Nativism (as part of the 1920s culture conflict)

One of the issues of the culture conflict of the 1920s, which pitted the old culture-represented by rural, poorer, protestant, native-born, more traditional Americans and the new culture-represented by urban, more affluent, non-protestant, immigrant and liberal Americans, was nativism. This topic of nativism can be shown in three primary issues: immigration restriction, the KKK, and the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti. The old culture was generally anti-immigrant and tended to blame many of the problems of urban industrial America on immigrants. During the 1920s the old culture, which was extremely nativist in attitude, was able to pass several immigration restriction laws which both lowered the number of immigrants to the U.S. and limited the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, which the old culture was particularly against. They did this through the quota system, set up in the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 (and then revised with the 1924 National Origins Act) which established a certain number of immigrants from each country to be allowed into the U.S. per year. Each country's quota was based on a percentage (3%) of people of that nation in the U.S. in the base year (1910). The "rebirth" of the KKK was another sign of the nativism of the 1920s as this "new" KKK was not only anti-black, but also anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant. The modern KKK also was more national in scope than the KKK of the 1860s as can be shown in that its membership was actually highest in Indiana, a northern state. The case of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian-born radicals who were accused, convicted and executed for robbery and murder when there was little evidence of their having committed the crime is another example of nativism during the 1920s. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted more because of who they were than any evidence of what they had done.