Intolerance In The 1920s Essay

Intolerance is the ‘unwillingness to accept views, beliefs, or behaviour that differ from one's own,’ America was known as the large melting pot, many historians argued that many faults existed within the republic as it retained a lot of intolerance and prejudice. The 20’s in USA is known as the age of the emergence of Hollywood, economic triumph and personal freedom. Despite this significant progress, it is almost undeniable that the bigotry existed in America in the 1920’s. The more difficult question is why prejudice existed and its origin. I will explore how a nation established by immigrants was able to consist of racism, antisemitism, anti-Communism and xenophobia by analysing the evidence given in the sources.

African Americans were

one of the many victims of intolerance. Negrophobia had existed since the Transatlantic Slave Trade. One major reason for hostility toward African- Americans after World War I was employment. Source 3 shows how the recession of 1919 led to a scarcity of jobs, ‘as a result, many former soldiers experienced great difficulty find jobs.’ The Great Migration of African- Americans from the southern states to northern states (to escape the instituted racial laws known as the Jim Crow laws) contributed greatly to the shortage in jobs. Source 3 also points out the fact that many ‘unemployed whites’ blamed the employed African- Americans and immigrants. Although the source was written 1997, many years after the racial tension occurred, the source is still very reliable in portraying the reason for the racism especially in the post WW1 era. The source is a newspaper published about the jazz era, the intolerance was so significant that it had to be mentioned in the article. Idea of being superior to African Americans gave the working class Caucasian American a sense of dignity.
Many public appliances in southern states like Alabama were labelled ‘white’ and ‘coloured’ in order to segregate African-Americans and Caucasian Americans. As stated in source 21, racism led the African American population to being ‘rigidly’ segregated and in ‘constant danger of white violence.’ The African Americans were ‘restricted to the physically harder and less well- paid job’ as result this led to their financial state to deteriorate.
Although intolerance existed, African-Americans still thrived in areas they were able.

Two groups emerged, National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). NAACP focussed on opposing racism and segregation with non-violent methods. The leader of the NAACP asked Washington to make laws to combat the KKK’s violence but had little help support. UNIA, on the other hand, encouraged segregation within black communities and told their member to become self-dependent and only employ African-American people. African-Americans who had migrated in Great Migration flourished in culture, many moved to Harlem as part of the Harlem Renaissance. Some whites resented this limited success by blacks.

In addition, The intolerance caused by the depression limited president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ability to help the African-American community. Source 41 show how the New Deal did help many people including ‘the most destitute and poor’ but FDR’s elderly racist southern Democrats made many adjustments to his plans such as Agricultural Adjustment Act so it only supports the farmers who owned their own land while African-Americans who mainly were labourers on these farms suffered, showing intolerance limited FDR’s ability to help

African-Americans.
Furthermore, racism existed toward black people especially in southern states because of the white supremacy group the Ku Klux Klan. Although established after the American Civil War, the Klan remerged in 1915. Members were White, Anglo-Saxon and protestant. The KKK was very affluent as most of political power in the southern states were white Anglo-Saxons and a few local politicians were members of the Klan. In Source 22, the photograph shows how intimidating the clan was and their anonymity allowed them to get away with many illegal attacks on black people such as lynching. The KKK did not only condemn black people but also disliked Jews, immigrants and Catholics.