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How did some Americans resist changes in the post-World War 1 world?
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After World War I, some Americans resisted changes by opposing labor strikes and Prohibition, fostering organized crime. Anti-immigration sentiments grew, leading to restrictive quotas, and the Ku Klux Klan reemerged, targeting minorities. The moral changes of the 1920s, such as women's suffrage, sparked a fundamentalist revival against evolution, exemplified by the Scopes Trial. Additionally, many opposed joining the League of Nations, fearing entanglement in future European conflicts.
US participation in World War I radically changed life on the home front in ways that were both welcomed and resisted by different groups of Americans. Factory production boomed during the war, and in the postwar years, the US established itself as one of the world’s foremost industrial powers. Along with that came a rise in labor strikes and other protests by workers seeking better working conditions.
With the passage of Prohibition in 1920, organized crime profited from the expansion of illegal bootlegging operations, with a corresponding spike in violence, especially in the nation’s rapidly growing cities. Hostility toward foreigners that was left over from the war years bloomed into a full-fledged anti-immigration movement after the war, which led Congress to set new immigration quotas in the 1920s. Finally, the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist organization originally founded during Reconstruction, reemerged in the 20s, espousing hatred and violence toward...
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immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and especially African Americans.
Finally, the supposed moral decline of American life in the 1920s (including new freedoms for women, who finally gained the vote in 1920) helped encourage a fundamentalist religious revival, which focused on opposing the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools. In the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a Tennessee court tried a young high school science teacher who had taught evolution, a case that pitted famed civil rights lawyer Clarence Darrow against the fundamentalist hero William Jennings Bryan.
The period of world history following World War I was a time of great change... It had to be, following such a destructive conflict that in some way touched every major nation in the world. Many Americans had developed a bad taste in their mouths for all things European following the war. They felt as if they had been drug into a "European conflict" that really had nothing to do with America itself. Meanwhile, in Europe, the major powers were trying to pick up the pieces. There were of course many disagreementes in the process; however, the one thing everyone seemed to agree upon was that no one wanted more war. This led to the formation of the League of Nations, as outlayed in President Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points peace plan. The League of Nations charter was seen to be a bold step toward forming a new order in the world. Yet some were whole-heartedly against the League... many of whom were in America. The main problem with the League of Nations, according to those who opposed it, was the fact that in the charter, there was a provision that required action on the part of League members should another member be attacked. To many war weary Americans, this sounded like an invite to another "European conflict."