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Cultural Revolution Of The 1920s Essay

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The 1920's were times of cultural revolution. The times were changing in many different ways. Whenever the times change, there is a clash between the "old" and the "new" generations. The 1920's were no exception. In Dayton, Tennessee, 1925, a high school biology teacher was arrested. He was arrested because he taught the theory of evolution. The teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of having violated the Butler Act. This was a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools. The Tennessee legislature felt that teaching evolution was wrong because it contradicted the creation theory of the Bible. The Scopes trial received worldwide publicity. The press nicknamed it the Monkey Trial …show more content…

U. S. Attorney-General Palmer planned a round up of communists. January 2, 1920, he ordered department raids on meeting halls and homes in thirty cities nationwide to gather all suspected communists. Twenty seven hundred people were arrested without being charged with a specific crime. In all, more than 6,000 people were arrested. The raids ended after May 5th. This was due to a government ruling that mere membership in the party is not in itself a crime. Most people that were arrested were released, few of the people arrested were actually communists. The Red Scare continued when on April 1, five legitimately elected members of the New York State legislature were expelled for being members of the Socialist Party. World War I ended in 1920 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Russia and the United States were allies during the war. After the war, both became the world's new superpowers. As the tension between the two nations grew, so did the fear of Communism. The Ku Klux Klan was a racist organization founded in 1915 by William Simmons. The KKK's popularity peaked in the 1920's when its membership exceeded 4 million nationally, with strong organizations in the Midwest as well as in the South. The Klan began to persecute Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners, Communists, and organized labor. Stressing white Protestant domination, the Klan enjoyed a spurt of growth in 1928 as a reaction to the Democrats' nomination for president of

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