Americans Were Intolerant in the 1920’s. How Far Do You Agree with This Statement? (12)

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Americans were intolerant in the 1920’s. How far do you agree with this statement? (12) It has often been argued whether American were tolerant or intolerant in the 1920’s. In this essay I will examine how American’s were prejudiced and tolerant. I will then make my judgement whether the US were tolerant or intolerant during the 1920’s. The meaning of intolerance is when someone refuses to accept ideas they don’t like. During the 1920’s widespread intolerance did exist on many different levels: politically, socially and culturally. To begin with, immigration in the 1920s started to become an increasingly worrying problem for the American government. Many of these people were unemployed and unskilled, subject to poverty and falling into the lower classes of America's ‘capitalist’ society. They were treated unfairly with appalling working and living conditions and, although they may have escaped persecution or extreme poverty elsewhere, the prospects of becoming successful and prospering (as the American dream had so claimed) were quite distant. It was soon apparent that Americans began to fear the immigration system where hundreds of thousands of people arrived in the USA. This brought about anarchism and communism. America dived into the Red Scare, fearing that thousands of communists were roaming the streets hoping for another revolution. The famous case of Sacco and Vanzetti, 5th May 1920, Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti were arrested on suspicion of robbing a shoe factory in South Braintree and murdering 2 men. The thieves got away with $15,000. The trial was placed 22nd June 1920, there was heaps of evidence proving Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent, yet the jury didn’t listen. 61 people had identified them as the murderers yet 107 people said that they were somewhere else. Both Sacco and Vanzetti carried loaded guns that matched the gun wounds. It was

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