories of emancipation and Reconstruction. Although he had spoken in opposition to racial segregation while a politician in Wisconsin, even progressive Republicans such as Robert La Follete avoided addressing racial issues once they became candidates for national office.

The Klan declined quickly in 1925 due to three factors. First and most importantly, mainstream conservatives and local officials began to join liberals in denouncing the Klan and its bigotry as un-American by 1923. Second, the hollowness and negativity of their message led many members to lose enthusiasm over time. Finally, local and national Klan leaders became the target of investigations that revealed irregularities regarding the tens of millions of dollars Klan members donated to the organization. The secrecy of the Klan allowed leaders to embezzle its untraceable funds for several years. The result was that many individual klaverns were near bankruptcy, while a coterie of Klan leaders began to display their newfound wealth in ways that aroused suspicion and jealousy among other members.

A series of national scandals in the mid-1920s also led many to question the Klan’s espoused support for Christianity, chivalrous protection of white women, and Protestant family values. Indiana Klan leader David Stephenson was convicted in 1925 of embezzlement and second-degree murder after his secretary, whom he had previously raped and assaulted, was found dead. The Indiana Klan had been the largest in the nation with 350,000 members. By the end of 1926, Klan membership in the Hoosier State plummeted to 15,000. Meanwhile, two leading Southern Klansmen were found together in a hotel bedroom with no clothing or women in sight. These and countless other allegations and indictments against Klan leaders made many members question whether they had been deceived by demagogues. The negative attitudes toward non-Protestants and nonwhites remained through the late 1920s and 1930s. However, the downfall of the Klan led many to question these beliefs. Others simply expressed them in more cautious ways.

Quotas and Unwelcome Americans

The rebirth of the Klan also led to greater activism among Jewish organizations, the NAACP, and immigrant rights groups. For example, NAACP chapters across the nation secured injunctions against the Birth of a Nation , an action that energized local chapters. Civil rights groups that defended the rights of immigrants also expanded in response to anti-Klan sentiment. However, because 24 million immigrants entered the United States between 1880 and 1920, many began to fear that the nation was growing too fast. By way of comparison, the total US population at the turn of the century was only 76 million. Many of these newcomers were treated poorly because of their ethnic background. Their reception only grew more hostile as the postwar recession accelerated through 1921. Unemployment soared to nearly 9 percent, and many out-of-work individuals blamed recent immigrants for their misfortune.

Congress responded by passing the Emergency Quota Law of 1921. As the name suggests, the law was meant to enact temporary restrictions on immigration to curb the number of newcomers that might compete for jobs. However, immigration was always a sensitive topic in the US. After all, nearly all Americans were immigrants or the descendants of people who came to America through coercion or free will. As a result, America wrestled with both the heightened nativist impulse of the era and the desire to create a fair law that did not discriminate against any particular ethnicity.

The 1921 law limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted into the United States from any particular country to a number no greater than 3 percent of the total number from that country who were living in the United States in 1910. For example, if there were 1 million Irish living in the United States in 1910, up to 30,000 might legally enter the United States each year. On its face, the law appeared to be racially and ethnically neutral. However, the bulk of the US population in 1910 was from Britain and Western Europe, and most of the migrants who were trying to enter the United States were from nations in Southern and Eastern Europe. These migrants tended to be Jewish, as well as Polish, Italian, Slavic, Greek, and other groups that were severely discriminated against.

The economy recovered in the next few years, but nativist sentiment remained a strong political force. With support of groups ranging from the Klan to mainstream labor unions, Congress approved the National Origins Act of 1924 with only a handful of dissenting votes. This law was clearly intended to restrict migrants from Southern and Central Europe, but it cunningly obscured this objective by issuing quotas that made no mention of race, nationality, or ethnicity. Instead, the National Origins Act created quotas that were based on the 1890 census. Although three more recent census records were available, 1890 was the most recent census taken prior to the arrival of large numbers of Jews and Southern Europeans.

The law established a quota limiting the number of immigrants from a particular nation to no more than 2 percent of the total number of immigrants who were living in the US prior to 1890. As a result, the law limited the new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe to a few thousand per year while permitting far more “white” Europeans from Britain, France, and Germany than actually desired to migrate to the United States. The law was even less subtle regarding those from India and Asia who were excluded entirely by a provision barring the immigration of persons who were ineligible for citizenship. At this time, a variety of laws prohibited anyone of Asian origin from becoming a citizen, while many localities had passed other discriminatory laws that applied specifically to Chinese immigrants.

President Coolidge expressed the view held by many Anglo-Americans that associated whiteness as one of the defining characteristics of what it meant to be an American. “America must be kept American,” Coolidge exclaimed upon signing the 1924 act into law. Others such as New York congressman Fiorello LaGuardia argued that the law and the sentiment it produced were contrary to the best interests and finest traditions of the United States.

LaGuardia was the son of an Italian father and Jewish mother. As such, he and his family represented precisely the kind of “un-American” amalgamation the 1924 law sought to prevent. LaGuardia spoke at rallies sponsored by his constituents from the racially and ethnically diverse melting pot of East Harlem. LaGuardia joined tens of thousands of New Yorkers and millions of immigrants across the nation in declaring that they would not be treated as strangers in their own land. Similar protests were held on the West Coast, including legal challenges to California’s Alien Land Law of 1920, which prohibited Asian Americans from owning land. Although the California law was framed as a law intending to limit foreign ownership of the nation, the intent was to prevent Californians of Asian descent, who by law could not be citizens, from being anything but landless peasant laborers.

Congressman Emanuel Celler sought to remove the façade of racial neutrality these laws constructed. He also sought to present immigration as a positive good for the nation, challenging his opponents to explain why the eight states with the highest numbers of recent immigrants were also the states that featured the greatest economic growth. Celler represented New York City in Congress for five decades and sponsored a bill that abolished these quotas in 1965.

Despite the protests of many nativists, neither the 1921 nor the 1924 law established quotas or restrictions against immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. Officially, the US government permitted immigration from these nations as part of its commitment to stewardship of the Western Hemisphere, as expressed in the Monroe Doctrine. In actuality, the unrestricted legal immigration from Mexico and other nations was a political compromise demanded by congressmen who represented industry and agribusiness in Texas and the rest of the Southwest. World War I and the subsequent restrictions against migration resulted in Western and Midwestern farms and industries depending on Mexican immigration. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals would enter the nation legally each year until the start of the Great Depression, paying $18 in taxes and fees to receive a visa and work permit. Some of this revenue offset the expense of the US Border Patrol that was also established in 1924. However, at this time, the Border Patrol was one of the smallest federal agencies, and little political pressure existed to prevent those who crossed the border without obtaining legal documentation.

In 1924, the federal government also passed a law permitting Native Americans to become citizens. The law included the federal territory of Alaska where natives had long been fighting for the right to become citizens. For example, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the Alaska Native Sisterhood had been advocating for citizenship for over a decade before the law was passed. In 1915, the Alaskan government approved a law opening the door for citizenship for natives. However, this process required five whites to testify that an applicant had renounced all traditional ways and was fully assimilated. Much like the Jim Crow South, Alaskan establishments displayed signs indicating that no natives would be served in restaurants. Similar messages appeared in advertisements for laborers specifying that only “white” workers need apply.In the late 1920s, the Brotherhood and Sisterhood joined together using both moral suasion and other more direct methods to protest establishments that discriminated against Alaskan natives. The campaign for civil rights in Alaska peaked during World War II when natives were forcibly removed and arrested for violating the policies of segregated theaters. Efforts of activist Elizabeth Peratrovich and many others would ultimately lead to the passage of an Alaskan law banning segregation in 1945. However, both formal and informal segregation within establishments would persist until statehood, especially in areas where natives lacked economic power precisely because of their exclusion from employment opportunities.

Nativism and National Security

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested in May 1920 following an attempted robbery of a Massachusetts factory that had left two men dead. Although very little evidence linked them to the crime, both men were radicals who had expressed support for anarchist violence in the past. And they were also Italians, part of the despised group of “new immigrants” whose desperate conditions in Southern Europe had led them to the United States. Convicted in 1921 of both robbery and murder, Sacco and Vanzetti’s case attracted the attention of Italian American groups such as the Order Sons of Italy in America who sought to publicize what they believed had been a miscarriage of justice.

Each of these immigrant groups had grown increasingly concerned by the reactionary climate of the 1920s. They sought to demonstrate how the convictions of these two men demonstrated the injustice of the criminal justice system for immigrants and radicals. Over the next six years, these groups filed a number of appeals that raised serious doubts about the guilt of the two men but failed to reverse their death sentences. Several witnesses described the burglars in ways that conflicted with the appearance of both Sacco and Vanzetti. In addition, police could not link either man’s fingerprints to the crime, and neither was found in possession of the $15,000 that had been stolen.

However, these appeals and subsequent trials publicized the extremism of some of Sacco and Vanzetti’s political beliefs. Both men were supporters of Italian anarchists who advocated anti-Capitalist revolution through violent tactics such as bombings and assassinations. Equally important, the two men had ties to known anarchists who were atop the Department of Justice’s most-wanted list for several attempted assassinations. The trials also demonstrated the unlikelihood that either man would have been convicted of the original burglary had it not been for their radical beliefs.

Despite international protests ranging from Buenos Aires to Rome, both men were executed on August 23, 1927. Most “white” Americans believed the two men were either guilty of this crime or likely to commit another because of their radical beliefs. Most recent immigrants from central and southern Europe, along with other minority groups who were no strangers to police discrimination, were less likely to sustain the decision of the court. As a result, the Sacco-Vanzetti Trials demonstrated that the Red Scare extended throughout the 1920s and also revealed that Americans of different racial and ethnic backgrounds perceived the same events quite differently. It also renewed questions about whether the US justice system tried defendants for their actions or their political beliefs and background.

Election of 1924

Calvin Coolidge became president following the death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. Coolidge was perhaps the most enigmatic leader of the early twentieth century. Many conservatives spoke out against the growing power and size of government yet sought to expand certain aspects of government authority. However, Coolidge was consistent in believing the federal government should defer to the states. He also demonstrated deference to the Supreme Court and Congress, believing that a president should not be too involved in the day-to-day business of government. At other times, Coolidge demonstrated support for progressive goals. For example, Coolidge outlined a broad legislative agenda full of specific goals, such as child-labor laws, improvements in health care, and environmental protection during one of his addresses to Congress.

Most other times, Coolidge lived up to his nickname of “Silent Cal.” As president, Coolidge rarely dominated a conversation and delivered speeches that often lasted only a few minutes. And yet it was Coolidge and not Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) who was the first to use regular radio addresses to the nation, even if FDR would later be credited with originating the idea. Coolidge would also decline running for reelection in 1928, despite the near-certainty of victory. A leading biographer suggests that Coolidge may have suffered from clinical depression. Although it is tempting to apply this explanation to his decision to leave public life as well as his insistence on sleeping twelve hours per day while president, no one really understood what drove Coolidge to abandon the hard work and ambition of his earlier years.

Coolidge conducted most of his 1924 reelection campaign from the White House through correspondence. His vice-presidential candidate, Charles Dawes, was an enthusiastic campaigner and attacked the third-party candidacy of Robert La Follette as promoting socialism. The Democrats nominated a corporate attorney named John W. Davis after several days of balloting. Southern conservatives and northern progressives vied for control of the Democratic Party in ways that ensured a Republican victory short of some major scandal or economic disaster. The Democrats of the North tended to be urban, recent immigrants, Catholic or Jewish, supporters of progressivism, and opponents of Prohibition. The Democrats of the South were white Protestants, old-stock Americans opposed to immigration, and supporters of Prohibition. As long as Coolidge stayed in the White House and the economy did not implode, the election had already been decided unless the Democrats could find a way to unite.

Instead, Northern Democrats were angered by the party’s compromise selection of Davis, who might have been mistaken for a Republican in most states beyond his native West Virginia. Meanwhile, La Follette entered the race under the banner of the Progressive Party. His platform demonstrated that Progressive ideas about governmental reform had not been forgotten during the relative prosperity of the 1920s. Ironically, the conservative Coolidge may have gained from La Follete’s more liberal campaign, as the Progressive Party likely took more votes away from Davis than Coolidge. Yet even if every one of the nearly 5 million supporters of La Follete had joined with the Democrats, Coolidge would still have won the election of 1924 in a landslide.

REVIEW AND CRITICAL THINKING

• How was the Klan of the 1920s similar and different from its Reconstruction-era predecessor? What accounts for the rapid growth and equally rapid demise of the Klan during the 1920s?
• Explain how nativism influenced US immigration policy during the 1920s. Why might immigration restrictions have been controversial despite the widespread nature of nativist impulses?
• How did the trial of two Italian immigrants galvanize America during the 1920s? Who were Sacco and Vanzetti? How did their political beliefs affect the trial and challenge the impartiality of the judicial system? Are there any other instances in US history where an individual’s political beliefs were placed on trial?
• Consider the connection between US anxiety regarding anarchists in the 1920s with the Cold War’s efforts against Communists in later decades. Or could it be that US concern with anarchism in the 1920s was more similar to that of terrorism in modern times? In what ways are such comparisons valid, and in what ways might they oversimplify or distort the past?
• Why did Calvin Coolidge win reelection so easily in 1924? What issues divided the Democratic Party? How might these divisions be overcome in future elections?