Nativism and Racism
1920S
NATIONAL ORIGINS ACT -- 1924
Limited # of immigrants to 150,000 per year
 Annual quota of 2% based on 1890 population

NATIONAL ORIGINS ACT -- 1924
OZAWA V. UNITED STATES (1922)

Ozawa –
A
person’s beliefs,
not race, should
determine
eligibility
 Definitions of race
should not apply to
the Naturalization
Act (1906)

United States
 The
law requires
naturalization is
based on race, not
character
 The law allows
“whites” or “aliens
of African descent”
OTHER ANTI-ASIAN CASES

Yamashita v. Hinkle -1922
 Upheld
Washington’s Alien
Land Law
 Claimed the
“Negroes, Indians,
and the Chinaman”
have proven that
assimilation is not
possible for them.

United States v. Bhagat
Singh Thind (1923)
 Denied
 Indians
citizenship
were not
“white as used in
common speech”
SACCO AND VANZETTI -
Italian Immigrants and
anarchists, who were tried
and convicted for a robbery
and murder in 1920

The evidence was
questionable

Labor Unions and
Socialists claimed the
convictions were
motivated by their
ethnicity and political
views
KU KLUX KLAN REVIVAL


William Simmons
Adopted a business
marketing approach
Aided by the debut of
“Birth of a Nation”
AFRICAN AMERICAN RESPONSE
MARCUS GARVEY

Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA)

“Black is Beautiful”

Black Nationalism and PanAfricanism
AFRICAN AMERICAN RESPONSE

NAACP Goals

Both “Negro and American”

Black Pride and equal rights

Supported by Black writers
Langston Hughes
 Claude McKay

W. E. B Du Bois
ALIENATION AND SECULARISM

Criticism of the Middle Class:



Criticism of Traditional Christianity




Henry L. Mencken “Faith may be defined briefly as an
illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable”
“For centuries, theologians have been explaining the
unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing”
The Scopes Trial – portrayed fundamentalists as
uneducated and close minded
Disillusionment with American Policy


Sinclair Lewis
Henry L. Mencken
Ernest Hemingway
Materialism/Hedonism

Depicted by F. Scott Fitzgerald