America 1920s Flashcards
Organised crime?
The gangs did not only get involved in the illegal alcohol trade.They also made money through racketeering.(when businessmen paid gangs to stop them smashing up their premises)
A new phase was coined to describe this behaviour as-organised crime.Some of the best-known ‘gangsters’ introduced being Al Capone who made millions in a year from racketeering alone.
How did gangsters get away with organised crime?(1)
The USA has 18,600 miles of coastline and land borders to patrol.The agents faced a near impossible task of trying to prevent alcohol being smuggled in by sea or over the border (known as bootlegging.) from Mexico in the south or Canada in the north.
Why was the prohibition law hard to reinforce?
Millions of people are willing to break the law and continue drinking, so prohibition was difficult to enforce.
How was it easy to get alcohol?
It was very easy to get alcohol because criminal gangs got involved in making and supplying it. These gangs run illegal bars (speakeasies) which sold bootleg alcohol. They also sold moonshine-A home-made spirit. Speakeasies we are hidden in cellars or private hotel rooms.
How did gangs avoid being arrested?
The gangs made so much money that they were able to avoid arrest and prosecution because they bribed some of the police offices,prohibition agents, border guards and judges. Organised-crime leaders were rarely arrested or charged with any offence is because they had a great deal of control over the police. Furthermore no witnesses ever wanted to come forward against them.
Was prohibition successful(prohibition being a nationwide ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcohol from 1920 to 1933)
It was clear the prohibition Was not working, there was approximately 200,000 speakeasies in the USA. Instead of America becoming a less violent, more honest and more moral country, it had seen the rise of gangsters, on organised crime and police corruption.
How did prohibition impact society?
The Association against the prohibition amendment attracted thousands of members. They argued that prohibition was a threat to a persons right to choose to drink and that prohibition was making people lose respect for the law. It was argued that if alcohol was legalised again, lots of legal jobs would be created in the brewing industry. The government could also tax alcohol itself, rather than the gangsters making money.
Did Rooseveldt agree with prohibition
In 1932 presidential election campaign, Franklin D Roosevelt gained many votes because he opposed prohibition. He won the election, and in early 1933 he appealed prohibition.(got rid of it)
What was the importance of the case of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian immigrants who were charged with robbing a shoe factory and murdering two staff.The trial was reported all over the world and there were huge demonstrations against the verdict. There were no conclusive evidence, but the jury found them guilty and sentenced them to death. The parents said they were innocent. However it was argued that they didn’t understand what was going on because they spoke such poor English.Protesters said the trial was unfair and the two men were found guilty as much for the race and the anarchist ideas as for their actions. Despite years of protests and appeals, the two men were executed by electric chair on the 23rd of August 1927.
Rising fear of immigrants
Some saw immigrants as an enemy who bought unAmerican ideas into the country. Communism was especially feared. Americans were concerned that a communist revolution could happen in America especially as America had let in nearly 1,500,000 Russians in the past few years. An American Communist party had been set up in 1919, and industrial unrest was increasing. Anarchists were greatly feared in the 1920s.Anarchists believed that countries should not be ruled by organised governments, but by the system where everyone rules them self through voluntary cooperation. Many Americans felt they had good reason to fear and Anarchists because in 1901 an anarchist Leon Franz Czolgosz had shot dead the US President William McKinley.
The Palmer raids and the red scare
July 1919 a bomb destroyed the house of Alexander Palmer,The man in charge of America’s law and police. A Communist newspaper was found next to the body of the suicide bomber later on that year an unidentified bomber blew up 30 people in New York. No one was Found guilty but many peoples fear of communism increased even more. Palmer vowed to get rid of America’s Communist’s ‘reds’ during the ‘Palmer raids’. Many communists were arrested even though there was little evidence of any Communist plots found.this period was known as the red scare.
What did communists ’reds’ believe in?
They believe that all workers should join together , Rebel against a countries ruling classes and share all wealth equally among the citizens and our committed to the improvement of the workers rights and working conditions.
What was the KKK
A racist terror group with a membership of around 5 million in 1925.Their aims were to maintain White supremacy over African Americans and immigrants and ‘keep them in their place’. It started 1860s, Black people were beaten up or even killed in the hope that they would be too scared to register to vote. The original KKK declined towards the end of the 19th century.
What were the KKK methods?
They dressed in white sheets,white hoods and carrying US flags, their methods of violence and intimidation include whipping, branding with acid, kidnapping, castration and lynching.
The decline of the klan
1925 and popular local clan leader was convicted of the brutal kidnapping, rape and murder of a young woman. At his trial, he exposed many of the secrets of the KKK. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and within a year KKK membership had fallen from 5,000,000 to 300,000.
who where the people within the KKK
Most members were poor white people, mainly from rural areas of southern and western states.
KKK?
They looked for someone to blame for their poverty, and turned to not just African Americans, but also Jewish people, Catholics and immigrants. They felt that black and immigrant workers willingness to work for lower wages took jobs from white people. The klan was against people that wasn’t like them white and Protestant.
Racial tension
Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865, but by this time there were more black people than white in the south. White politicians, often driven by racial prejudice and fear, try to keep control by passing laws such as Jim Crow laws to keep African-American segregated.such as stopping them from voting, using the same restaurants as white people.African Americans could not expect justice from the legal system, because many judges, sheriffs and police upheld the Jim Crow laws.
The position of women in society
Life change for millions of American woman In the 1920s. Many had jobs for the first time and were wearing clothes and behaving in ways that would have been unthinkable A decade before.
Women before the war
Most women lead restricted lives and could not vote.Middle and upper-class women were expected to behave politely at all times. And wear sensible clothing.They rarely played energetic sport and wore little make up. Relationships with men were strictly controlled. for poorer woman Who had to work, there were few opportunities for promotion. They usually had to settle for poorly paid jobs such as cleaning, low skilled factory work and secretarial work.
Women during the First World War
Women took over the jobs of men who went away to fight. They worked just as hard and as well as men and the money they earned gave them a sense of independence. American women were given the right to vote in 1920, by 1929, there were around 10.5 million women with jobs, around 25% more than in 1920.
What was a flapper
The independent and fashionable young women of the 1920s were often described as flappers. Mainly middle and upper-class women from the northern states. Some road motorbikes and went to nightclubs with men until the early hours of the morning. Their liberal attitude shocked more traditional members of society, they saw flappers as an example of the evils of modern life and felt that family life, religion and traditional values were under threat. An anti-flirt league was formed to protest against the flappers behaviour.
Did woman’s life change for the better
Life did not change for all American women. For most, especially those in the south and rural areas, Life went on as before. Women worked and raised their families, and did not have enough money to buy luxuries. Despite gaining the vote, women were still not equal to men. Women worked in low skilled jobs and earned less than men in the same job.
How did the lives of some women change
More women lived on their own. They were less likely to stay in an unhappy marriage. The divorce rate double during the 1920s. Some women began to behave and dressed differently, wearing more revealing clothes and smoking and drinking in public.A survey in the 1900s so that nearly 80% of college students questioned had not had sex before marriage. A similar survey in 1920 found that only 31% had not had sex before marriage.
