USA : A nation of contrast

• Groups that made up America's society

  • White Americans
  • Black Americans
  • Native Americans
  • Hispanics
  • Asians
• Push factors to USA

  • Overcrowding
  • Lack of opportunity
  • Unemployment
  • Persecution
• Pull factors to USA

  • Space
  • Natural resources
  • Economic opportunity
  • Wages
  • Land of the free
• Reasons for demands for immigration restriction

  • Poor immigrants
  • Illiterate immigrants
  • Different cultural and religious background
  • Fear of Communism during the Red Scare
• Government legislation to restrict immigration

  • Literacy tests 1917
  • Emergency quota act 1921
  • National origins act 1921
  • Processed and tested for disease
• Xenophobia


  The fear of immigrants/ dislike
• Political differences


  • Communism (left wing)
  • Anarchists
  • Capitalism (right wing)
• Americans frightened by Communist Revolution in Russia in 1917
• Believed communist revolution happening in USA
• 1919, 100,000 members of the Boston police force went on strike – communists blamed
• Sep 1920, bomb exploded on Wall Street killing 38 people, and another bomb destroyed the front of the Attorney General, A Mitchell Palmer's house
• Palmer raids


  1. A Mitchell Palmer organised attacks against left wing organisations

  2. Palmer spread rumours saying that there were around 150,000 communists living in the country

  3. 6,000 were arrested and held in a prison without a hearing and hundreds were deported
• Sacco and Vanzetti


  Italian immigrants accused of armed-robbery and murder in 1919, despite defence evidence they were executed in 1927
• The Bible belt


  South east america, the people were Fundamentalists who believed strongly and literally in everything the Bible said, and in the Bible Belt they condemned any other beliefs
• The monkey trial


  1. Not allowed to teach evolution, goes against bible

  2. John Scopes teach his pupils about Darwin and evolution in his biology lessons in order to make a political point

  3. Scopes was fined $100

  4. Clarence Darrow his lawyer regarded it as a victory and a blow for the fundamentalists
• Treatment of Native Americans

  • Restricted to living on federal government reservations in the 19th C
  • Sent to boarding schools to help them "assimilate" into American society
  • Forced to convert to christianity
• Jim Crow Laws


  Laws from the 1890s that said black Americans had to be treated as "separate but equal"
• Segregation


  Black and white Americans had to be kept apart
• Effects of segregation


  • Black Americans were poor, badly educated, lived in separate neighbourhoods in poor quality housing, were separated on public transport
• Aims and beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

  • Terrorise black people
  • Anti-communist, anti-black, anti-jews, anti-catholic, against all foreigners
  • White supremacy
• The Ku Klux Klan declined in the 1920s due to crimes that could not be forgiven
• The Ku Klux Klan had between 100,000 to 5 million members, and the "birth of nations" movie gained them a huge audience
• Methods used by the Ku Klux Klan

  • Lynching
  • Mutation
  • Beating up
  • Wearing white gowns
• The Ku Klux Klan could be as violent as they wanted because many members
• 1 million black people migrated from the south to the north and west to look for work
• Black areas developed within these cities which were called ghettos
• Reasons for the migration of black people to the north and west


  • Escape discrimination, intimidation and poverty
  • Leaving behind damage to farms by the boll weevil infestation
  • Taking jobs in factories due to increased demand from the First World War
• Achievements of the black renaissance


  • Boycotts of department stores until they agreed to employ blacks
  • Black theatre - black performing artists, huge audience
  • Jazz - black performers gained fame, eg Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
• National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)


  Founded in 1909 by William du Bois, campaigned for non-discrimination and litigation through marches, demonstrations, petitions
• Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)


  Founded in 1914 by Marcus Garvey, more militant and smaller, promoted "back to Africa" and black pride
• Prohibition was the complete ban on the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol, clarified by the Volstead Act
• Reasons for prohibition


  • Religious morality
  • WW1 and Germany as the enemy
  • Lack of efficient workforce
  • Pressure on politicians
• Groups that campaigned for prohibition

  • The Women's Christian Temperance Union
  • The Anti-Saloon League
• Ways to avoid prohibition

  • Bootleggers
  • Moonshine
  • Speakeasies
• Prohibition caused more crime than it solved and more alcohol was drunk by Americans during Prohibition than before it was alcohol banned
• Reasons why prohibition came to an end

  • Caused more crime than it solved
  • America needed the extra jobs in the Great Depression
  • The St Valentine's Day Massacre had sickened Americans
  • Ordinary people liked a drink
• Al Capone


  Well-known celebrity gangster who bribed officials to avoid trouble for his criminal activities
• Al Capone's gang killed over 300 people during 1926-7 in Chicago and not a single one of those murders had been solved
• St. Valentine's Day Massacre

  Capone's gang killed rival Bugs Moran gang on 14th February 1929
• Capone was eventually sent to prison for not paying his income tax