22 c -- A Conflict of Cultures
Prohibition
Nativism and the Klan
Religious Fundamentalism
The Democrats' Ordeal
Prohibition went into affect in 1920, with the support of middle class progressives.
Violations of prohibition due to a lack of enforcers (the government only hired 1,500 people to enforce this legislation) made the law a dissolution.
In some parts of the country, it was almost as easy to obtain legal alcohol as it was illegal.
Other parts of the country formed gangsters that used organized crime to obtain alcohol.
It was not until 1933 that wets (challengers to prohibition) convinced the Congress and the drys (supporters) to repeal the 18th amendment.
Those against immigration were mostly rural Protestants who associated them with radicalism. Employers in the North did not want to give up their work force.
government anti-immigration actions
1921 congress passes an immigration act establishing the quota that immigration cannot exceed 3% of the number of persons admitted to the country 1910
national Origins Act of 1924 excluded immigration from Asia entirely, angering the Japanese who knew they were the ones being targeted because Chinese immigration had been stopped in 1882.
the National Origins Act also reduced the quota to 2% and moved the year to 1890 (a year where their were fewer immigrants from eastern and southern Europe)
Nativism in the government instigated the new Ku Klux Klan.
origins
D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation glorified the old Klan, partially invigorating the new one
Other origins include the case of Leo Frank (a Jewish man who killed a female employee on flimsy evidence and then was lynched by a mob
goals
Primary was to antagonize African Amerians
After WWI, Catholics, Jews, and other foreigners were prioritized as the second "concern"
The Klan also expanded membership in the North and Midwest, though the first Klan was primarily southern
Some Klans were only political groups that talked of patriotism and politics, while others violently hurt "alien groups"
They feared these groups because they threatened "traditional values"
They also antagonized white Protestants if they were considered guilty of irreligion, sexual promiscuity, or drunkenness
The Klan worked to promote Prohibition and to punish divorce
Decline of the Klan began in 1925 when the leader of the Indiana Klan David Stephenson raped a young secretary, kidnapped her, and watched her die after eating poison rather than call a doctor. By WWII, the Klan was effectively dead
The 1920s challenged the place of religion in society. There were the modernists who attempted to adapt religious teachings to science and the traditionalists or "fundamentalists" who practiced traditional religious practices
Fundamentalists tended to be rural men and women who believed the bible must be interrupted literally. Thus, they opposed the teachings of Charles Darwin.
Modernists were mostly urban middle-class citizens
Evangelical fundamentalism began gaining political strength by imposing laws that prohibited schools from teaching evolution
One such law was in Tennessee, a site of attention from the American Civil Liberties Union who offered free counsel to anyone who opposed such law and was willing to become a defendant case.
24 year old John T. Scopes agreed to have himself arrested
The news covered the trial calling it the "Monkey Trial" for its circus like atmosphere
Though he was convicted, the Trial was a success for modernists because the lawyer Bryan made the judge look ridiculous by admitting that their was more than one interpretation of the bible. Furthermore, the judge would not allow any evolution experts to give testimony.
The trial did not change fundamentalist opinions
The democrats were divided in the 1920s between Southern Klansmen, prohibitionists, and fundamentalists on one side + Catholics, urban workers, and immigrants on the other.
A schism occured when the democrats could not decide who would be their presidential candidate: Alfred E. Smith who was a progressive immigrant New Yorker, of William McAddo who was the favorite with rural democrats
They decided to go with a middle of the road candidate, John W. Davis in 1924
Again in 1928 they had the same problem, but instead chose Al Smith who was beat by Herbert Hoover