World War I Home Front and Post-War Society

This set of vocabulary flashcards covers concepts related to the United States home front during World War I, including government agencies, civil liberty restrictions, the Red Scare, and the Great Migration.

Total War

A war that requires a state to leverage all of its resources, both at home and abroad, in order to fight.

War Industries Board

A government agency that worked with private sector corporations to help them prepare to ramp up production to manufacture war supplies.

National War Labor Board

A body representing labor unions and corporations that worked to ensure fair treatment for workers while preventing strikes that would slow down war production.

Espionage Act (1917)

A federal law that made participating in anti-war activities illegal, most notably interfering with the military draft.

Sedition Act (1918)

A law that prohibited Americans from expressing anti-government beliefs or displaying any kind of disloyalty to their government.

Eugene V. Debs

The Socialist Party leader who was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for a speech comparing the military draft to slavery.

Schenck v. United States

A Supreme Court case which ruled that it is permissible to restrict free speech if that speech presents a "clear and present danger" to national security.

American Protective League

A group of nativists sponsored by the Department of Justice in 1917 tasked with spying on German-American neighbors and reporting disloyal behavior.

Red Scare

A period of anti-communist hysteria in the U.S. triggered by the 1917 Russian Revolution and the fear of radicalism spreading to capitalist countries.

Comintern

A group of Russian leaders whose stated goal was to start communist revolutions in capitalist countries throughout the world.

Palmer Raids

A series of law enforcement actions in 1919 and 1920 led by U.S. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer resulting in the arrest of over 6,000 immigrants and several hundred deportations.

Immigration Act of 1921 and 1924

Legislation passed by Congress that led to significant reductions in immigration to the United States following the mass hysteria of immigrant radicalism.

Great Migration

The movement of millions of black Americans from the South into northern and western cities to escape segregation, racial violence, and limited economic opportunities.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation of public facilities as long as those separate facilities were considered equal in quality.

Sharecropping

An economic system in the South that essentially amounted to slavery by a different name by driving black farmers into debt by design.

Tulsa Massacre (1921)

A severe race riot in which white mobs destroyed the prosperous Greenwood district, also known as "Black Wall Street," in Tulsa, Oklahoma.