Nativism In The 1920s

The period of the 1920s brought about radical changes in the ideology of Americans, urbanization, and economic instability following World War I. After a period of weakening conservatism, the country emerged into a revolutionary liberal era. According to the Oxford Dictionary, revolutionary means “involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.” Although the 1920s were partially conservative with nativism, the period was liberally revolutionary because of the rise of modernism that changed the American’s views on religion, and women gaining the right to vote under the 19th Amendment. Granted, the Twenties were conservative with nativism in the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the passage of the 18th Amendment which effectively began Prohibition,

In the Twenties, Protestant churches throughout the nation were struggling with the divide between the liberal and conservative wings. The rise of modernism shaped the views of religion because of the clash between fundamentalism, which believed in a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible, and modernism, which believed in a more symbolic meaning to the Bible and its applications to daily life. During World War I, the Third Great Awakening was spreading across the nation. In Tennessee, the state legislature banned the teaching of evolution in schools. The American Civil Liberties Union was formed and decided to bring the case to court by asking a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, to intentionally break the law by teaching about evolution in his classroom, which directly went against fundamentalist views. The case later went to court, known as the Scopes Monkey Trials. The trials were based on the controversial topics of evolution and the views of fundamentalism, as expressed through Clarence Darrow, who advocated for modernism, and William Jennings Bryan, a thrice presidential campaigner, and devout fundamentalist. The climax of the trial was the defeat of Bryan under the persistent questioning of Darrow, which intensely weakened Bryan’s argument and stand on Christianity, as well as the people’s support of fundamentalism. In Joshua

In the beginning of the 1920s, women began to adopt new lifestyles that were careless, exciting, and scandalous. These women were called flappers, women who rejected the traditional cult of domesticity and Victorian Era values and began to wear risque outfits for the first time, smoke, drink, and turn to actions that promoted self-indulgence and gratification. The start of the new women lifestyle led to a significant rise in the discussion of gender equality and the quality of life. The passage of the 19th Amendment secured women’s right to vote. This opportunity gave women a voice in the government that was unheard of before, but also played into the gender equality argument that would gain support in the upcoming years. In 1920, Congress federally allowed women to vote despite discrimination during the time, to be protected under the text of the amendment, as stated by the first section of the amendment. During the Twenties, women took positions in clerical and vocational training to pursue careers in professional, organized workplaces as secretaries or telephone operators. The change in positions for women was due to the increasingly competitive workplaces in the factories that forced black women out from the Great Migration, as well as other women as the jobs were not needed for wartime