The new culture of the 1920s thrilled some Americans and alarmed others. Many in small towns and rural areas felt their values and way of life were under attack from cities, immigrants and new ideas. The conflicts of the decade show a country divided over change.
Key idea
Conflicts of the twenties: the Red Scare (1919 to 1920), the Sacco and Vanzetti case, immigration quotas (1921, 1924), the Scopes trial (1925), a revived Ku Klux Klan, and the struggle to enforce Prohibition.
| Conflict | What happened |
|---|---|
| Red Scare | After the Russian Revolution, strikes and anarchist bombings in 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's raids arrested thousands of suspected radicals; hundreds of immigrants were deported |
| Sacco and Vanzetti | Two Italian-born anarchists were convicted of a 1920 robbery and murder and executed in 1927; many believed their trial was unfair because of their politics and origins, and historians still debate their guilt |
| Immigration quotas | The Emergency Quota Act (1921) and the Immigration Act of 1924 limited immigration by national origin, favoring northern and western Europe; the 1924 act barred most immigration from Asia |
| Scopes trial | In Dayton, Tennessee, teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution; William Jennings Bryan helped prosecute and Clarence Darrow defended; Scopes was convicted and fined, a verdict later overturned on a technicality |
| The Klan | Revived in 1915, it claimed millions of members in the mid-1920s, in the North and West as well as the South, targeting Black Americans, Catholics, Jews and immigrants, until scandals shrank it |
Why it works
What tied these together? Rapid change: cities, new immigrants, science, women's new roles, and fears of revolution after 1917. Some answered with laws (quotas, Prohibition, the Tennessee law against teaching evolution); some with fear of outsiders; some with violence. Defenders of the quota laws argued they protected American workers and culture; critics, then and now, saw them as discrimination by national origin. The quotas lasted until 1965.
Work it through
Worked example: Reading the amendment closely
Under Prohibition, was it a federal crime to drink a glass of wine at home?
- Read the verbs: "manufacture, sale, or transportation," plus import and export.
- Drinking is not on the list.
- So making, selling or moving alcohol was banned, while drinking alcohol already owned was not.
Answer: No. The amendment and the Volstead Act banned making, selling and moving alcohol, not drinking it.
Common mistake
Many students think Prohibition banned drinking alcohol. The Eighteenth Amendment banned making, selling and transporting it. Enforcement was hard: speakeasies and bootleggers thrived, and gangsters such as Al Capone grew rich. It was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.