Topic 2 : Intolerance in Society Flashcards
Misogyny
-Factory Federal Contracts : men 40 cents/hour vs women 25 cents/hour
-Only 23% of the workforce were women
-Only 10% of married women worked
-Only 36% of women voted in the 1920 elections
However….
-5% increase in women in workforce by the end of the decade
-Right to vote in 1920
-60% of families had a car by 1929
Immigrants + Native Americans
-“Red Scare” : Mitchell Palmer (Attorney General) posted bomb which almost killed him
-As a result he ordered his clerk to compile suspect files on 60,000 immigrants, 10,000 of whom were deported.
-Immigrants had to do the lowest paid jobs
-Immigration quotas (incl. no asian immigrants)
-Sacco and Vanzetti Case
-No. of Native Americans fell to 250,000 by 1920s
However….
-Only around 7% of the nation were immigrants so not as widespread
KKK
-5 million members by 1925
-1925 50,000 members marched through Washington
-One third of all men in Indiana members by 1925
-Police officers and judges were members
-Klan helped elect mayor of Oregon
-Boycotted and set on fire businesses owned by Catholics or Jews
-37 Public lynchings in 1921
-Two young black Americans from Louisiana who had criticised KKK were kidnapped and murdered
However…..
-Membership decreased after one of the clan’s leaders David Stephenson was found guilty of assaulting a woman on a train.
- Only a few hundred thousand members by 1928
Wider Racism
- Jim Crow Laws : Promoted segregation in South eg different water fountains
- Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme court case : it was constitutional for things to be separate but equal
- Only 3% of Black Americans were eligible to vote in 1920s due to literacy tests and grandfather clause.
- Separate education eg Howard University
- Black Americans in Harlem had to pay more for worse housing
- Separate athletic clubs
- Poor medical care meant life expectancy for Black Americans was 11 years less than White Americans
Prohibition
- Lasted 13 years…. a long time!
- Repressed freedom
