Question

Explain how the 1920's were a decade of contradictions. What does the relationship between mass immigration and the rise of the second ku klux klan tell us about the American attitudes? how might we reconcile the period of both the flapper and prohibition?

Answer 1

American people were tired of the changes and were against mass immigration from Europe etc.So immigration policy was tightened by the US government.

But at the same time,we saw rise of Ku Klux Klan ,a vicious racist organisation which employed violence and acts of terror in order to assert white supremacy and maintain a strict racial hierarchy.

American women wanted more freedom and equality just like men and their fashion at that time was flapper.

So we may conclude that the 1920s America were a decade of contradictions between openness to women in the form of flapper and conservative racial aggression by some whites in the form of revival of Ku Klux Klan.

Answer 2

The 1920s were a decade of contradictions for many reasons.

After World War I, the numbers of European immigrants sky-rocketed and while this produced a bigger diversity in culture, customs and beliefs, it also brought fear to white Americans as they were scared of the posible spread of communism and anarchism (this fear scalated after the Russian Revolution in 1917), so they embraced Nativism, which consisted of a supremacy of the older American families over recent ones. This also led to the resurgence of the violent and racist KKK that was originally disbanded after Reconstruction.

Flappers were a Group of women who enjoyed jazz music, drinking and dressing themselves in a more provocative manner, contrasting with the times of Prohibition in the United States, which consisted of the ban on producing and selling alcohol from 1920 to 1933.