Video 5 - Home front

Heimlers History V5/26 - The American Homefront during World War I     1890-1945

  • “Total War” requires a state leverage of all resources home and abroad to be able to engage in combat

Government Expansion

  • new government Agencies

    • Organize the economy and society for war production

    • War industries board: prepare for an increase in supplies and manufacturing

    • National war labor board: represents labor unions for fair work treatment, and ensuring no strikes to not slow down work production, increased jobs

Homefront restrictions

  • Restricted freedom of speech

    • Government side dissent as a threat

    • 1917 Espionage act; anti-war activities declared illegal

    • 1918 Sedition act; prohibits expression of antigovernment belief

    • Eugene, V dubs in prison for 10 years for comparing the draft to slavery

    • Schenck v US 1919; SCOTUS rule that the restriction of the freedom of speech is legal if it is considered a national security threat

  • Immigrant attacks

    • American protective league formed in 1917 by nativists and the Department of Justice funding

    • Immigrants spying

  • 1917 red scare

    • Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution for communism

    • Founding of Comintern; Russian leader group, encouraging the start of global revolutions for communism under capitalistic societies such as the US

  • Palmer Raides of 1919-20

    • Led by Attorney General Mitchell A Palmer

    • 6000 immigrants imprissoned

    • Immigration acts 1921 and 1924 decreased immigration quotas

Migrations

  • Rural to urban

    • Chicago and New York

    • Increased the amount of factories

    • Stable wages

    • World War I overall decreased immigration

  • The great migration

    • A large movement of a lot of African-Americans moving up north in the United States

    • Plessy v Ferguson SCOTUS upheld that the “separate but equal” doctrine was constitutional

    • Escaping violence and the KKK as well as limited economic opportunities, and the sharecropping system

  • Discrimination

    • White immigrants see African-Americans as competition for jobs

    • 1921 Tulsa massacre; the burning of a successful black Neighborhood in Oklahoma under false accusations of an African-American assault, one of the most violent race riots