Social and Racial Tension in 1920's America

The roaring twenties was a decade of excitement. For the first time in many families’ lives, leisure times were extended thanks to the time saving inventions such as the vacuum cleaner, the refrigerator, and the washing machine. Another factor that made the 20s the best decade for many Americans was because of installment, also known as “buy now, pay later,” buying which allowed the middle class families to afford those products when needed and pay it off later. Clubs bustled with life, filled with the stench of alcohol, and the noise of tapping shoes as men and women danced their soles off their shoes. New thing occurred and made many Americans’ lives a paradise. However, there were few groups of people who didn’t view the same decade the way that the others did. Some Americans negatively viewed the 1920s because of the fear of change in social differences.

In the 1920s, racial tensions in American society reached its highest. Minorities such as the Mexicans and Black population suffered the most from those who were concerned in keeping the long established White Anglo Saxon Protestant (W.A.S.P) values as an important part of American life. In Document A, a small black child is shocked by being called a “Nigger” from a white child his age during his trip to Baltimore. This example showed how the negative racial views stretched far and wide throughout America and affected the innocent children also. The Ku Klux Klan’s revival after the wartime period may be the best evidence in that America’s intolerance towards minorities has indeed erupted in the 1920s. Starting back in the Civil war days, the KKK was an organization in which believed in their political ideology of a White America or a White nationalism. In Document F, in a c...

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...the changes in social differences of America. Racial discrimination was at its peak due to the rises in the number of the Americans who wished for a “Pure America.” Fear of Immigrants grew because of the differences Americans saw in both their cultural and political ways, whether it was just they as an individual or the nation of origin as a whole. Many of the older generations of America found themselves disagreeing with the ways in which the new generation behaved in the 20s and had a much too circumscribed views to the decade. America, still to this day, suffers from very similar problems almost a century ago. If history helps the present to realize past mistakes to fix the present of future problems similar to it, the 20s may be a good example in which America may use to solve the problems in America concerning the fear of the changes in our social differences.