Although this may be true, many other people do believe that the events occurring during the 1920’s changed American lives for the worst. This was due to the many racial and religious conflicts arising during this time. With every other concept becoming modern in the United States, modernists took this approach with religion as well. They believed that they could accept Darwin’s theory without sacrificing their religious faith. However, fundamentalists disagreed. They took every word of the bible as true and blamed liberal views of modernists for a “decline in morals”. Both of these ideas were present during the Scopes Trials. In 1925, a Tennessee biology teacher, John Scopes, was arrested for illegally teaching the concept of evolution …show more content…
Due to these propositions, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti became very popular. Two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in a Massachusetts court of robbery and murder. Many liberals felt that they were only convicted due to their ethnicity and political beliefs (anarchists). They were executed in 1927, despite these remarks. Moreover, the most severe example of nativism in the United States was the resurgence of the KKK. They used modern advertising method to gain 5 million members by 1925. The KKK in this time period were not against only African Americans, but also Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and suspected Communists, due to the Red Scare. They used cruel punishments as tactics to intimidate anybody deemed as “un-American”. From whipping, tar and feathering, and even hanging, the KKK was ruthless. However, by 1925, it was discovered that the KKK was a fraud and very corrupted. This caused the Klan’s influence and membership to decline expeditiously. Notwithstanding, the events that occurred in the 1920’s still had a positive effect on the lives of Americans because social reform during this time was the only reason why the KKK shrunk in size in the first place. Many people were able to become
A trial was then held in the summer of 1921 where, due to their lawyers advise, the accused admitted their radical beliefs,
Sacco and Vanzetti case is one of the most popular cases of the Roaring Twenties. It was a rough time for the immigrants with rising tide of anarchist movements. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were to Italian emigrants who were convicted at the wrong time. Nicola Sacco was a 32-year-old shoemaker and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was 29-year-old fish peddler. They were accused for a double murder of a paymaster and payroll carrying payroll of $15,776, were shot to death during a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts.
Changes The Scopes trial or “monkey trial” took place on July 10, 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. Where John Thomas Scopes was being tried for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a public school. Tennessee was the first state to pass an anti-evolution law which prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools and universities. The trial was not just about science versus religion, it was much more complex.
Due to the ratification of the amendments, many southern elites could not stand the fact that African Americans were freed. One solution that was developed was to destroy reconstruction by murdering Black Americans. The Ku Klux Klan was then formed, this group consisted of vindictive Confederate Army veterans. Sought out to be heros to many southern democrats, but a nightmare for African American families. The Ku Klux Klan terrorized many African American families, burned down churches, drove thousands of families out of their homes, and caused great mayhem.
It was the roaring twenties! Money was being made and people were enjoying life. All was well in the United States, including Dayton, Tennessee. It was smooth sailing in the volunteer state until July 21, 1925 when John Scopes, a substitute teacher, was convicted of illegally teaching his high school students the idea of evolution. This sparked up a huge controversy between modern science and religious beliefs.
Other changes were brought by our view points and such, from things like the Scopes Trial. The Roaring 20s, as we call them, was a tool used to teach the public something other than what our preachers taught, and to challenge the Butler Act, which says evolution should not be taught in public
The United States of America in the 1920s was a period of debate, of shifting values and changing social structures, and was, above anything else, a battleground of clashing ideologies that ultimately boiled down and exploded within the Scopes Trial of 1925. The Scopes Trial was not in any way, shape, or form primarily a conflict of simply one issue alone. Instead, the Scopes Trial was the height of the tensions that emerged within America during the infamous Roaring 20s, and it, unfortunately, pushed smaller, less-debated topics to the sidelines to make way for the main conflict. Issues which revolved around racial and gender tensions existed and were debated at length within society, but were completely ignored during the proceedings of the
John Scopes, voluntarily, was in violation of this law and was arrested in Dayton, Tennessee. This arrest led to one of the most famous trials in the 1920s. After teaching evolution illegally, John Scopes was the subject of controversial trial that opened people’s minds to the idea of evolution. John Scopes taught evolution to students in Tennessee which was against the law. The Butler Act made the teaching of evolution more difficult.
Chief Prosecutor Tom Stewart then asked seven students in Scopes class a series of questions about his teachings. They testified that Scopes taught that man and all other mammals had evolved from one-celled organisms. Darrow cross-examined the students, asking freshman Howard Morgan, “Well did he tell you anything else that was wicked?”. Howard replied, “No, not that I can remember.” . After, drugstore owner Fred Robinson took the stand to testify as to Scopes’ statement that “Any teacher in the state who was teaching Hunter’s biology was violating the law.”
The Scopes Trial began on July 10th, 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee when John Thomas Scopes was charged with violating the Butler Act by teaching the theory of evolution in his class by saying men have descended from apes claiming that was the theory of evolution. The prosecuting attorney William Bryant was flooded with questions from the bible by defending attorney Clarence Darrow, several he could not answer. William Bryant, a Christian, could not defend the Bible nor his beliefs and the point of being a certain religion is to understand what you believe and why you believe it. Furthermore, what makes this trial significant is that till this day we still have that debate of how were we created, whether it’s from the religion we possess or from
The Scopes Monkey trial was a battle over the right to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools. The trial was named after the mistaken belief of many creationists that Darwinists believe humans directly evolved from monkeys. The trial began in July of 1925, the case prosecuted high school coach and science teacher, John Scopes. Scopes, pushed by leaders of his community, began teaching Hunters Civic Biology. The text book was the standard Tennessee text book until it was outlawed by Governor Austin Peay.
Immigrants faced additional prejudice once inside the United States. In 1920, police arrested two Italian anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, accused of robbery and killing a security guard. Their subsequent murder trial sparked intense controversy and was marred by both anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment, in which “the judge was biased, evidence was manipulated, Italian immigrant eyewitness testimony was undermined, and ballistics tests may have been tampered with.” Despite “eight motions for a new trial,” the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that there had been no legal errors,” and executed the two men in 1927. The fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted despite very little evidence linking the two men to the crime, in a clearly biased and
While it is illegal to express so hate speech so long as one does not engage in acts of discuss, or commit illegal crimes. There is a group called the “KKK” They were founded in 1866 in almost every southern state by 1870. In the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies. They were only against blacks, but then a 1915 film, “Burn of a Nation” came out. They rallied against blacks, catholics, jews, immigrants, and even the consumption of alcohol.
As the Ku Klux Klan’s membership grew, organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which fought to end racial discrimination and segregation, grew as well. With these two growing groups pushing for opposite ideals, tensions continued to increase. The NAACP pushed for reform and rights for African Americans and the Ku Klux Klan combated their progress with lynching and
The Ku Klux Klan first emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee following the Civil War. As we know today, the mere mention of the Klan triggers fear as the KKK is known for its various tactics of violence that came in the form if lynchings, murders, and mutilations. Following their emergence, the KKK were quickly symbolized and portrayed as the protectors of the South, following the defeat of the Southern states in the Civil War and the beginning of the period of Reconstruction by the federal government (Gurr, 1989, p. 132). During the 1920s, the KKK achieved its greatest political success and growth outside of the South. During this period, the membership of the Klan heavily expanded to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Oregon, to which the KKK obtained two to two and one-half million members at its apex.