APUSH 1920s Lecture

The Red Scare

• Fear of communists, socialists, anarchists, etc., following a series of anarchist bombing in 1919

  • A. Mitchell Palmer raided homes of suspected radicals in the United States

    • Appointed J. Edgar Hoover

    • Many were rounded up and deported

    • The American public generally supported it

    • Often limited evidence that people were actually guilty

    • Unions were targeted as they were often seen as socialist organizations

      • IWW was especially targeted because it actually was socialist

• The “American Plan” was employers trying to subvert unions

  • Created open shops, which didn’t require employees to be in a union

• Criminal syndicalism laws made it illegal to make change through violence

• The Sacco & Vanzetti Trial:

  • Sacco & Vanzetti were Italian immigrants who were also self-identified anarchists

    • They were accused of killing 2 clerks of a shoe factory in a robbery and were sentenced to death

  • Little evidence, but they seemed guilty cause they lied