religion and race

• Bible Belt


  An area of southern America where Christian belief is strong
• Fundamentalist


  A religious person who goes to church regularly and believes the Bible word for word
• Rural areas tended to be very religious, especially those in the Bible Belt states of the south east such as Alabama and Tennessee. Many people in these states were Christian fundamentalists.
• The Monkey Trail

  • Bible Belt states believed in creationism, over 1924-25, six states banned the teaching of evolution in schools.
  • A biology teacher called John Scopes from Tennessee, ignored the ban. He was arrested and put on trail in July 1925.
  • Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution and fined $100.
• Native Americans

  • Until the Indian Citizenship Act 1924, America's native people were denied full US citizenship.
  • Encouraged to reject their own culture.
  • Children were sent to boarding schools, taught English and encouraged to convert to Christianity.
  • Native Americans were treated as second class citizens.
• In 1910, around 12 million black people lived in America, 75% in the southern states. Slavery had been abolished in the 1860s but the white-controlled state governments introduced laws to control the freedom of black Americans.
• Jim Crow laws

  • Introduced segregation, separating black and white Americans in schools, parks, hospitals, swimming pools, libraries and other public places.
  • Life for black Americans living in the south was very hard. They were discriminated against and found it difficult to get fair treatment. They could not vote and were denied to get the right to decent education and a good job.
• The KKK was founded during the Civil War in 1865, it was a racist organisation which aimed to terrorise black Americans in the southern states who had just been freed from slavery.
• After a period of decline, the KKK was revived in 1915 by William J. Simmons following the release of the film Birth of a Nation.
• Membership of the Klan was only open to WASPs; members saw themselves as superior to other races.
• Concerns over immigration and the Red Scare caused Klan membership to rise sharply in the early 1920s; 100,000 members in 1920 rising to 5 million by 1925.
• The head of the Klan was the Imperial Wizard - a post held in the 1920s by Hiram Wesley Evans; Grand Dragons were in charge of each state.
• Klan members dressed in white robes and white hoods - symbolising white supremacy; members carried the American flag and burnt crosses during their night time meetings.
• Klan members carried out lynchings, floggings, brandings, mutilation, tar and feathering and kidnapping.
• The Klan suffered a sharp decline in membership following the conviction in 1925 of David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, for the rape and mutilation of a woman on a Chicago train.
• Many black Americans migrated to the northern industrial cities as segregation didn't exist there. Between 1916 and 1920 almost 1 million people made the trek north in what became known as the 'Great Migration'.
• Jim Crow laws

  Laws which brought about segregation and discrimination against black Americans living in the southern states
• The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)

  • Founded in 1909 by William Du Bois
  • By 1919, it had 90,000 members in 300 branches
  • Du Bois believed in peaceful protests
• The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

  • Founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey
  • By 1920 it had 2,000 members and at its peak, membership was 250,000
  • Garvey believed that black people should not try to be part of white society but celebrate their blackness. He wanted black people to return to Africa
  • He was watched by the FBI, who imprisoned him after he was found guilty of postal fraud in 1925