U.S. History / Unit 7: The 1920s, Great Depression and New Deal
7.2 Culture Clashes of the 1920s
Notes
The decade saw sharp conflict between new urban values and traditional rural values.
- Prohibition: the 18th Amendment (ratified 1919, in effect 1920) banned alcohol. Illegal speakeasies, bootlegging and organized crime (Al Capone) grew. The 21st Amendment (1933) repealed it.
- The Scopes Trial (1925): a Tennessee teacher was tried for teaching evolution, pitting Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan.
- Nativism returned: the Immigration Act of 1924 set quotas that favored Northern and Western Europeans and barred most Asian immigrants.
- The Sacco and Vanzetti case: two Italian immigrant anarchists were executed for murder in 1927 after a trial many believed was unfair.
- The Ku Klux Klan revived, targeting Black Americans, immigrants, Catholics and Jews, with millions of members by the mid-1920s.
Practice
The 18th Amendment:
It began Prohibition; the 21st Amendment ended it in 1933.
The Immigration Act of 1924 reflected nativism because it:
Quotas were based on older census numbers to favor Northern and Western Europe.
The Scopes Trial highlighted the conflict between:
The trial was about teaching evolution in public schools.
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