Minority Groups In The 1920's

In a time after World War I, in which the United States emerged as a world military and industrial leader, many of the citizens wanted to return to the government’s old policy of laissez-faire economics. This was a drastic change from the strong sense of nationalism that arose throughout the citizens of the United States during World War I, creating acts such as the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a crime to criticize the government’s war policy. The decade of the 1920’s ended with the crash of the stock market which eventually led to the Great Depression, a worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930’s. It is in this context that America began to break away from its past and transform into a more modern era. While

The Klu Klux Klan, otherwise known as the KKK, was “a Reconstruction-era paramilitary group that had faded from American life until 1915 when Colonel William Simmons re-founded the organization.” (Zeitz) While the KKK was not necessarily the main source of discrimination against minority groups such as African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and Asians in the years leading up to the Roaring Twenties, which is a common nickname for the decade of the 1920’s, racial discrimination did not fade from American society. The new Klu Klux Klan emerged because of the film Birth of a New Nation which was released by the filmmaker D. W. Griffith, an influential director, writer, and producer, of his time. The film showed the history of the original Klan during the Reconstruction Era, and Woodrow Wilson supported the film. Wilson was the 28th President of the United States and served from 1913 to 1921. After being fueled by the positive response of Griffith’s film, the Klan spread throughout the entire United States, as opposed to remaining in the South. The KKK gained enough support from Americans to hold a march in Washington, D.C. The Klu Klux Klan remained in the United States until 1944 when the IRS, or the Internal Revenue Service of the United States, was forced to shut down the national organization due to the group being

However, many more changes occured throughout this decade that makes it so much more distinguished from other. Some of those changes include the right for women to vote, the introduction of the flappers, and mass entertainment, production, and culture. It is all of these new ideas and technologies that took arose throughout the 1920’s that changed the way the United States communicates with each other, moves from place to place, and becomes