Intolerance In The 1920s Essay

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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 …show more content…

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

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