Life in the 20s
1920s Music
Nativism
In the 1920s the KKK moved beyond just targeting blacks, and broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews and foreigners. By the middle of the decade, estimates for national membership in this secret organization ranged from three million to as high as eight million KKK members
Politics
The Teapot Dome Scandal was a bribery incident that took place in the United States from 1921 to 1922, during the administration of President Warren G. Harding.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact is a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve and disputes or conflicts of whatever nature they may be.
Political Cartoons are illustrations or comic strips containing a political or social message usually relating to current events.
Court Cases
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids by the United States Department of Justice intended to capture, arrest and deport radical leftists, especially anarchists, from the United States. The raids and arrests occurred in November 1919 and January 1920 under the leadership of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested in May 1920 and were charged with robbery in which 2 guards were killed. Both of these men were Italian and both spoke very little English. They went to trial and 61 people say they saw both of the men at the scene of the crime but 107 people say they saw the men else where when the crime was commited. Regardless, both men were found guilty and spent 7 years in prison. They both died of execution by the electric chair.
Schenck vs. United States is a United States Supreme Court decision concerning enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 during World War 1. A unanimous Supreme Court, in a famous opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., concluded that defendants who distributed leaflets to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense.
Scopes Monkey Trial
Clarence Darrow was an American lawyer and the leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Darrow was best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14 year old Robert Franks.
William J. Bryan was an American orator and politician from Nebraska, and a dominant force in the populist wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as the Party's candidate for President of the United States. He was also the 41st United States Secretary of State.