Racism in the 1920s

scrawny642

,United States

Next
Glog All
Glogs

Create new Glog

Choose from the following Glog templates to start:

All Glogs by scrawny642

- glog-2698
- by scrawny642

Flash

Embed this Glog

Stats:

874 views | 1 likes | 0 reposts

Private print

You can embed this Glog

Full size Glog 960x1300

Blog size glog 560x758

Feed size Glog 360x488

Text

Racism in the 1920s

The original Ku Klux Klan was started in the 1870s in the South as a reaction against Reconstruction. It only lasted for a short time. In the 1920s William Simmons created a new Klan, seizing on Americans' fears of immigrants, Communism, and anything un-American. He saw it as a money-making opportunity where he could sell memberships, costumes, and life insurance. He hired an aggressive, commissions-based sales force who generated over 2 million members by 1924.

Simmons marketed the Klan not only as a white supremacy group, but also a 100% American organization. He expanded the original Klan's anti-African American position to include Roman Catholics, Jews, and immigrants of all backgrounds.

The 1921 National Origins Act limited immigration in any year to 3% of the number of foreign-born members of a nationality group as shown in the 1910 census. After receiving complaints that the 1921 act still let in too many Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Poles, and Jews, the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 reduced quotas to just 2% of 1890 census, which was of course a much smaller number.

Parochial schools were often singled out by the KKK, because the students were being taken out of mainstream American public schools and instructed to take orders from a foreign leader, who was of course, the Pope. The new Klan saw themselves as protecting the American family. They spoke out against violating prohibition, labor union membership, Sabbath breaking, immodest dress, bobbed hair, and all forms of unconventional sexuality. They became champions of vigilante justice against bootleggers, wife-beaters, and adulterers