Ch 24 Section 1 Social Turmoil

The Red Scare

● Belief that communists, anarchists, and other radicals

are a threat to the US
○

Actual danger was notreal

● A. Mitchell Palmer (Attorney General) and J. Edgar

Hoover (Deputy General) arrested more than 10,000
people

● Government raided headquarters of suspicious groups
● Any immigrants arrested were deported

Sacco and Vanzetti Trial

● 2 Italian immigrants and anarchists accused of

murdering 2 men during a robbery in Massachusetts

● Littleevidence to prove guilty, but were still convicted in

1920

● Many Americans called for the death penalty
● Despite other trials Sacco and Vanzetti were executed

in 1927

Labor Issues

● Sept 1919: 350,000 steel workers go on strike - 8

hour work day, better wages

● Sept 1919 entire Boston police force goes on strike

○

Governor Calvin Coolidge calls out the National Guard

○

All police officers were fired when strike ended

● A. Philip Randolph began to organize railroad

workers and union grew in the 1930s

Racial Unrest

●

More than 70 African-American are lynched in the South

●

Great Migration increasing numbers of African Americans in Northern
cities

●

1919 (Detroit): close to 40 people killed, 500 injured during riots in the
city

●

1921 (Tulsa): Whites attack African-American neighborhood
(Greenwood)
○Estimated 300 African-American deaths, 800 injured, Over 35 city blocks of
building destroyed, 6000 held in convention center

●

Marcus Garvy: Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
○Support “back to Africa movement,” African-American pride, businesses, education