Organized Crime In The 1920s

Moments in history tend to stick out the most. Pearl Harbor, D-Day, 9/11, and Independence Day survive so prominently within our history as singular days. What made the twenties so notorious in our history? It was the first time our country saw a massive change in culture, ways of thinking, government policies, and the rise of organized crime.
The most well-known piece of legislation that came from the 1920’s was the passage of the 18th Amendment. Ratified on January 16 ,1919 he amendment, also known as Prohibition, banned the manufacturing, transportation and selling of alcohol. The proponents of the amendment believed that liquor was destructive and was the leading cause of the rise in crime. They also believed that it would curve solve

Although it occurred in 1919, the “Red Summer” sparked a lot of racial tensions in the twenties. The “Red Summer” is the collective name for a series of race riots that erupted in 25 cities including Chicago, Omaha, Tulsa, and Washington D.C. (Prentice Hall, 2000) The Chicago was the bloodiest of all 25, and started when a young African American boy accidentally swam into the segregated, white only section, of a beach on Lake Michigan. People who were upset by this threw stones at the young boy, causing him to drowned. At the end of the riot, 23 African Americans, and 15 Caucasians. people had been killed, 537 wounded, and 1000 African Americans had been displaced from their residents. (Prentice Hall,

government of the 1920s had moved beyond the interference in World War I of Wilson’s presidency to the isolationism of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. “Not heroism, but healing. Not nostrumus, but normalcy.” (Prentice Hall, 2000) Warren Harding’s promise of a “return to normalcy” after the calamity of World War I easily won him the election of 1920. Harding’s idea of disarmament earned him the respect of not only his own people but other world leaders eager to avoid another Great War. The Republican stability that many Americans came to love in this decade would cause the party to dominate all three branches of government. A Republican held the Presidency, both houses of Congress were majority Republican, and the appointment of William Howard Taft to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court pushed the Court to lean Republican. During this decade, Republican leaders practiced Laissez Faire business policies, whereby they deregulated businesses and did not interfere with their practices. As a result, the economy experienced a boom. Despite all this, Harding’s presidency was wracked by scandal. Leading up to his death, scandals began to erupt within Harding’s administration, although there was no evidence to show that he personally was involved. The worst scandal was known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, secretly gave oil contracts on two government oil fields to private oil companies. In return he received more than