Speech

           The 1920s brought the American people closer together, by making many communities of like minded individuals, but also drove them apart, creating a growing tension between those who did not hold similar beliefs. Through the invention of new conveniences, like the automobile, rural peoples could now more easily interact with those from the city. However, this community overlap did not always produce unity. In fact, it is quite possible that the ability to interact with one another only strengthened the divide between modernist city dwellers and their more rural, traditional counterparts, creating fundamentalist movements such as the Ku Klux Klan focused on the oppression and eradication of those with contrary beliefs.

         While the 1920s produced a number of very important inventions that created more convenience for the average consumer, the automobile completely changed the lives of both rural communities and city dwellers alike. It gave them escapes from their own world, most of the time by allowing them to enter the other. This allowed for much more interaction between the two groups, who quickly learned that on many fundamental principles, they disagreed. This sprouted from a fear of the change that the modernists were seeming to fight for. This fear created a divide between those who lived on farms and those who lived in cities.

          Fear is a very powerful motivator for violence, which many of the rural peoples resorted to. These people were now considered fundamentalists, as they viewed keeping Christianity at the center of American Culture as a necessity. They were opposed by modernist, or urban peoples, who had since adapted the idea that Christian teachings can work together with science for their modern society. This divide, as well as fear of change, created the Ku Klux Klan, an organization focused on the oppression of minorities and anyone who did not share their fundamentalist views. They operated in the open, claiming to be leaders of their community, while lynching those who were only guilty of holding different view points or being of a different color. While this organization did lose credibility after a series of scandals, their appeal alone showed just how deep the divide of the country had become.



            While the 1920s created the ability for American people to come together, it ironically drove them even further apart. It made people revert back to their animalistic behaviors in which fear and anger seemed to rule logical thought. In a time when so many Americans were focused on going forward, they actually took step after step in the wrong direction.