1920s CULTURE, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

1920

barring states from using sex as a qualification for the suffrage.

major victory for the women’s suffrage movement women of color were still kept from voting because of racist laws and barriers (poll taxes, citizen restrictions for asians and natives)

Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre

May 30 1921

• tulsa oklahoma is filled with black-owned businesses (black wall street) • 19yo shoeshine man (dick rowland) was arrested for alleged assault on 17yo white girl (sarah page) ◦ whites used that as a call to action and gathered at black wall street even when sarah didnt press charges

• armed whites set houses and businesses on fire and killed blacks ◦ loaded trucks with bodies dumped in river ◦ ppl who survived lived in tents • Articles and evidence were erased after massacre

1920s advertising

dvertising in the 1920s encouraged consumerism (constant acquisition of goods and services), convincing Americans to buy new products like cars, radios, and household appliances.

many ads used misleading or exaggerated claims to sell products (Quoted fake experts or statistics, Promised unrealistic results) making people feel they needed a product to be happy, healthy, or popular.

Sacco-Vanzetti

1927

Case held during the 1920s in which two Italian AMerican anarchists were found guilty and executed for a crime in which there was very little evidence for

demonstrated how long the Red Scare extended symbolized the nativist prejudices and stereotypes that haunted immigrant communities

Meyer v. Nebraska

Supreme Court case challenging a Nebraska law banning foreign language instruction. The court struck down the law

• Rules that it violated the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause (prohibits state from depriving any person of liberty and lifee witrhout fair legal procedure) • freedom includes the right of a teacher to teach German to a student, and the right of parents to control the upbringing of their child as they see fit

Scopes Trial

1925

• a trial in tennessee • john scopes, a public school teacher was arrested for violating a state law that prohibitied the teaching of charles darwin’s theory of evolution • found scopes guilty but supreme court overturned the decision because of a technical mistake

• Tennessee law offered a lesson in the dangers of religious intolerance and the merger of church and state. • it became a nationally celebrated confrontation between religious fundamentalism(traditional religious ideas) and civil liberties (freedom of speech, freedom of religion)

Kellogg-Briand Pact

1928

• an agreement to outlaw war, like world war one • making war an illegal means of resolving international disputes

sets a global model for peace and disarmament after World War I, despite its failure and ineffectiveness to prevent outbreak of World War II