David Vega

Instructor’s Name

Class Information

April 7, 2014

Human Rights in the 1920’s

“Human Rights” refer to the basic rights and freedoms that all humans are entitled to including the right to life, equality before the law and freedom of expression. Human rights provide equality and fairness and recognize the people’s choice of freedom. Every human has the right to live free from fear, harassment or discrimination. During the 1920’s women’s rights, immigration, and racism were the biggest topics in human rights.

Women’s rights were paramount in the 1920’s. The 19th Amendment was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920. The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. This was a lengthy and difficult struggle that took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win. Some of the key leaders of this movement were Elizabeth Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony. These three women, along with the assistance of many others, were pivotal in shifting the public’s view on a women’s right to vote and be contributing members of the nation. During the nineteenth century, women organized, petitioned, lectured, marched, rioted, and practiced civil disobedience in order to get freedom. Since the 19th Amendment was first introduced in 1878 and not ratified until August 19, 1920, most of the woman who started the movement didn’t live to see it passed.

After the passing of the 19th Amendment women actually had a voice and it wasn’t men making all of the decisions. Public offices once made up entirely of men were being infiltrated with women. This transformed the whole dynamic of the office and work environment. The Act changed America dramatically and because women were now in positions of power, it also affected other nations. The United Nations started to explore the treatment of women and today they are central to global efforts to solve problems that challenge humanity and promote gender equality and the advancement of women.

Congressional debate over immigration began in 1924. Historians believe Congress wanted to maintain American homogeneity. The Immigration Act of 1924 satisfied this and ended any further immigration from Japan while restricting the number of immigrants to the United States from southern and eastern Europe. A component of this Act, the National Origins Act, created a permanent quota system and reduced the immigration limit from 3% to 2% of each foreign-born group living in the United States in 1890. Using the 1890 Census rather than the 1910 or 1920 Censuses, this excluded the new wave of foreign-born citizens from southern and eastern Europe from quotas truly proportionate to their new numbers in the population. In addition, all immigrants now had to obtain a visa from an American consul in their country of origin. This system allowed for an initial screening of immigrants since part of the act was to select those best suited to American society. The quota system did not apply to countries in the Western Hemisphere as the United States did not want to alienate its neighbors. It needed workers, ideally skilled in agriculture which included citizens from Mexico. The quota system established by this Act has been banned and other provisions drastically changed by the Immigration Act of 1965.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was founded in 1920 by a small group of people who decided to take a stand against egregious civil liberties abuses. It has since evolved into the nation’s foremost defender of the rights contained in the United States Constitution. The ACLU has more than 500,000 members, nearly 200 staff attorneys, thousands of volunteer attorneys and offices throughout the nation. They continue to fight government abuse and fiercely defend individual freedoms including speech and religion, a woman’s right to choose, the right to due process, citizens’ rights to privacy and much more. In an effort to fight for religious freedom, the ACLU was determined to challenge a Tennessee law that was passed in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution. The law was titled The Butler Act and banned the teaching of any theory that denied the biblical story of Creationism. The ACLU wanted to challenge the constitutionality of this law and recruited biology teacher John T. Scopes to defy the law by teaching the banned subject in his class. Scopes was charged with breaking the law and his trial began on July 10, 1925. The trial was the first one to ever be reported on radio and bought in hundreds of reporters from all over the country. The jury deliberated for only nine minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. The verdict was thrown out on a technicality on an appeal but for the next few years, textbooks in Tennessee had all mention of evolution removed. The Butler Act was repealed in 1967. Racial tensions flared in the 1920’s as African Americans began to assert their rights. The rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan further emphasized racial conflict. Believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history, the bloody 1921 Tulsa Race Riot spanned eighteen hours on May 31 and June 1, 1921. More than one thousand homes and businesses were destroyed and the death toll ranges from fifty to three hundred. In the end, the city was placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held under armed guard, and the state’s largest African American community has been burned to the ground. This unfortunate massacre mirrored similar episodes nationwide. Tulsa’s crime rates were extraordinarily high and the city had been plagued by vigilantism. The riot stemmed from an incident that occurred on n May 30, 1921. An African American shoe shiner (Dick Rowland) entered an elevator where a white, female elevator operator was working. The most common belief is that the shoe shiner stepped on the foot of the elevator operator causing her to scream. The next day, the Tulsa Tribune reported that the shoe shiner, who had been picked up by the police, had attempted to rape the elevator operator. By early that evening there was talk of lynching on the streets of Tulsa. Hundreds of whites demanded that the police turn over Mr. Rowland. At the same time, a group of approximately twenty-five African American men (many of them World War I veterans) offered their services to the authorities to protect Mr. Rowland. Several hours later a false rumor said that whites were storming the courthouse. This time a second contingent of African American men, perhaps seventy-five in number, went back to the courthouse and offered their services to the authorities. Once again, they were turned down. As they were leaving, a white man tried to disarm a black veteran and a shot was fired. The riot was on and furious fighting erupted. Carloads of armed whites began making drive-by shootings in black residential neighborhoods. Fires had been set along the edge of the African American commercial district and whites began to organize for a dawn invasion. During the early hours of the riot the local authorities did little to quell the crisis. Tulsa police officers deputized former members of the lynch mob and, according to an eyewitness, instructed them to “get a gun and get a nigger”. Local units of the National Guard were mobilized but they spent most of the night protecting a white neighborhood from a feared, but nonexistent, black counterattack. The African Americans were outnumbered and outgunned and a vast majority of them were rendered homeless by the riot. Despite overwhelming evidence, no whites were ever sent to prison for the murders and arson that occurred during the riot. A state commission formed in 1997 to investigate the riot recommended that reparations be paid to the remaining survivors of the riot. Americans have been fighting for human rights since the 1800’s. During the 1920’s some strides were made regarding women’s rights that paved the way for future advancements and democracies. Unfortunately, this same decade did not fare as well for some other rights like immigration and racial equality. This era was referred to as “The Roaring Twenties” and was an age of dramatic social and political change. This decade was known for new technologies, women’s freedom and cultural growth.

Works Cited
"American Civil Liberties Union." American Civil Liberties Union. N.p., n.d. Web.

"Bodies, History, Visits, Employment, Address, Members, Budget, Information." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web.

"The Fight for Women’s Suffrage." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web.

"National Origins Act." National Origins Act. N.p., n.d. Web.

"TULSA RACE RIOT." TULSA RACE RIOT. N.p., n.d. Web.
"The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act) - 1921–1936 - Milestones - Office of the Historian." The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act) - 1921–1936 - Milestones - Office of the Historian. N.p., n.d. Web.