Notes on the First Red Scare and Immigration PDF

The government was concerned about “hyphenated-Americans” because they are worried that during a war will these people be loyal to America or their homeland. They need to ensure that they are loyal Americans and are going to ght on the right side. Wilson feared that the hyphenated Americans could ca...

The government was concerned about “hyphenated-Americans” because they are worried that during a war will these people be loyal to America or their homeland. They need to ensure that they are loyal Americans and are going to ght on the right side. Wilson feared that the hyphenated Americans could cause problems, create divisions in society. So, to mobilize support for the war, Wilson created the Committee on Public Information. The CPI was the U.S. governments propaganda agency. It had speakers go around the country, it put out pamphlets and lms, it delivered the government’s message about the war. Germans were lying low because there was so much animosity against them. The German music and language was not allowed in the US. They even renamed the sauerkraut to a liberty cabbage and a hamburger to a liberty sandwich. The created propaganda so people began to really be supporting the war and hating on the Germans. After WW1 ended the hatred was redirected towards communists, anarchists, and socialists. The Espionage Act served to destroy Leftist forces of all kinds by targeting individuals who interfered with the draft or publicly criticized the government. Under this law, opposition to the war of almost any sort is practically de ned as criminal. Or even anything that went against the government or was seen as disloyal was frowned upon and could get you in trouble. The sedition act of 1918 is basically a set of amendments toughening the Espionage Act. This new law made it criminal to provide “disloyal advice” about buying bonds, or to “utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government in the United States”. Eugene V. Debs is sentenced under the Espionage Act/Sedition Act. He is jailed for speaking his opinion. One is designed to reinforce the other. They don’t make people more supportive of the war but the criticism goes away. The IWW, an international labor union, had ties to socialist and anarchist movements. Americans are skeptical of this group because they have connections./support from communists, socialists, and anarchists. Big Bill Haywood, who was convicted of violating the Espionage Act or 1917. While out of prison on appeal, Haywood ed. He escaped to Bolshevik Russia, where he remained until death. The government was very suspicious of labor groups in general because the government never really know what the intentions of the labor organizations are and they could be tied to communists. The labor organizations were really just regular people but the government always thought it was communist invasions or crazy things. The city of Seattle turned very quiet suddenly. No busses or rally’s rank, no cranes unloaded ships, no smoke came from foundry chimneys, and factory whistles were silent, downtown streets were deserted, streetcars stopped and elevator operators stayed home, public schools closed their doors, it was the U.S.’s rst major general strike. The strike showed impressive coordination among workers from di erent elds, The federal government as well as big business leaders would be alarmed by this because if all the workers are working together and can all strike then they now have a lot of power because the companies and economy and cities can not last with out workers for very long. It can also symbolize that communism is taking over in the governments eyes. Late in the evening on June 2, 1919, eight cities in Northeast were torn by simultaneous bomb blasts. None of the targeted victims were hurt, but the nation was shocked by what appeared to be a coordinated conspiracy. One of the bombs was targeted towards A. Mitchell Palmer. A tiny sect of Italian anarchists were believed responsible. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer responded to this attack by dispatching federal agents to raid the o ces of radical and labor organizations throughout the country. These raids are overseen by the 24 year old director of the Radical Division of the Justice Department, J. Edgar Hoover.Hoover begins complaining les on thousands of Americans suspected of holding radical political ideas. This practice will continue when Hoover becomes the head of the FBI. The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union. The mission of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) is the defense of the Bill of Rights. The ACLU is a product of the rst Red Scare. Civil liberties are being able to have the freedom of speech, being able to get a job, able to have equal rights, freedom of thought, etc. KKK experienced a resurgence in the 1920s because preached white supremacy but they began to feel threatened by Catholics and Jews. KKK began to surface and treat Catholics and Jews as inferior, This had to do with all the immigrants that were coming from Europe. Many of them were Catholics this also sparked the KKK. The ultimate reason that the KKK resurfaced was because of the in ux of Catholics immigrating to the U.S. The law was meant to severely curtail the number of Jews, Italians, Greeks, and Slavs immigrating to the U.S., limiting each country’s immigrants to a formula based on the 1890 census. Another provision of the law barred the Japanese from immigrating altogether. The impact was that only a tiny number of immigrants would enter the U.S. over the next four decades, profoundly a ecting the demographic and political character of the nation. The two countries most a ected were Italy and Russia because they by far had the most amount of immigrants coming to the U.S. and after the law was passed only a few could come. After the law was passed more people from Great Britain immigrated to the U.S.