Social Science Section 3 Academic Decathlon 25-26

Robert Staughton Lynd

Conducted Middletown study

Helen Merell Lynd

Conducted Middletown study

Muncie, Indiana

Central Indiana, 50 miles NE of Indianapolis

"Middletown"

40,000 residents (1 in 12 was a member of KKK; 1924, 2,000 marched in downtown)

Showed growing wealth gap, change in religious and gender traditions

One of lowest percentages of immigrants; native-born, white, and Protestant (cultural homogeneity)

Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture

Written by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merell Lynd

Showed society in flux, with changing patterns of class, religion, and gender divisions

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

White supremacist group with anti-Semitism, anti-Catholic bigotry, and anti-black racism

Indiana's KKK

250,000 members

Controlled Republican Party, governor, half of the general assembly, and U.S. Senators

August 1925, 30,000 KKK marched on Pennsylvania Avenue

David Curtis Stephenson

"Grand Dragon" of the Indiana KKK

Original KKK

Aftermath of Civil War as Confederate Veterans started to deny African Americans economic, social, and political equality

Crushed by Pres. Ulysses S. Grant

Efforts continued by Democratic Party

Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffin

1915 Film

Glorified original KKK as defenders of Southern white womanhood

Very popular, praised by Woodrow Wilson

Revival of KKK

1915, gathering at Stone Mountain, Georgia

Mission: "Native, white, and protestant" ; "100 percent Americanism"

1920-25, grew to 5 million members

Back Prohibition, moral crusaders against prostitution and gov. corruption, opposers of evolution, supporters of immigration restriction

Hiram Wesley Evans

"Imperial Wizard" of KKK

Oregon's KKK

Anti-Catholic legislation that mandated public school attendance

Decline of KKK

Scandals and internal conflicts

Birthright Citizenship

14th Amendment

United States v. Wong Kim Ark

(1898) Established precedent that children born in the US to immigrant parents become American citizens regardless of parents citizenship, race, or ethnicity

Naturalization

Article 1, Section 8

1790 = any free white person

1870 = revised Naturalization Act, immigrants of African descent

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

Barred Chinese immigrants from becoming Naturalized citizens

Left ambiguity for non-Chinese Asians

Takao Ozawa

Japanese

Immigrated to US at 19 to attend University of California

Moved to Hawaii and started a family

Involved in court case regarding citizenship, argued for assimilation and Americanness

Ozawa v. United States

Nov 1922, physical traits were unreliable for race

Involved Takako Ozawa, who argued for long-time residence, children in local schools, English fluency, church attendance, and "transparent pink tint" to skin

A white person is caucasian

United States v. Bhagat Signh Thind

Feb 1923

Thind argued that the Aryan race descended from Ancient India

Court decided there were "whites" and "non-whites"

Many South Asian immigrants stripped of U.S. citizenship and declared unassimilable

Bhagat Signh Thind

From Punjab region in Northeast British India

Sikh

Served with distinction in US Army during WW1

Designated a "high caste Hindu of full Indian blood" by gov.

Involved in court case regarding citizenship in 1923

First wave of immigration in nineteenth century

Northern and Western Europe

Second wave of immigration, 1890-1924

Southern and Eastern Europe

Peaked 1924

1901-1920, 14.1 million immigrant

2.5 million Eastern European Jews

Roman Catholicism

Italians, Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians boosted Irish Catholic population

Caused Roman Catholicism was largest Christian denomination, 1906=14 million members

Revived anti-Catholic prejudice

Jewish Immigration (1890-1924)

2.5 Million from cities and shtetls within Tsarist Russia Pale of Settlement & Austro-Hungarian controlled areas

Fled impoverishment, discrimination, and religious persecution

1910, >1 million Jews in NYC (Manhattans Lower East Side)

Leo Frank

Jewish factory owner

1915 lynching due to a false accusation of murdering a young girl

Dearborn Independent

Henry Ford's Newspaper

Published conspiracy theories which said there were Jewish plots to dominate politics

1927, issued apology to settle a libel case

Abbot Lawrence Lowell

President of Harvard

VP to Immigration Restriction League

Imposed strict limits on the number of Jewish students admitted to Harvard

Immigration Restriction League (IRL)

Immigration Act of 1917

Imposed literacy tests and banned Asian immigration

Emergency Quota Act of 1921

Capped number of immigrants permitted each year

3% of number for foreign born residents of particular nationality as recorded in 1910 census

Allocated 45% of total quotas to Southern and Eastern Europe

Over 700,000 immigrants in 1924

Johnson-Reed Immigration Act

Proposed 1924 by Senator David Reed (Pennsylvania) and Congressman Albert Johnson (Washington)

Quotas based on 2% of the foreign born population from the 1890 census

S/E Europe = 16% of total quotas

155,500 immigrants per year

"National Origins Act" "Quota Act"

Ended era of open immigration, codified hierarchy of desirability

Madison Grant

Chair of the New York Zoological Society and leader of the Immigration Restriction League

Wrote The Passing of the Great Race

The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant (1916)

Virtues of "Nordics" and vices of "Mediterranean"

Skull shape and size

Nature determined worth and destiny

Rejected American melting pot as dangerous, "race suicide"

The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy by T.L. Stoppard (1920)

WW1 had unsettled the historical dominance of European nations, opened the world for Asian dominance

Army Mental Tests

Led by Robert M. Yerkes in 1918

Measured familiarity with American Culture

Average mental age of 13 for White Americans, lower for African-Americans and immigrants

Seen as objective scientific facts

Eugenics

Used evolutionary biology and Social Darwinism to show that people could be divided into superior and inferior races and that traits & poverty was heredity

Hoped for bans on interracial marriage and sterilization on criminals and disabled

American Eugenics Society

Founded by Madison Grant and H. H. Loughlin in 1922

Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act of 1914

Authorized involuntary sterilization of state asylum inmates with "idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness, or epilepsy"

Carrie Buck

18 year old committed to Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

"obviously feeble-minded" and sexually promiscious

Mother admitted to same place (Emma Buck) and had child out of wedlock

Buck v. Bell

1927

James Wendell Holmes Jr. upheld constitutionality of Virginia's sterilization law

Led to 28,000 involuntary sterilizations

Never overturned

Flapper

Youthful rebellion, freedom, and sexual liberation, fought Victorian-era gender norms and conventions

Largely apolitical

Displaced Gibson Girl

Boobed hair under soft-brimmed felt cloche hats, simple slip, sheer silk stocks, bare arms

Named for "flapping" of Charleston dance

Effect of flappers on cosmetics

Cosmetics, hair products, and perfume sales surged

73% of American women over 18 used perfume; 90% used face power; 50% used rouge

Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

1925 novel named by wife, Zelda

1920s Marriage and Dating

More relaxes approach due to freedom

1 in 6 marriages ending in divorce with high remarriage rates

Revolt of Modern Youth by Ben Lindsay

1925 book

Argued for companionate marriage (preliminary relationship to ensure compatibility)

Ben Lindsay

Author of Revolt of Modern Youth (1925)

Juvenile Court Judge in Denver

Divorce

Difficult and drawn out in majority of states

Divorce in Nevada

"Quickie Divorce"

No residency requirement

9 grounds for divorce

No waiting period

Women in the consumer economy

Spent $29.3 billion annually

Controlled 85% of the nation's spending

Women in the workforce

1930, 1 in 4 (25.3) over the age of 16 worked outside the home (1920=20.6%)

Married women, 15% to 295

Often left when married

Women's jobs

"Pink Collar" "Lace Collar"

Clerics, secretaires (19%)

Nurses, teachers, social workers

3%=lawyers ; 4.4% = doctors

Southern Women in the workforce

Sharecropped

Coordinated production

Greenwich Village Pre-WW1

Intellectuals, artists, and political radicals

Bohemian Culture

Bohomeian

Feminists, anarchists, socialists, communist revolutionaries, painters, sculptors, writers

Rejected Victorian-era social norms for nonconformist lifestyle and celebrated individual self expression

Isadora Duncan

Dancer in Greenwich Village

Eugene O'Neill

Playwright in Greenwich Village

Emma Goldman

Anarchist in Greenwich Village

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poet in Greenwich Village

Wrote "First Fig" (About a candle)

Effect of WW1 on Bohemians

Joined Parisian joie de vivre

Disillusioned with war's brutality and moral bankruptcy , moved to Europe

Americans in Paris

Fifth and Sixth Arrondissements on Left Bank of Seine

1924, 32,000 Americans in Paris

Lost Generation

Coined by Gertrude Stein

American writers and artists during WW1

Influence in US due to American literary publications (EX Vanity Fair)

Challenged conventional literary forms

Alienation, disillusionment, and cynicism

Gertrude Stein

Lover Alice B. Toklas

Ran literary salon in Paris

Coined "Lost Generation"

Writers in Paris

Disillusionment, alienation, search for meaning

The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway

Mood of 20s

The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Critiqued excess of American Dream

Modernism

Art, architecture, and literature

Changes in poetry

e. e. cummings

Experimented with form and language

Wrote stanzas of nonsense as artistic defiance

Iconoclastic anti-rational Dadaist movement in Europe & Freudian psychology

Pablo Picasso

Cubist Style

Fragmented images, sharp geometric shapes, and bold colors

Georgia O'Keefe

Traditional subjects with abstract and familiar styles

Dmitri Shostakovich

Soviet composter

Chrysler Building

Built in NYC 1930

Empire State Building

Built in NYC 1931