After experiencing the disillusionment of the Great War, many Americans sought new ways of doing things. Old-fashioned values and traditional fundamentalism was openly mocked and disregarded by the modernists, who wanted to recreate the art of life for the 20th century. As the 1920s roared on, a culture war brewed between the forces of fundamentalism and modernism. The forces collided in 1925 during the Scopes Monkey Trial, and America's culture war has been raging ever since. Current Event: John Kerry's 1971 speech about Vietnam (Real Video)1916 Gubernatorial Election: Knott versus Catts
· William Valentine Knott, the aristocratic and aloof state comptroller
· Sidney Johnston Catts, the erratic and eloquent Baptist oracle from Alabama
· first count: Catts won Democratic primary by 270 votes
· recount: Knott won Democratic primary by 21 votes
· Catts campaigned against the Supreme Court, political rings, corporations, railroad executives, the state press, Negro voters and the Catholic hierarchy on the Prohibitionist ticket
· November 1916: Catts wins the election as a Prohibitionist
Postwar Disillusionment
· unimaginable carnage of war
· traditional views were challenged
· emergence of a modernist sensibility
· horror of veterans, "shell shock"
Modernism
· artists
· writers
· journalists
· architects
· Darwin
· Einstein
A modernist sensibility
· postwar ennui
· a mood
· a movement
· metropolitan
· hot
· disillusioned
· untraditional
Prophets of modernism
· horrified by the slaughter of war
· rejected 19th-century cheerful optimism
· violated expectations
· shocked audiences
· obscure allusions
· juxtaposition of unexpected metaphors
Nativism
· radical nationalism
· hatred of the other
· fear of the unknown
· racial superiority
· militant Protestantism
Not your father's Klan
· Old Klan: devoted to Confederacy
· New Klan: devoted to Americanism
· native-born white Protestants
· spooky robes
· flaming crosses
· a reaction to shifting moral standards
Fundamentalism
· A war of cultures
· Had modernism invaded the schools?
· Could the Bible be reconciled with scientific theories of evolution?
· What was the nature of truth?
· Should tradition be followed or abandoned?
Scopes Monkey Trial
· ACLU versus Fundamentalists
· Bible versus Darwin
· holy rollers versus modernists
· urbanism versus ruralism
John T. Scopes
· 1925: Scopes was fresh out of college
· Hired to teach in Dayton, Tenn.
· Answered an newspaper ad from ACLU
American Civil Liberties Union
· Legal organization dedicated to defending unpopular civil-rights cases
· When Tennessee passed the first anti-evolution law, ACLU saw an opportunity
William Jennings Bryan
· 1921: Bryan was 61 years old, he began a new campaign to stop public schools from teaching evolution
· supported women's suffrage, championed the rights of farmers and laborers and believed passionately in majority rule
· did not support evolution in public schools
Clarence Darrow
· 1890: Darrow became a lawyer for Pullman Railway
· 1894: Pullman workers went on strike, Darrow resigned his job to defend them against the railroad
· 1890s: Darrow became famous defended strikers, labor leaders and anarchists. By the turn of the century he was a celebrity of the radical left
The Trial of the Century
· beginning of America's culture war
· lasting divisions
· enduring jingoes
· clashing belief systems
Prohibition
· the law of unintended consequences
· led to increased drinking
· created organized crime
Innovations of Prohibition
· speakeasies
· hip flasks
· bathtub gin
· drinking women
· cocktails
· cocktail parties
Works by William Faulkner:
The Marble Faun (1924)
Soldier's Pay (1926)
Sartoris (1929)
The Sound And The Fury (1929)
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Sanctuary (1931)
Light In August (1932)
A Green Bough, (1933)
Pylon (1935)
Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
The Unvanquished (1938)
The Wild Palms (1939)
The Hamlet (1940)
Go Down, Moses (1942)
Intruder in the Dust (1948)
Collected Stories (1950)
Requiem for a Nun (play, 1951)
A Fable (1954, Pulitzer Prize)
The Town (1957)
The Mansion (1959)
The Reivers (1962, Pulitzer Prize)
