Social and Cultural Tensions

1. Social and Cultural Tensions 20.3

2. Objectives • Compare economic and cultural life in rural America to that in urban America. • Discuss the changes in U.S. immigration policy in the 1920s. • Analyze the goals and motives of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s • Discuss the successes and failures of the Eighteenth Amendment.

3. Key Parts • Traditionalism and Modernism Clash • Restricting Immigration • The New Ku Klux Klan • Prohibition and Crime

4. Introduction • Read section 20.3 • Answer Critical Thinking questions 4&6.

5. Traditionalism and Modernism Clash • The nation used to be divided along the north and the south and the east and the west. • Now in the 1920s the nations was split between urban America and rural America. • On virtually every important social and cultural issue, the two groups were divided.

6. Cont. • Urban Americans emphasized science and secular values over traditional ideas about religion, this became known as modernism. • By contrast, rural Americans did not participate fully in the consumer bonanzas, and they missed out on many of the new forms of leisure. • People in the country generally embraced a more traditional view of religion, science, and culture.

7. Cont.. • Education begins to become more important in rural and urban areas. • In rural America the children were responsible for reading, writing, and arithmetic. • The mastery of mathematics and language could mean the difference between a low paying job and a higher paying job.

8. Cont… • In the 1920s Christianity was under siege throughout the world. • The Russians with their communism tried to spread, and the Mexican Revolutionary assaults on the Roman Catholic Church. • This however reaffirmed their belief in the fundamental or basic, truths of Christianity. • Fundamentalism emphasized Protestant teachings and the belief in the bible that every word was literal truth.

9. Cont…. • Fundamentalism and modernism clashed in the Scopes Trial of 1925. • The issue was the theory of evolution, developed by English scientist Charles Darwin. • Scopes taught evolution in his classroom and was arrested for it and fined $100. • Scopes was found guilty in the trial for breaking the law over evolution. (this struggle still continues today)

10. Restricting Immigration • Another cultural clash involved the ongoing boom in immigration. • The issue was still that immigrants could take jobs away from native born Americans and would change the culture and values of Americans. • Two important laws emerged from this nativist mindset.

11. Cont. • The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924 established a quota system to govern immigration from specific countries. • The National Origins Act set up a simple formula: The number of immigrants of a given nationality each year could not exceed 2 percent of the number of people of that nationality living in the United States in 1890.

12. Cont.. • That year was chosen because it was before the huge influx of immigrants. • The Quota system did not apply to Mexico which was still reeling from the chaos of the 1910 revolution. • Mexicans were sparsely populating regions in southwest United States and making large contributions there in farming. • However they did face harsh discrimination at times because the act didn’t apply to them.

13. The New Ku Klux Klan • In 1915 on Stone Mountain in Georgia a group of angry men revived the Ku Klux Klan. • The KKK orinally was a hate group toward African Americans, now they turned their aim toward Jews, Catholics, and all Immigrants. (however they still continued hate crimes toward African Americans, just not to the same degree as they once had.)

14. Cont. • The Klan also claimed to stand against lawbreaking and immorality. One of their leaders claimed that every criminal, every gambler and every crooked politician will be sought out by the Klan. • At the height of the Klan it had approximately 5 million members. • The Klan Leader during this time was David Stephenson.

15. Cont.. • Some Americans opposed the Klan such as the NAACP and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. • The focused on the Melting Pot Idea of the United States and diversity. • By the end of the 1920 the Klan was not as powerful but never fully disappeared.

16. Prohibition and Crime • Another divisive issue was prohibition, the banning of alcohol use. • By 1917 seventy five percent of Americans lived in “dry” counties. • Opponents of Prohibition countered the ban by saying it didn’t stop people from drinking it just created a larger atmosphere for organized crime.

17. Cont. • This stemmed a large illegal network of bootlegging. Bootleggers sold alcohol illegally to individuals, or secret drinking establishments. • Those secret establishments were called speakeasies. • Government agents worked tirelessly to stop the flow of illegal liquor. • They were to short handed and the demand too great. • The Prohibition divided the nation similar to modernism and fundamentalism.