Notes for Feb. 18

The Johnson-Reid Act:

Intended to limit immigration and rejected the natives feelings of the time

• some people thought that there were simply too many immigrants
• industrialist no longer needed unskilled European laborers
• leaders of labor unions were convinced that immigrants, unfamiliar with English, and unfamiliar with the purpose of unions were weakening labor solidarity

1921 Emergency Quota Act passed

• new comers from Europe were restricted in any given year to a definite quota which was set at 3% of the immigrants living in U.S in 1910

Johnson -Reid Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 established a quota of 2% of total number of immigrants from the country already in U.S in 1890

• favored British, Germans, and Scandinavians
• discriminated against "New Immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe: Italians, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, and eastern European Jews
• Chinese, Japanese, and other Asians were barred

The Scopes Trial or The Monkey Trail

Protestant Fundamentalism also reacted against urban life

• fundamentalists believed that every event depicted in the bible was literally true
• rise of the fundamentalism from the 1870s through the 1920s paralleled the rise of urban industrial society
• fundamentalists backed off from the "evils" of the cites

Fundamentalists took shape in reaction against other groups such as the liberal protestants

Liberal Protestants believed religion had to adapt to the times

• the Bible was looked to for ethnic values
• religion turned a quest for salvation to the pursuit of good deeds, social conscience, and love for one's neighbor

Both knew science biggest challenge to Christianity

• no aspect of science aroused more anger anger among fundamentalist than Darwin's theory of evolution
• could not believe man came from apes and not from God

1925 Tennessee passed law forbidding teaching of "any theory that decries the story of divine creation of man as taught in Bible"

Some found the law to be ludicrous

• American civil liberty union (ACLU) founded during Red Scare of 1919-1920 began to look for a teacher to challenge the law
• John Scopes, a biology teacher, challenged law by teaching evolution
• At trial William Jennings Bryan came forward to help prosecution and Clarence Darrow, a famous trial lawyer, led Scopes defense

Trial drew large crowds and lots of press; Scopes was convicted by trial took a strange twist

• Darrow convinced judge to let Bryan testify as expert on Bible
• Darrow embarrassed Bryan and got him to admit that was not always easy to determine the "truth" of the bible

Caused the fundamentalist to retreat

Ethnic/Racial culture and politics in the cities of the 1920s

Government policy simultaneously discouraged the continued immigrations of "new immigrants" from southern and eastern Europe, and encouraged migrations of blacks from the south to the north and of Mexicans into Southwest U.S

• new immigrants concentrated in cities of northeast and Midwest
• many semiskilled and unskilled industrial workers who lacked job security
• many catholic or Jewish and the targets of the KKK
• Catholics resented prohibition
• Southern and eastern Europeans represented immigration restriction and the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti
• state after state passed laws requiring public schools to teach citizenship

Ethnic association flourished; immigration sought to preserve their culture

Many immigrants went to movies, amusement parks, baseball games, and boxing matches

African Americans combines to move north despite to race riots

• 300,000 blacks in New York and 234,000 in Chicago formed cities unto themselves
• complex societies emerged from these black metropolises
• society thrilling but discrimination remained high
• found only lowest paying jobs
• housing available in "colored" neighborhood

Harlem Renaissance

Black Culture: 1920s vigorous and productive

• musicians coming north brought blues and ragtime
• southern styles merged with European influence of the north to become Jazz

Black literary and artistic awakening (the Harlem Renaissance) paralleled emergence of Jazz

• black novelists, poets, painters, sculptors, and play writers set about creating roots in black culture
• the world culture was one place the "new negro" could assert himself
• an example of a prominent member was poet Langston Hughes
• white club owners would not let blacks in

Alienated American intellectuals / the last generation

Many native born, white artists and intellectuals despaired of American culture and regarded the average American as

• anti-intellectuals, small minded, materialistic, and puritanical
• these alienated intellectuals were known as the "lost generators"
• many went to Europe: particularly pans to live

American intellectuals shocked by the effect of WWI on American society

• the wartime push for consensus in support of the war created in tolerance of radicals, immigrants, and blacks
• intellectuals were further dismayed by prohibition, the rebirth of the KKK, the rise of fundamentalism, and the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti

Many writers of this period received high literary awards including the Nobel prize for literature

• William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neil, T.S. Elliot