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Dick's Guide to Urban and Rural Conflicts After World War I (The Great War)
The 1920's were great times for city dwellers. But there were poor folks on the farm and this gave rebirth to Urban Rural Conflicts: There were irresolvable white and black conflicts, as blacks began to switch to the historically bigotry of the Democratic party.
Fundamentalism.
Religious fundamentalism decried the evils of the city, especially among Baptists and Ministers opposed to Darwin's Theory of Evolution. They vented their anger on the only public institution they could easily control; the schools. Five Southern states stopped the heretical teaching of Darwin. William Jennings Bryan asked why public money should be spent teaching anti-bible, speculative Darwin theory. The American Civil Liberties Union is always ready to support the spending of American Christian's money to teach anti-Christian theories. It decided on a trial case in Governor Austin Peay's Tennessee, known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, because John T. Scopes, a young biology teacher, was talked into filing a suit against the legality of the law. The ACLU brought in Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Darrow opined that "Civilization was on trial" not scopes. Darrow felt all must be forced to believe the non-biblical and non scientifically proven Theory of Evolution. Ironically, he accused the other side of bigotry. Apparently, bigotry is in the eye of the beholder. To prevent the teaching of unproven scientific theories was bigotry. To force the unscientific theory to be shoved down the throats of Christians and Jews as "science" was apparently considered enlightened. American liberals seem to love the Darwinian idea that the White Race was the superior product of evolution. Scope had obviously broken the law, but was let off with hundred dollar fine. Once having been used and abused by the ACLU he left Tennessee. Judge John Raulston who had bought Darrow's views of bigotry, lost his next election. Lawyer Darrow, on the other hand, continued his successful law degree, and the ACLU continued to March on, opposing religious values. In rural areas, the return to God continued with men like John Stewart Curry capturing the spiritual revival on canvas. In the cities, increased drinking went on.
The Temperance movement — that had been around since Jackson's days, worked on Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1919. In The Great War, the Lever Act had required that grain be used for food., easing the impact of the Eighteenth Amendment. It worked. Per person alcohol consumption was reduced by more than 60%, from 2.6 gallons per person to under 1 gallon in early 1930. Of course, the lawyers, politicians, big city business men and other law breakers found ways to get liquor from bootleggers. Police even took money to guard the doors of Speakeasy's. This exposed the hypocrisy of corrupt individuals who did not want the public to see them as hypocrites. Politicians gave lip service to Prohibition, while making sure the Prohibition bureau was not funded sufficiently to prevent elimination of liquor. (Question: Does this seem anything like today's drug problem?) Either the elite hypocrites would have to obey the law and give up liquor, or they would have to find a way to re-legalize liquor. Eventually, it was legalized, just before Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1932. The police lost their jobs protecting law breaking establishments. Politicians and other society leaders could again drink, without appearing as hypocritical law breakers.
In the midst of this cesspool of a drunken elite and the force feeding of anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Black "science," it was not surprising that a new Ku Klux Klan rose, founded by William J. Simmonds. Two very creative publicity agents, Edward Y. Clarke and Elizabeth Tyler, were hired to increase membership. They did! By 1923 the New Klan had 5 million Americans. These Klan members tried to enforce prohibition, end gambling, stop anti-Christians and stop prostitution. Garraty says they also "put pressure on businessmen to fire higher paid blacks." The Indiana Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, was convicted of assaulting and causing the death of a young women. This was widely publicized and the Klan lost many members, and their power. In the meantime, Northern politicians were displaying their own rampant racism in the Sacco and Vanzetti case. In April 1920 two men were seen robbing and killing a paymaster in Braintree, Massachusetts. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (suspicious looking Catholic eye-talians) were arrested. They were then prosecuted by their trial judge, Webster Thayer, a WASP, declared his psychic powers on the issue by saying he knew both men were "anarchist bastards." Now, Vanzetti was no where near the site of the robbery. He was at the Italian Embassy at the time the killings took place. Still, Vanzetti and Sacco were both executed, demonstrating, once more, that WASP lawyer/judges of the 1920's could be as bigoted as the worst members of the older Klan had been. John Dos Passo's wrote about this injustice.
Faced with a society that was bigoted from the top to the bottom, The "New Negro" arose. Black men like Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Dubois were tired of waiting for something to crawl into the baskets they had dropped for Booker T. Washington. Blacks had suffered for years as the targets of elite white politicians and the scapegoats of white labor leaders. Fleeing to the cities, seeking a better place, they quickly discovered the same prejudices up North. They grouped together with other blacks in places like Harlem, which Garraty identifies as a "ghetto." One black sociologist, E. Franklin Frazier, pointed out that places like Harlem did see an influx of rural people, not attuned to the needs of living in a city. The North's white power elite made sure blacks were kept in their place. The YMCA, churches, news reporting, movie houses and other facilities were segregated. W. E. B. Dubois wrote in "The Crisis", "we are cowards and jackasses if ... we do not marshall every ounce of our brains and brawn to fight ... against the forces of hell in our own land." Marcus Garvey, a West Indian, went further. As the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, he called for a return to Africa. Black artists did thrive, like poet Langston Hughes and writer Alain Locke who asked blacks to participate in America, not become its wards. Like many Americans they benefitted from The "New Era," a prosperous decade of the 1920's, when the USA had 40% of the world's wealth and produced more electricity than the rest of the world. Our production was highly efficient, thanks to wealth building men like Henry Ford and Frederick W. Taylor. This was also The Age of the Consumer, with advertising being used to increase consumer demand. Bruce Barton wrote a book, "The Man Nobody Knows", explaining that Jesus was the greatest salesman that ever lived. By 1929 there were 23 million cars owned by Americans or — as Garraty says — "clogg(ing) the highways."
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