Demobilization and Its Difficult Aftermath Quiz

PDF page 642: After the war ended, U.S. troops were demobilized and rapidly sent home. One unanticipated and unwanted effect of their return was the emergence of a new strain of influenza that medical professionals had never before encountered. Within months of the war’s end, over twenty million Americans fell ill from the flu (Figure 23.19). Eventually, 675,000 Americans died before the disease mysteriously ran its course in the spring of

PDF page 642: After the war ended, U.S. troops were demobilized and rapidly sent home. One unanticipated and unwanted effect of their return was the emergence of a new strain of influenza that medical professionals had never before encountered. Within months of the war’s end, over twenty million Americans fell ill from the flu (Figure 23.19). Eventually, 675,000 Americans died before the disease mysteriously ran its course in the spring of

PDF page 642: After the war ended, U.S. troops were demobilized and rapidly sent home. One unanticipated and unwanted effect of their return was the emergence of a new strain of influenza that medical professionals had never before encountered. Within months of the war’s end, over twenty million Americans fell ill from the flu (Figure 23.19). Eventually, 675,000 Americans died before the disease mysteriously ran its course in the spring of

PDF page 642: Another element that greatly influenced the challenges of immediate postwar life was economic upheaval. As discussed above, wartime production had led to steady inflation; the rising cost of living meant that few Americans could comfortably afford to live off their wages. When the government’s wartime control over the economy ended, businesses slowly recalibrated from the wartime production of guns and ships to the peacetime production of toasters and cars. Public demand quickly outpaced the slow production, leading to notable shortages of domestic goods. As a result, inflation skyrocketed in 1919. By the end of the year, the cost of living in the United States was nearly double what it had been in 1916. Workers, facing a shortage in wages to buy more expensive goods, and no longer bound by the no-strike pledge they made for the National War Labor Board, initiated a series of strikes for better hours and wages. In 1919 alone, more than four million workers participated in a total of nearly three thousand strikes: both records within all of American history.

PDF page 642: Another element that greatly influenced the challenges of immediate postwar life was economic upheaval. As discussed above, wartime production had led to steady inflation; the rising cost of living meant that few Americans could comfortably afford to live off their wages. When the government’s wartime control over the economy ended, businesses slowly recalibrated from the wartime production of guns and ships to the peacetime production of toasters and cars. Public demand quickly outpaced the slow production, leading to notable shortages of domestic goods. As a result, inflation skyrocketed in 1919. By the end of the year, the cost of living in the United States was nearly double what it had been in 1916. Workers, facing a shortage in wages to buy more expensive goods, and no longer bound by the no-strike pledge they made for the National War Labor Board, initiated a series of strikes for better hours and wages. In 1919 alone, more than four million workers participated in a total of nearly three thousand strikes: both records within all of American history.

PDF page 642: Another element that greatly influenced the challenges of immediate postwar life was economic upheaval. As discussed above, wartime production had led to steady inflation; the rising cost of living meant that few Americans could comfortably afford to live off their wages. When the government’s wartime control over the economy ended, businesses slowly recalibrated from the wartime production of guns and ships to the peacetime production of toasters and cars. Public demand quickly outpaced the slow production, leading to notable shortages of domestic goods. As a result, inflation skyrocketed in 1919. By the end of the year, the cost of living in the United States was nearly double what it had been in 1916. Workers, facing a shortage in wages to buy more expensive goods, and no longer bound by the no-strike pledge they made for the National War Labor Board, initiated a series of strikes for better hours and wages. In 1919 alone, more than four million workers participated in a total of nearly three thousand strikes: both records within all of American history.

PDF page 643: White women to justify the murders. During the “Red Summer” of 1919, northern cities recorded twenty-five bloody race riots that killed over 250 people. Among these was the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, where a White mob stoned a young Black boy to death because he swam too close to the “White beach” on Lake Michigan. Police at the scene did not arrest the perpetrator who threw the rock. This crime prompted a week-long riot that left twenty-three Black people and fifteen White people dead, as well as millions of dollars’ worth of damage to the city (Figure 23.20).

PDF page 643: White women to justify the murders. During the “Red Summer” of 1919, northern cities recorded twenty-five bloody race riots that killed over 250 people. Among these was the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, where a White mob stoned a young Black boy to death because he swam too close to the “White beach” on Lake Michigan. Police at the scene did not arrest the perpetrator who threw the rock. This crime prompted a week-long riot that left twenty-three Black people and fifteen White people dead, as well as millions of dollars’ worth of damage to the city (Figure 23.20).

PDF page 642: In addition to labor clashes, race riots shattered the peace at the home front. The race riots that had begun during the Great Migration only grew in postwar America. White soldiers returned home to find Black workers in their former jobs and neighborhoods, and were committed to restoring their position of White supremacy. Black soldiers returned home with a renewed sense of justice and strength, and were determined to assert their rights as men and as citizens. Meanwhile, southern lynchings continued to escalate, with White mobs burning African Americans at the stake. The mobs often used false accusations of indecency and assault on

PDF page 643: A massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, turned out even more deadly, with estimates of Black fatalities ranging from fifty to three hundred. Again, the violence arose based on a dubious allegation of assault on a White girl by a Black teenager. After an incendiary newspaper article, a conflict at the courthouse led to ten White and two Black peoples' deaths. A riot ensued, with White groups pursuing Black people as they retreated to the Greenwood section of the city. Both sides were armed, and gunfire and arson continued throughout the night. The next morning, the White groups began an assault on the Black neighborhoods, killing many Black residents and destroying homes and businesses. The Tulsa Massacre (also called the Tulsa Riot, Greenwood Massacre, or Black Wall Street Massacre) was widely reported at the time, but was omitted from many historical recollections, textbooks, and media for decades.

PDF page 643: B.C. Franklin was a prominent Black lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A survivor of the Tulsa Massacre, he penned a first-person account ten years after the events. The manuscript was uncovered in 2015 and has been published by the Smithsonian. “About mid-night, I arose and went to the north porch on the second floor of my hotel and, looking in a northwesterly direction, I saw the top of stand-pipe hill literally lighted up by blazes that came from the throats of machine guns, and I could hear bullets whizzing and cutting the air. There was shooting now in every direction, and the sounds that came from the thousands and thousands of guns were deafening....

PDF page 644: Private citizens who considered themselves upstanding and loyal Americans, joined by discharged soldiers and sailors, raided radical meeting houses in many major cities, attacking any alleged radicals they found inside. By November 1919, Palmer’s new assistant in charge of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, organized nationwide raids on radical headquarters in twelve cities around the country. Subsequent “Palmer raids” resulted in the arrests of four thousand alleged American radicals who were detained for weeks in overcrowded cells. Almost 250 of those arrested were subsequently deported on board a ship dubbed “the Soviet Ark” (Figure 23.22).