POSTWAR TENSIONS EQ What effects did postwar tensions

POSTWAR TENSIONS

EQ: What effects did postwar tensions have on America’s founding ideals? • What are the rights of immigrants? • Is there equality before the law? • Should liberty be denied to people who have unpopular political views?

The governor of Massachusetts has summoned you • to testify in a clemency hearing for two convicted death-row murderers. Governors convene these • hearings when they are considering granting clemency, a pardon or lessening of a penalty. You will learn more about the facts of the case and • the clemency hearing throughout the chapter. 1. Listen as your teacher reads about the upcoming hearing. Write down three facts about the case in your notebook • 2. Examine the following additional facts. 3. Determine which two facts should most • influence the clemency hearing. Write a paragraph explaining your choices. Additional facts: At the time of the murder, Sacco was 29, and Vanzetti was 32. Sacco and Vanzetti were both carrying guns at the time of their arrest. At the time of his arrest, Vanzetti had a flyer in his pocket advertising an anarchist meeting that evening. Both men had been involved in labor strikes. The judge in the case, Judge Webster Thayer, was 64 years old and had recently disagreed with a jury for acquitting an anarchist.

EMERGING ECONOMIC TENSIONS • After coming to the US, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti struggled to make a living. Sacco worked for a construction company as a water boy and a “pick-and-shoveler. ” He made as little as $1. 15 a day for backbreaking labor. After 12 hour shifts, he spent three nights a week studying English. Eventually he found a job as a shoemaker, which paid better. At the Milford Shoe Company, he earned between $30 -40 per week. • Vanzetti had a harder life than Sacco. Over the years he worked as a dishwasher, a bricklayer, a cook and a factory hand in an iron mill. At the time of his arrest, he was selling fish from a cart that he pushed through the streets. None of his jobs ever paid enough for him to buy a home, wear nice clothes or marry. Still, Sacco and Vanzetti did have jobs. In the years just after WWI, many other American workers did not.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND RECESSION • Under WWI, US had economic prosperity • Contracts for war-related materials • Centralized management of transportation, manufacturing and agriculture under the War Industries Board • No plans for demobilization, transition from wartime to peacetime • Gov’t cancelled contracts day after armistice signed • Factories closed, crop prices fell • Army discharged nearly 4 million soldiers with $60 and a one-way ticket home • By 1920, more than 5 million Americans were jobless

UNEMPLOYMENT AND RECESSION • High inflation (prices went up and value of dollar shrank) combined with unemployment led to a recession, a decline in economic activity and prosperity • 100, 000 businesses went bankrupt, 453, 000 farmers lost their land • Crime skyrocketed

LABOR UNREST • What interesting details do you see in the photograph? • What seems to be happening? • Why might there have been so many labor strikes in the postwar years? • How might labor tensions have affected the Sacco and Vanzetti trial?

RISING LABOR TENSIONS • Like many workers after WWI, Sacco and Vanzetti were union men. Sacco and his wife, Rosina, acted in plays to raise money for striking workers. Vanzetti helped organize a strike at Plymouth Cordage Company, where he worked as a rope maker. He urged immigrant groups to support labor unions. The dedication of the two men to the union movement was one reason working-class communities later raised money for their legal defense.

SEATTLE STEEL STRIKE • 350, 000 steel workers went on strike in Sept worked a 12 hour 7 day week. • 3600 strikes occurred in 1919

THE RED SCARE • What interesting details do you see in the cartoon? • Who might the man in the cartoon be? Who might he be holding? • What might the man do with these people? Why? • What message do you think the cartoonist is trying to convey? • How might political tensions have affected the Sacco and Vanzetti trial?

GROWING POLITICAL TENSIONS • Nicola Sacco became an anarchist while working in a shoe factory. Bartolomeo Vanzetti learned about anarchism while working at a rope factory. The two met in 1917, when they fled to Mexico to escape the military draft. When they returned to MA, they joined an East Boston anarchists group. Vanzetti later boasted, “Both Nick and I are anarchists-the radical of the radical. ” On the night of their arrest, both were carrying guns. Sacco also had a pamphlet advertising an anarchist rally at which Vanzetti would speak. After their trial, many came to believe that Sacco and Vanzetti had been convicted because of their radical politics.

October 1917 The Bolsheviks Revolution brings a Communist gov’t to power in Russia KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN: Capitalism Communists want private property abolished, want collective ownership of property. Why were so many Americans afraid of the spread of communism after WWI? Bolsheviks called on workers of the world to overthrow capitalist gov’t, who they said served the interest of businesses.

PALMER RAIDS

Summer 1919 Eight bombs went off simultaneous in 8 cities. Authorities discovered 36 bombs and blamed them on radicalism Attorney General Mitchell Palmer home after bombing

• Palmer got an appropriation of $500, 000 from Congress to launch a campaign to “tear out the radical seeds that have been entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories. ” • • A. Mitchell Palmer PALMER RAIDS Nov 1919 to Jan 1920 249 deported to Russia arrested more than 4, 000 people Seized without warrants, many of the prisoners were denied attorneys and deprived of food, water, heat, and even bathroom facilities. • 600 radicals were expelled

US IMMIGRATION, 1918 -1926 • What important details do you see in the graph? • According to the graph, what happened to immigration from southern and eastern Europe during this period? • What might have caused this sharp decline in immigration? • What might this graph tell us about attitudes toward immigrants at the time • How might anti-immigrant sentiment have affected the Sacco and Vanzetti trial?

INCREASING SOCIAL TENSIONS • The police investigating the South Braintree robbery had little to go on except eyewitness accounts of two bandits who “looked Italian. ” Three weeks later, the police arrested Sacco and Vanzetti. When searched, the suspects were found to be carrying pistols and ammo. When questioned, they lied about where they had been and how they had obtained their guns. Their behavior made them look suspicious to the police, and later, to a jury. But during this troubled time, some native born Americans eyed many immigrants-especially those who were poor and spoke little English-with suspicion.

• As the Red Scare heightens more people become Nativists. • This leads to a quota system which restricts the number of immigrants that can come from each country • By 1924 the quotas % are lowered and all immigrants from Asia are banned. • By 1929 only ¼ of the immigrants enter the US as did in 1921 NATIVISM REVIVED

REVIVED KKK • The Nativist feelings of the time led to the rebirth of the KKK. • The Birth of a Nation portrayed the clan as heroic, chivalrous, individuals who for to save society • By 1920 Klan membership would reach 3 -4 million, and actually win political offices in numerous southern states • This time however the Klan became equally anti-immigrant, anti-African, anti. Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-woman, and anti-union (Only liked WASPs), and continued to push their political agenda through terror & intimidation.

ACLU DEFENDS UNPOPULAR VIEWS • 1920 -Pacifists and social activists founded American Civil Liberties Union to protect freedom of speech • Specialized in defense of unpopular groups • Fought to protect immigrants from Palmer Raids, trade unions, Wobblies and pacifists • Opposed censorship

SACCO AND VANZETTI PLEAD FOR CLEMENCY • What interesting details do you see in the top photograph? • Who do you think the two shackled men are? Why do you think they are shackled? • The top photograph was taken the day Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to be executed. Why did so many people worldwide protest their execution? • Governor Alvan Fuller is the man in the bottom photograph. Why might he have convened a clemency hearing for Sacco and Vanzetti? • Who might have participated in this hearing?

RACIAL TENSION • The tension created by immigrants revived social problems for Black Americans. • Lynching and race riots were again becoming an issue in society. • Marcus Garvey would start the Back- To - Africa movement, where he encouraged blacks to return to land of their ancestors. • The movement attracted 2 million followers, and established a company with the intent of moving people back to Africa. • Garvey was charged and convicted for mail fraud in 1925, and the movement died out.

ENDURING RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS TENSIONS • Influx of 2. 4 million Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe stirred up anti. Semitism, prejudice against Jews • Anti-Defamation League (1913) originally meant for Jews, long-term mission justice for all citizens • Anti-Catholic sentiments, NY Gov. Al Smith 1928 Democratic candidate • Lost election

VANZETTI TESTIMONY Well, I have already say that I not only am not guilty of these two crimes, but I never committed a crime in my life-- I have never stolen and I have never killed and I have never spilt blood, and I have fought against crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify. This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth-- I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and for my beloved than for myself, but I am so convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.

ACTIVITY – TRIAL ROLE-PLAY 7 members of the Lowell Committee will run a clemency hearing. 6 witnesses will testify • Are Sacco and Vanzetti guilty? • Did they have a fair trial?

SACCO & VANZETTI- THE TRIAL • S & V had fled to Mexico instead of being drafted • Both men had alibies saying that they were not around the scene of the crime. • Both men were carrying guns at the time of their arrest • At the time of arrest, Vanzetti had an anarchist meeting flyer in his pocket. • Sacco’s gun fired the type of bullets used to kill the two men, but test could not prove the bullets came from his weapon. • The defense of S & V was largely paid for by working class people who were members of Unions • The Prosecutor kept going back to the fact that the men were Immigrant Anarchists • During their six year trial, Thayer refused repeated motions for a new trial.

ENDURING RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS TENSIONS On July 27, 1927, six years after Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murder, the Lowell Committee concluded that the trial of the two men had been fair. On August 23, 1927, the two men were executed. Decades after their executions, doubts remain about their guilt. Modern analysis of the evidence has confirmed that the gun found on Sacco at the time was one of the murder weapons. This suggests that Sacco was guilty of the crime. But no one has found proof to link Vanzetti to the murders. “I have suffered because I was Italian, ” Vanzetti wrote from prison.

IMMIGRATION THEN AND NOW Although historians continue to debate the verdict of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, most agree that it raised fundamental questions about America’s founding ideals during the postwar period, including, What are the rights of immigrants? Is there equality before the law? Should liberty be denied to people who have unpopular political views? Write a paragraph to submit to Governor Alvan Fuller and the Lowell Committee. Choose one founding ideal and describe whether it was advanced or restricted during the postwar period. Explain how the advancement or restriction of this ideal may have helped or hurt Sacco and Vanzetti in their trial. Your paragraph should include • a clear thesis that states your position. • two pieces of evidence that support your topic sentence. • an explanation of how each piece of evidence supports your topic sentence A second paragraph connecting to the immigration article and immigration today in America