1920-40 Social Divisions

• by 1920 the KKK had ..... members


  4 mil
• how did the KKK garner more support in the 20s

  changed focus from just AAs to catholics, jews, and Eastern European immigrants
• how many female members in the KKK

  1.5 mil - able to be political activists and take part in marches
• Readjusted KKK rhetoric

  family oriented

  - semi-pro baseball team that competed across the country
• KKK media

  150 newspapers and 2 radio stations
• Henry Ford antisemitism

  funded publication of 50,000 copies of antisemitic propaganda
• KKK politicians

  16 senators, several dozen congressmen and 11 state governors
• 1924 Immigration Act


  set quotas for each nationality e.g. 1000 for the whole of Africa
• Sacco and Vanzetti


  1921

  - itialian anarchists accused of armed robber and murder of Fred Parmenter

  - 45 day trial

  - sentenced to death and executed in 1927 despite serious flaws in the case

  - showed racial prejudices
• Huey Long's Share Our Wealth Society


  7 mil members in 1935

  - campaigned against standard oil
• by 1940 ...% of NY were AAs


  6%
• Ford Massacre


  1932

  - police shot and killed 4 workers during hunger strike in Michigan
• Monkey Trial


  1925

  - Tennessee had passed the Butler Act to ban the teaching of evolution

  - Science teacher John Scopes challenged the law by teaching evolution
• Congress declares all NA were US citizens


  1924
• FDR signs the Indian Reorganisation Act (Indian New Deal)


  1934
• how much land was give back to NAs under FDR

  7 mil acres- less than they wanted and the land quality was far poorer
• Grand Wizard David Stephenson (downfall of KKK)


  convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to 25 yrs
• Death of Elizabeth Tyler


  1924

  - propagandist for KKK

  - popularity decreased
• Scottsboro Boys


  9 black teens accused of of raping two white women

  - convicted of rape by white juries, despite the weak and contradictory testimonies of the witnesses

  - appealed with help from Communist Party but only 4/9 were freed
• Eleanor Roosevelt's campaign for AA rights

  1936

  - held a White House garden party for poor black girls of the National Training School for Girls
• the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters


  1925

  - first black trade union founded by A. Phillip Randolph
• Executive Order 8802


  1941

  - FDR passed to prohibit racial discrimination in the defence industry
• Lynch mob in Mississippi take two AAs from prison, set fire to them with a blowtorch and hang them


  1937
• ..% of AAs in cities were unemployed by 1938


  50%
• Poll tax to vote

  $12 - many AAs could not afford to pay
• Racism evident in FDR's New Deals


  - TVA : new model town called Norris, only whites allowed to live there

  - CCC: had segregated camps for workers

  - NRA: employers allowed to pay whites more than AAs

  - AAA: forced thousands of AA farmers off their land