immigrants/red scare Flashcards
Red Scare description
most immigrants were from South and East Europe.
conservatives thought immigrants had been influenced by the Russian Revolution (1917) and would want to have strikes, set up trade unions and overthrow the government
IN 1919, a wave of 3600 strikes with 400,000 strikers seemed to confirm the fears of Bolshevism and communism
April - June, 1919, bomb blasts in more than 7 states across America were perceived as an attack against the state. (One damaged the Attorney General (the representative of all legal matters in a government), Mitchell Palmer’s House.)
PALMER RAIDS - from these attacks, suspected anarchists and communists were rounded up, deported and arrested
OVER 500 DEPORTED AND 5000 ARRESTED. the majority being immigrants with radical beliefs
immigration in 1920s
early 1900s, immigration was at an all time high with majority of immigrants coming from Eastern Europe and Russia. (were escaping poverty or persecution.
FACT: in 1900 there were around 3.5 million immigrants. By 1910, 8.5 million.
more established immigrant grps (French Canadians, Irish, German) looked down on eastern Europeans and Italian immigrants.
communism and anarchism
communism (the idea that all things in a socioeconomic society should be allocated equally - money, social class and the state do not exist.)
anarchism (belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis)
Sacco and Vanzetti
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Italian radicals and anarchists who became symbols of the Red Scare of the 1920s; arrested (1920) for the alleged crime of rob/murdering factory worker Fred Parmenter
trial lasted 45 days - sentenced to death on July 14 1921 and finally being executed (1927) by electric chair
they were believed by many to have been innocent but convicted because of their immigrant status and radical political beliefs.
this was proven true. in (1970) the men were pardoned
immigration laws/quotas
1921 - the Immigration Quota Act was issued
- limiting 357,000 immigrants only in the country per annum
1924 - the National Origins Act decreased the quota to 2 percent (the census that had been present in 1890) meant that immigrants mainly from North - West Europe were allowed to enter
1929 - only 150,000 immigrants were allowed into the US per year. These acts had the intention to limit Asian, South and Eastern European immigrants to come into the country - Asians were not allowed at all after 1929,
