America+1920s

The Red Scare
[|America] may be famed for its [|Jazz Age] and [|prohibition] during the 1920's, and for its [|economic strength] before the [|Wall Street Crash], but a darker side existed. The [|KKK] dominated the South and those who did not fit in found that they were facing the full force of the law. Those who supported un-American political beliefs, such as communism, were suspects for all sorts of misdemeanors. The so-called "Red Scare" refers to the fear of communism in the USA during the 1920’s. It is said that there were over 150,000 anarchists or communists in USA in 1920 alone and this represented only 0.1% of the overall population of the USA. || **"The whole lot were about as dangerous as a flea on an elephant." (US journalist)** However many Americans were scared of the communists especially as they had overthrown the royal family in [|Russia] in [|1917] and murdered them in the following year. In 1901, an anarchist had shot the American president (**McKinley**) dead. The fear of communism increased when a series of strikes occurred in 1919. The police of Boston went on strike and 100,000’s of steel and coal workers did likewise. The communists usually always got the blame. A series of bomb explosions in 1919, including a bungled attempt to blow up **A. Mitchell Palmer**, America’s **Attorney-General**, lead to a campaign against the communists. On New Year’s Day, 1920, over 6000 people were arrested and put in prison. Many had to be released in a few weeks and only 3 guns were found in their homes. Very few people outside of the 6000 arrested complained about the legality of these arrests such was the fear of communism. The judicial system seemed to turn a blind eye as America's national security was paramount However, far more people complained about the arrest of **Nicola Sacco** and **Bartolomeo Vanzetti**. They were arrested in May 1920 and charged with a wages robbery in which 2 guards were killed. Both men were from Italy and both spoke little English. But both were known to be anarchists and when they were found they both had loaded guns on them. The judge at their trial - Judge Thayer - was known to hate the "Reds" and 61 people claimed that they saw both men at the robbery/murders. But 107 people claimed that they had seen both men elsewhere when the crime was committed. Regardless of this both men were found guilty. They spent 7 years in prison while their lawyers appealed but in vain. Despite many public protests and petitions, both men were executed by electric chair on August 24th, 1927. 

**Vanzetti and Sacco** Throughout the 1920's and 1930's a culture developed within America which both feared and despised communism. This stance against the "Reds" only become diluted when America and [|Russia] allied against a common foe in the [|Second World War]. 

Immigration Quotas
The **Immigration Act of 1924**, or **Johnson–Reed Act**, including the **National Origins Act**, **Asian Exclusion Act** (43 Statutes-at-Large 153), was a [|United States federal law] that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the [|United States] in 1890, down from the 3% cap set by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, according to the [|Census of 1890]. It superseded the 1921 [|Emergency Quota Act]. The law was aimed at further restricting the [|Southern] and [|Eastern Europeans] who were immigrating in large numbers starting in the 1890s, as well as prohibiting the immigration of [|East Asians] and [|Asian Indians]. Congressional opposition was minimal. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From 1880 to 1924, over 25 million Europeans migrated to the United States.[|[75]] Following this time period, immigration fell because in 1924 Congress passed the [|Immigration Act of 1924], which favored immigrant source countries that already had many immigrants in the U.S. by 1890

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Ford and Mass Production
The term //mass production// was defined in a 1926 article in the //Encyclopedia Britannica// supplement that was written based on correspondence with Ford Motor Co. The //New York Times// used the term in the title of an article that appeared before publication of the //Britannica// article.[|[][|1][|]] It was also referenced by Sir Chiozza Money, the Fabian banker, politician and author, writing in the London Observer in 1919, comparing the efficiency of mass-production techniques as used in America with British practice.
 * Mass production** (also **flow production**, **repetitive flow production**, **series production**, or **serial production**) is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on [|assembly lines]. The concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk (such as food, fuel, chemicals, and mined minerals) to discrete solid parts (such as fasteners) to assemblies of such parts (such as household appliances and automobiles).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Republican Policies
Republican policies in the ten years 1919-1929 were essentially those that encouraged a free market economy - though the imposition of tariffs on imported goods was a contradiction since it involved government interference in the free workings of the economy.

The belief that the government should 'leave well alone' (=laissez faire) and the widespread belief that Americans could succede solely by their own efforts (=rugged individualism) contributed to the boom but I don't think one could say that these ideas //created// the economic boom.

The 'American Dream' (maybe that was the 4th thing?) - the conviction that absolutely anyone could be financially and socially successful in America whatever their social origins - was an additional factor.

These policies and beliefs aided the economic boom in a number of ways:

A government that believes in 'laissez faire' as the Republicans did will not tax the profits that a businessmen makes heavily and will do little to interfere in the workings of the economy. Eg they will not subsidise struggling businesses, nor will they attempt to regulate wages in any way. The effect of this (in theory and in practice) in 1920s America was to encourage investment in profitable industries (whilst declining industries were allowed to 'go to the wall') As I am sure you are aware, the more successful a business is the more people will want to invest in it and this pushes up the prices of shares on the Stock Market. (The converse is true: look at what happened to the price of shares in Marks and Spencers the other day).

On the whole 'big' investors in the Stock Market have their heads screwed on and make (mostly) rational decisions. What fuelled the boom in 1920s USA was that perfectly ordinary people were able to buy shares on credit ('on the margin') and these were the people who panicked first in October 1929. One could argue that the Republican government laissez fire beliefs were responsible for this since there was no control on bank lending (to those inexperienced 'speculators').

A belief in 'rugged individualism' is also connected here since it it 'glorified' the idea that hard work and individual effort would be rewarded with financial success and takes no real account of the fact that individuals have little control over economic forces. (I'm sure you can think of hard working people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own). Whilst times were 'good' though this philosophy encouraged ordinary men and women to think that the 'bubble' would never burst and that further fuelled investment in the Stock Market.

The imposition of tariffs on imported goods of course protected American industries from foreign competition and in that way created a 'captive market' for American goods and would have had the effect of artificially rasing profits (and thus share prices)

I expect you realise that the prices of Shares on the Stock Market depend heavily on people's confidence in the future. At its simplest - when confidence is high prices go up. When prices go up fast enough you have an economic boom. The reverse is also true.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Women
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Fashion <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Early 20s - The salient features of women's clothing in the 20's are short skirts and dropped waistlines. The silhouettes of the earlier part of the decade are long and cylindrical, with the skirt falling 7" to 10" below the knee.Despite the relatively simple silhouette, the wide variety of detail was astonishing. Even inexpensive, ready-made clothing from catalog and chain stores such as Sears portrayed an imaginative range of cuts and trims. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The long straight style had a great many variations, one extremely popular fashion was the //Basque dress// or //Robe de Style//. This dress style is best known from the beautiful creations of Jeanne Lanvin. It is a sort of compromise between the straight twenties silhouette and the old fashioned belled-skirt. It featured a tubular bodice that draped straight down to a dropped waist, then a full skirt (not bias cut, but with gathers at the waist) ending at mid-calf or ankle. These were very popular for afternoon and evening wear. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mid Twenties - The silhouette of the early twenties was still rooted in the shirtwaist and skirt mode of the teens. It was in high fashion that the long straight silhouette started to get a toe-hold. As the decade continued, the long straight shape moved to day time wear. Then evening wear became straighter and shorter, after which daytime wear copied it. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was in evening wear that the innovations of twenties style first appeared. By 1926, women who grew up in a world that barely acknowledged knees were very nearly wearing their dresses above them. This is when the modern fashion concept of the flapper first appeared. The name 'flapper' - meaning a young modern woman who went out on dates without a chaperone, wore fashionable clothes, wore make-up, and possibly had a job - had already made appearances as early as 1919. The 'bob' haircut had been introduced in New York by the society dancer Irene Castle in 1914, she had acquired it on a European tour where she'd seen fashionable Parisians wearing it. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Late Twenties - As the decade reached its end, fashion started to revert to a longer silhouette, and waist lines began to make a tentative reappearance. The fabrics and cut clung more closely to the body, foreshadowing the bias cuts of the 30s. As a sort of compromise between the old shorter skirt and the newer longer skirt, there was a brief period (c.1928) when evening clothes had both. Again it was evening wear that led the way, while daywear still clung to the flapper fashion ideal. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The fashions we regard as 'the Flapper look' only lasted about 3 years, from 1925 to 1928. By 1928 high fashion had drifted onward, but the look of the Flapper lives on in popular consciousness.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Monkey Trial
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Who would dominate American culture--the modernists or the traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and they found one in a [|Dayton, Tennessee] courtroom in the summer of 1925. There a jury was to decide the fate of [|John Scopes], a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The guilt or innocence of John Scopes, and even the constitutionality of [|Tennessee's anti-evolution statute], mattered little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">[|William Jennings Bryan], three-time Democratic candidate for President and a populist, led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish [|Darwin] 's theory of evolution from American classrooms. Bryan's motivation for mounting the crusade is unclear. It is possible that Bryan, who cared deeply about equality, worried that Darwin's theories were being used by supporters of a growing eugenics movement that was advocating sterilization of "inferior stock." More likely, the Great Commoner came to his cause both out a concern that the teaching of evolution would undermine traditional values he had long supported and because he had a compelling desire to remain in the public spotlight--a spotlight he had occupied since his famous "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention. Bryan, in the words of columnist [|H. L. Mencken], who covered the Scopes Trial, transformed himself into a "sort of Fundamentalist Pope." By 1925, Bryan and his followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in fifteen states to ban the teaching of evolution. In February, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced by [|John Butler] making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals." <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. [|George Rappalyea][|,] a 31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the others--including School Superintendent Walter White--became convinced that publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town, whose population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890's to 1,800 in 1925. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a twenty-four-year old general science teacher and part-time football coach, to the drugstore. As Scopes later described the meeting, Rappalyea said, "John, we've been arguing and I said nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution." Scopes agreed. "That's right," he said, pulling a copy of Hunter's Civic Biology--the state-approved textbook--from one of the shelves of the drugstore (the store also sold school textbooks). "You've been teaching 'em this book?" Rappalyea asked. Scopes replied that while filling in for the regular biology teacher during an illness, he had assigned readings on evolution from the book for review purposes. "Then you've been violating the law," Rappalyea concluded. "Would you be willing to stand for a test case?" he asked. Scopes agreed. He later explained his decision: "the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle." Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Rappalyea initially wanted science fiction writer H. G. Wells to head the defense team. "I am sure that in the interest of science Mr. Wells will consent," Rappalyea predicted. Wells had no interest in taking the case, but others did. [|John Neal], an eccentric law school dean from Knoxville, drove to Dayton and volunteered to represent Scopes. When William Jennings Bryan offered to join the prosecution team--despite having not practiced law in over thirty years--, [|Clarence Darrow], approaching seventy, jumped to join the battle in Dayton. Darrow was not the first choice of the ACLU, who was concerned that Darrow's zealous agnosticism might turn the trial into a broadside attack on religion.The ACLU first preferred former presidential candidates John W. Davies and Charles Evans Hughes, but neither was willing to serve alongside Darrow. Instead, it dispatched [|Arthur Garfield Hays,] a prominent free speech advocate, to join the defense team. The final member of the defense team was [|Dudley Field Malone], an international divorce attorney (and another volunteer who the ACLU might have preferred to stay at home). Completing the prosecution team in Dayton were present and former attorneys general for Eastern Tennessee, [|A. T. Stewart] and [|Ben B.] [|McKenzie][|,] and Bryan's son, federal prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, Jr. Time has a way of simplifying events and today Darrow and Bryan are remembered as the key adversaries in the trial, even though Hays for the defense and Stewart for the prosecution played equally important roles at the trial. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as the opening of the trial approached in July of 1925. Banners decorated the streets. Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on Main Street. Anti- Evolution League members sold copies of T. T. Martin's book //Hell and the High School//. Holy rollers rolled in the surrounding hills and riverbanks. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Nearly a thousand people, 300 of whom were standing, jammed the Rhea County Courthouse on July 10, 1925 for the first day of trial. (Judge [|John T. Raulston], the presiding judge in the Scopes Trial, had proposed moving the trial under a tent that would have seated 20,000 people). Also in attendance were announcers ready to send to listeners the first live radio broadcast from a trial. Judge Raulston, a conservative Christian who craved publicity, was flanked by two police officers waving huge fans to keep air circulating. The proceedings opened, over Darrow's objections, to a prayer. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A jury of twelve men, including ten (mostly middle-aged) farmers and eleven regular church-goers, was quickly selected. The trial adjourned for the weekend. On Sunday, William Jennings Bryan delivered the sermon at Dayton's Methodist Church. He used the occasion to attack the defense strategy in the Scopes case. As Bryan spoke, Judge Raulston and his entire family listened attentively from their front pew seats. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">On the first business day of trial, the defense moved to quash the indictment on both state and federal constitutional grounds. This move was at the heart of the defense strategy. The defense's goal was not to win acquittal for John Scopes, but rather to obtain a declaration by a higher court--preferably the U.S. Supreme Court--that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional. (That goal, however, would not be realized for another 43 years, in the case of [|Epperson v. Arkansas] ). As expected, Judge Raulston denied the defense motion. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Opening statements pictured the trial as a titanic struggle between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed that "if evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued, "Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial." The prosecution, Darrow contended, was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in the Middle Ages." To the gasps of spectators, Darrow said Bryan was responsible for the "foolish, mischievous and wicked act." Darrow said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible "the yardstick to measure every man's intellect, to measure every man's intelligence, to measure every man's learning." It was classic Darrow, and the press--mostly sympathetic to the defense--loved it. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The prosecution opened its case by asking the court to take judicial notice of the Book of [|Genesis], as it appears in the King James version. It did. Superintendent White led off the prosecution's list of witnesses with his testimony that John Scopes had admitted teaching about evolution from Hunter's //Civic Biology//. Chief Prosecutor Tom Stewart then asked seven students in Scope's class a series of questions about his teachings. They testified that Scopes told them that man and all other mammals had evolved from one-celled organism. Darrow cross-examined--gently, though with obvious sarcasm--the students, asking freshman Howard Morgan: "Well, did he tell you anything else that was wicked?" "No, not that I can remember," Howard answered. After drugstore owner Fred Robinson took the stand to testify as to Scope's statement that "any teacher in the state who was teaching Hunter's Biology was violating the law," the prosecution rested. It was a simple case. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">On Thursday, July 16, the defense called its first witness, Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from the Johns Hopkins University. The prosecution objected, arguing that the testimony was irrelevant to Scopes' guilt or innocence under the statue. Before ruling the prosecution's evidence, Judge Raulston decided to hear some of Dr. Metcalf's testimony about the theory of evolution. The testimony evoked Bryan's only extended speech of the trial. Bryan mocked Metcalf's exposition of the theory of evolution, complaining that the evolutionists had man descending "not even from American monkeys, but Old World monkeys." Dudley Malone countered for the defense, arguing in a thundering voice that the prosecution's position was borne of the same ignorance "which made it possible for theologians...to bring Old Galilee to trial." It was a powerful speech. Anti-evolution lawmaker [|John Butler] called it "the finest speech of the century." Members of the press gave Malone a standing ovation and most courtroom spectators joined in the sustained applause. The next day, Raulston ruled the defense's expert testimony inadmissible. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Raulston's ruling angered Darrow. He said he could not understand why "every suggestion of the prosecution should meet with an endless waste of time, and a bare suggestion of anything that is perfectly competent on our part should be immediately overruled." Raulston asked Darrow, "I hope you do not mean to reflect upon the court?" Darrow's reply: "Well, your honor has the right to hope." Raulston responded, "I have the right to do something else." The insult earned Darrow a contempt finding, which was later dropped when Darrow, to a big hand from spectators, apologized for his remark. Darrow and Raulston shook hands. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">After expressing concern that the courtroom floor might collapse from the weight of the many spectators, Raulston transferred the proceedings to the lawn outside the courthouse. There, facing the jury, hung a sign--attached to the courthouse wall-- reading, "Read Your Bible." Darrow asked either that the sign be removed or that a second sign of equal size saying "Read Your Evolution" be put up along with it. Raulston ordered the sign removed. Before a crowd that had swelled to about 5,000, the defense read into the record, for purpose of appellate review, excerpts from the prepared statements of eight scientists and four experts on religion who had been prepared to testify. The statements of the experts were widely reported by the press, helping Darrow succeed in his efforts to turn the trial into a national biology lesson. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">On the seventh day of trial, Raulston asked the defense if it had any more evidence. What followed was what the New York Times described as "the most amazing court scene on Anglo-Saxon history." Hays asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan assented, stipulating only that he should have a chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Bryan, dismissing the concerns of his prosecution colleagues, took a seat on the witness stand, and began fanning himself. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After initially contending that "everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My impression is that they were periods." <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes." Both old warriors grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue to answer Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from evidence. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow was reported by the press as a defeat for Bryan. According to one historian, "As a man and as a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his testimony that day." His performance was described as that of "a pitiable, punch drunk warrior." Darrow, however, has also not escaped criticism. Alan Dershowitz, for example, contended that the celebrated defense attorney "comes off as something of an anti-religious cynic." <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The trial was nearly over. Darrow asked the jury to return a verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby denied the opportunity to deliver a closing speech he had labored over for weeks. The jury complied with Darrow's request, and Judge Raulston fined him $100. <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Six days after the trial, William Jennings Bryan was still in Dayton. After eating an enormous dinner, he lay down to take a nap and died in his sleep. Clarence Darrow was hiking in the Smoky Mountains when word of Bryan's death reached him. When reporters suggested to him that Bryan died of a broken heart, Darrow said "Broken heart nothing; he died of a busted belly." In a louder voice he added, "His death is a great loss to the American people." <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A year later, [|the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed] the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality--not the constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case." <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jim Crow Laws
The **Jim Crow laws** were state and local laws in the [|United States] enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated //[|de jure]// [|racial segregation] in all public facilities, with a supposedly "[|separate but equal]" status for [|black Americans]. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for [|white Americans], systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages. De jure mainly applied to the Southern United States. Northern segregation was generally [|de facto], from blacks predominately living in urban ghettos. Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800–1866 [|Black Codes], which also restricted the [|civil rights] and [|civil liberties] of African Americans. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the [|Supreme Court of the United States] in 1954 in //[|Brown v. Board of Education]//. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the [|Civil Rights Act of 1964][|[][|1][|]] and the [|Voting Rights Act of 1965].

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">KKK
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Ku Klux Klan**, often abbreviated **KKK** and informally known as **the Klan**, is the name of three distinct past and present [|far-right][|[6]][|[7]][|[8]][|[9]] organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist [|reactionary] currents such as [|white supremacy], [|white nationalism], and [|anti-immigration], historically expressed through [|terrorism].[|[10]][|[11]] Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been [|anti-communist].[|[10]] The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is classified as a [|hate group].[|[12]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The first Klan flourished in [|the South] in the 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members adopted white costumes: robes, masks, and [|conical hats], designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities.[|[13]] The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopted the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings.[|[14]] The third KKK emerged after World War II and was associated with opposing the civil rights movement and progress among minorities. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to America's "[|Anglo-Saxon]" and "[|Celtic]" blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century [|British colonial revolutionaries].[|[15]] All incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in [|terrorism], though historians debate how widely the tactic was supported by the membership of the second KKK. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The second Klan arose during the [|nadir of American race relations], in response to urbanization and industrialization. Massive immigration from the largely Catholic countries of eastern and southern Europe led to friction with America's longer-established Protestant citizens. The [|Great Migration] of African Americans to the North stoked racism by whites in Northern industrial cities; thus the second Klan would achieve its greatest political power not in any Southern state, but in [|Indiana]. The migration of African Americans and whites from rural areas to Southern cities further increased tensions. The Klan grew most rapidly in urbanizing cities which had high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, such as [|Detroit], [|Memphis], [|Dayton], [|Atlanta], [|Dallas], and [|Houston]. In Michigan, more than half of the members lived in Detroit and were concerned about urban issues: limited housing, rapid social change, competition for jobs.[|[77]] [|Stanley Horn], a Southern historian sympathetic to the first Klan, was careful in an oral interview to distinguish it from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days".[|[78]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In an era without [|Social Security] or widely available [|life insurance], it was common for men to join [|fraternal organizations] such as the [|Elks] or the [|Woodmen of the World] to provide for their families in case they died or were unable to work. The founder of the new Klan, [|William J. Simmons], was a member of twelve different fraternal organizations. He [|recruited for the Klan] with his chest covered with fraternal badges, and consciously modeled the Klan after those organizations.[|[79]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Klan organizers, called "[|Kleagles]", signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and bought KKK costumes. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a huge rally, often with burning crosses and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant minister. He then left town with the money. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Klan's growth was also affected by mobilization for [|World War I] and postwar tensions, especially in the cities where strangers came up against each other more often. Southern whites resented the arming of black soldiers. Black veterans did not want to go back to second-class status in the United States. Some were lynched, still in uniform, upon returning from overseas service.[|[80]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In reaction to social changes, the Klan adopted [|anti-Jewish], [|anti-Catholic], [|anti-Communist] and [|anti-immigrant] slants. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Although Klan members were concentrated in the South, Midwest and west, there were some members in [|New England], too. Klan members torched an [|African American] school in [|Scituate, Rhode Island].[|[81]]

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Prohibition
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Prohibition in the United States** (sometimes referred to as the **Noble Experiment**)[|[1]] was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of [|alcohol], in place from 1920 to 1933.[|[2]] The ban was mandated by the [|Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution]. It was repealed on December 5, 1933. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The [|Senate] proposed the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917. Having been approved by 36 states, the 18th Amendment was ratified on January 16, 1919 and effected on January 17, 1920.[|[3]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On November 18, 1918, before the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, the United States Congress passed the temporary Wartime Prohibition Act, which banned the sale of alcoholic beverages having an alcohol content of greater than 2.75%.[|[4]] (This act, which was intended to save grain for the war effort, was passed after the [|armistice] was signed on November 11, 1918.) The Wartime Prohibition Act took effect June 30, 1919, and July 1, 1919 became widely known as the "Thirsty-First".[|[5]][|[6]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[|Congress] passed the [|Volstead Act], the popular name for the National Prohibition Act, over [|President] [|Woodrow Wilson]'s [|veto] on October 28, 1919, and established the legal definition of intoxicating liquor, as well as penalties for producing it.[|[7]] Though the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of alcohol, the federal government did little to enforce it. By 1925, in [|New York City] alone, there were anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 [|speakeasy] clubs.[|[8]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While Prohibition was successful in reducing the amount of liquor consumed, it stimulated the proliferation of rampant underground, organized and widespread [|criminal activity].[|[9]] The bulk of America became disenchanted after the [|St. Valentine's Day massacre] in 1929. Prohibition became increasingly unpopular during the [|Great Depression], especially in large cities. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On March 22, 1933, President [|Franklin Roosevelt] signed into law an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the [|Cullen-Harrison Act], allowing the manufacture and sale of certain kinds of alcoholic beverages. On December 5, 1933, the ratification of the [|Twenty-first Amendment] repealed the Eighteenth Amendment. However, United States federal law still prohibits the manufacture of [|distilled spirits] without meeting numerous licensing requirements that make it impractical to produce spirits for personal beverage use.[|[10]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As a result of prohibition, the advancements of [|industrialization] were essentially reversed. This was achieved by large scale alcohol producers being shut down for the most part and individual citizens taking it upon themselves to produce alcohol illegally. This process reversed the efficiency of mass producing and retailing alcoholic beverages. Closing manufacturing plants and taverns resulted in economic reversal. The [|Eighteenth Amendment] originally did not have this effect on the industry due to its failure to define what an “intoxicating” beverage was. The [|Volstead Act]’s definition of 0.5% or more alcohol by volume constituting “intoxicating” shut down the brewers who had expected to still be able to produce beer of moderate strength.[|[55]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Illegal marketeers had to attract new clients. One notable group of new drinkers were women. Those who were not in support of prohibition could drink in the new semi-public environment of [|speakeasies].This was a result of the masculinity of drinking being reduced as a result of the [|saloon] dying out and the norm of women drinking in public was much more acceptable.[|[55]] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Heavy drinkers and alcoholics were among the most affected parties during prohibition. Those who were determined to find liquor could still do so, but those who saw their drinking habits as destructive typically had difficulty in finding the help they sought. The self-help societies had withered away along with the alcohol industry and in 1935 a new self-help group was founded: [|Alcoholics Anonymous (AA)].[|[55]]