Click on the category to learn more about the era of the Great Gatsby.....

On January 16, 1920 it was made illegal to sell, make, or transport any drink that contained more than one half of one percent alcohol by volume.

Many people brewed “bathtub gin” in the homes to circumvent the law. However, the extremely high alcohol content made the brew very potent. Canada became important in the smuggling of alcohol to the US.

Arrested in May 1920, Sacco & Vanszetti were charged with executing a robbery and murder in exchange for money.

While there was little evidence against the two, the pair were vocal about their anarchist views. Mixed with their ethnic background, Italian, the public had already convicted them based on those two factors. They were sentenced to death. This case is a prime example of the widespread racism that plagued early America.

July 1925—Teacher John T. Scopes goes to trial in Dayton, TN, for teaching evolution over creationism in a public school. Just months before the Butler Act made it illegal to teach evolution in Tennessee schools. Scopes was found guilty as charged.

Inherit the Wind, a play, was based on this famous trial.....

*White supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan gained in popularity by the middle of the 1910s. Hatred toward immigrants as well as African Americans, American Jews, and Catholics were all boasted by Klan. As the years past attacks by the Clan became increasingly violent. African Americans lived in fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time which resulted often times in violent lynchings.

*Unfortunately congress did little to protect people from meeting such a violent end at the hands of such hate groups.