Planning the Strike

The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike marked an intense period in the state’s labor history. In August of 1927, leaders of the International Workers of the World prepared and submitted a strike petition to the Colorado Industrial Commission (CIC). Officially unveiled at a September 4th meeting, it largely focused on demands for better pay and working conditions. It also laid out the plan for a strike that would begin on October 8th. The petition deliberately omitted anything that referred to the International Workers of the World, also called the IWW or Wobblies, because they were not a legally recognized union in Colorado. Instead, they called themselves the All State Conference of Colorado Coal Miners. However, the CIC realized that they were a front for the IWW and rejected their petition on the grounds that it was submitted by an unrecognized union. This meant that regardless of how closely the Wobblies followed the CIC rules, their petition to strike would always be rejected.¹

Deeming any and all IWW strikes illegal backfired on the CIC; it encouraged previously hesitant workers to participate in the Wobbly strike, and the date was pushed back from October 8th to October 18th in order to properly organize the northern and southern coal fields of Colorado.²

On October 17th, coalminers gathered in Lafayette, Colorado to vote on the strike. So many workers were present that they had to move from a local meeting hall to a baseball field. The workers unanimously voted to strike. Afterwards, a few men from each mine were called to a closed door meeting to begin planning the protests.³ Miners began to walk off the job the very next day, officially beginning the 1927-1928 Coal Strike on October 18th.⁴

Government Response

On October 19th, Thomas Annear, the state industrial commissioner and representative of the CIC, stated that the strike was illegal on the grounds that the picketers had not provided 30 days notice. The petition that they had submitted as the All State Conference of Colorado Coal Miners remained, in his eyes, illegal.⁵

On October 26th, Governor William H. Adams issued his first official statement on the strike:

The government’s immediately hostile response to the strike was just the beginning; tensions would only increase for the duration of the strike, and they would eventually lead to bloodshed in Colorado.

Columbine Mine Keeps Running

Columbine Mine was run by the Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, or RMFC. It was the newest and largest mine run by the company and was surrounded by the company town of Serene. It was also the only large coalmine that remained in operation after the strike began. Picketers were very active at Columbine Mine because it was so close to many other towns, including Lafayette and Erie. It allowed protesters to walk or drive to Columbine while scabs were preparing for work and try to dissuade them from working or convince them to join them in the strike.⁷

Columbine, like other northern Colorado coalmines, operated seasonally. The kind of coal that was rich there could not be stored well, but if it was left out too long it would not burn but could, potentially, spontaneously combust. Normally, coal miners only worked from October to March. The strike coincided with the opportune mining season as well as the time when people needed coal most; they needed it to heat their homes and businesses and provide them with electricity.⁸ The timing of the strike placed more pressure on coal companies, including the RMFC and its lone operating mine at Columbine.

Columbine Mine Workers Negotiate

On October 27th, the workers that had been manning Columbine Mine throughout the strike filed a petition with the CIC to raise their pay and impose better working conditions. The CIC considered this document legal, unlike the petition sent in to get permission for the state-wide strike. This was because the petition was filed separately from the strike by miners that worked while others were protesting. Crucially, the petition, and the miners that filed it, had no affiliation with the unrecognized IWW.⁹

This legal recognition scared mine owners, who believed a CIC decision favoring the miners could encourage strikers to keep pushing for wage increases. Simultaneously, owners feared that a decision against the petition could lead to yet more workers walking off of the job.¹⁰ M. D. Vincent, the Vice-President of the RMFC, penned a response to the petition. He acknowledged that the workers had “causes for just complaint” and stated that the company would be willing to increase wages, however he also claimed that the company was not turning a large profit. He said that if miners considered the difficulties the company faced, it would “consider their complaints, and it will be possible, not all at once, but gradually, to improve the conditions of both miners and operators.”¹¹

Two days after receiving the petition, the CIC announced that the basic wage at the Columbine Mine would be increased from $6.27 to $6.77 per 8 hour day. The decision was to be applicable at all six of the mines owned by RMFC, and many officials hoped it would spark the end of the strike in the northern Colorado coal fields.¹² Many Columbine miners were disappointed with the CIC decision, as they had hoped to earn at least $7.25 per day.¹³ Nonetheless, representatives of the Columbine Mine workers accepted the fifty-cent wage increase on October 30th, and by November 2nd more workers began returning to the job. However, this limited win was not enough to quell the strike in the rest of the state. The IWW encouraged protesters to hold out for the higher wage that they wanted, and the demonstrations continued throughout Colorado.¹⁴

The Strike Continues

During the first two weeks of the strike, meetings, rallies, and parades continued to grow stronger and more impactful throughout Colorado. Many picketers were able to convince scabs to join the strike, impacting coal mine production. On November 4th, as they grew more desperate, Colorado Fuel & Iron, or CF&I, told strikers that they would do anything to protect their property. Up to that point, the company had publicly claimed that production had actually increased during the strike, but the day before they had to lay off half of their steel workers because there was insufficient coal to run the plant. In response to this development, Governor Adams decided to intervene.¹⁵

The Colorado State Strike Police

On November 4th, the same day CF&I laid out their willingness to protect their coal mines, Governor Adams revived the controversial prohibition force used by his predecessor, Governor Clarence Morely. Adams had actually campaigned against the force but brought it back as the state strike police, possibly to avoid calling in the more expensive National Guard.¹⁶ 

The new police force was under the direction of Louis Scherf. He and his men raised tensions with the protesters almost immediately. On November 6th, Scherf and seventeen strike officers arrested seven speakers who were about to address a crowd of protesters in Berwind, Colorado. They beat the speakers and, despite being under orders not to open fire, were all armed with pistols. That same day, roughly one thousand strikers gathered in Lafayette for a rally; two hundred of them then marched into Columbine Mine.¹⁷

On November 7th, Adams further expanded the strike police and sent them to the southern fields. When three thousand people rallied at a monument to the Ludlow Massacre, a 1914 slaughter of coal strikers, four airplanes controlled by the strike police flew overhead. One of them was armed with bombs. Meanwhile, in the north, protesters blocked the road leading to Serene and for the first time were able to halt production at Columbine Mine.¹⁸

Tensions at Columbine Mine

On November 8th, a large parade marched through Serene and the Columbine camp. County sheriffs tried and failed to arrest some protesters, who were defended by swarms of picketers that prevented police from getting close enough to arrest their targets. The picketers also convinced some scabs to join their movement, and the number of people working at the Columbine Mine fell to just 75.¹⁹

The arrests the strike police made in the southern fields may have angered and motivated protesters, as roughly one thousand men, women, and children all demonstrated at Columbine Mine at 4 o’clock on the morning of November 12. Another mass rally was held on November 14th. When it marched through Columbine, Weld County sheriffs were once again unable to arrest anyone due to the sheer size of the crowd. That seems to have been a turning point, as strike policemen then told newspaper reporters that the state strike police officers were going to begin enforcing the law in Weld County.²⁰

Columbine Mine closed for fortification on November 15th. Governor Adams sent twelve strike police officers to the northern coal mine, and when it reopened the next day, it was guarded by thirty-fix armed men and two machine guns. Notably, the state legislature only allocated $18,600 for emergency state police funding. Since November 4th, $16,000 of that money had been spent. By November 17th, only a few hundred dollars remained.²¹ It was crucial for Adams to end the strike before the funding for the state police ran out.

The Columbine Mine Massacre

As the sun rose on November 21st, roughly 500 people arrived to parade through Columbine and Serene as they had for the past few weeks. For the first time, however, they found the gates locked. They were met with local sheriffs, RMFC officials, and at least twenty armed state police. Louis Scherf was among the strike police, and he told the crowd they would not be allowed to protest that day. They insisted on their right to march through the company town, and Scherf demanded to talk to their leaders. The strikers responded by saying they were all leaders.²²

The stories of what happened next conflict. Scherf testified that the crowd stormed through the gate unprovoked and attacked the police with knives and rocks. He claimed he gave them verbal warnings to stop, then fired an ineffective warning shot. Left with no other options, he gave his men the order to fire into the crowd.²³

The protesters that witnessed the massacre were not called to testify but showed up at the Weld County Coroner’s office regardless, insisting on telling their story. They argued that after telling Scherf they were all leaders, he began yelling and threatening them. One of the protesters, Adam Bell, began to argue with one of the police officers, and both men tried to climb the fence. Picketers testified that Bell was pulled over the fence by the policeman and beaten. They claimed that they had no choice but to push the fence down in order to save Bell. They stated that, per strike instructions, they carried no weapons with them. However, they admitted to fighting back when the police began to attack them. In the midst of the violence, the police knocked down the picketing flag bearer and trampled the American flag. One eyewitness claimed a woman named Elizabeth Veranek tried to shield the flag with her own body, after which it was picked up and someone tried to continue marching with it.²⁴

It did not take long for shots to be fired, and World War I veterans that participated in the protests testified that the bullets came so fast that they had to have come from machine guns. People began to flee from the mine and soon returned with cars draped in white flags in order to collect the injured.²⁵

Two men, John Eastenes and Nick Spanandakis, were killed immediately. Jerry Davis, Rene Jacques, and George Kovovitch, died by sunset. Although doctors amputated both of his legs in an attempt to save his life, Mike Vidovich died of gangrene by the end of the week. He was the last to die as a result of the Columbine Massacre.²⁶

Aftermath of the Massacre

In spite of the testimony protesters gave, the County Coroner ultimately ruled that the strikers that had been killed were “assembled and invading the mine property after having been properly and legally warned not to enter,” meaning that the deaths were “not felonious.” ²⁷ No one would be charged for any of the six deaths. Following the Massacre, the IWW largely lost control over the strikes, as many protesters refused to risk their lives.²⁸

The day after the Massacre, Governor Adams ordered 325 men to occupy the area surrounding the mine and declared martial law in the northern fields. He also decided to finally mobilize the National Guard, however he never sent them to the Columbine Mine. Instead, they remained in Denver, ninety miles north east of the site of the Massacre. Despite his activation of the Guard, Adams still trusted the state police, allowing them to deal with any unrest for the remainder of the strike.²⁹ As a result of the martial law in the northern fields, the largest protests shifted to the south. There, demonstrators were often arrested or attacked by the strike police. This went on for for the remainder of the strike, until workers finally voted to end it at a meeting near Walsenburg on February 19th, 1928.³⁰

Significance

Governmental Anti-Reform Sentiment

The Columbine Mine Massacre demonstrates the strong push against reform in the 1920s. Part of this was caused by “the political and economic climate that strangled union and worker initiative.”³¹ Indeed, the Colorado state government’s direct involvement in suppressing the strikes was an effort to protect the interests of large corporations. By refusing to legally recognize the strikes, arresting IWW leaders and protesters, and of course firing upon demonstrators at Columbine Mine, the Colorado government demonstrated its willingness to intervene on behalf of coal companies at the expense of workers. The government’s defense of its actions also demonstrates its anti-labor stance, as Governor Adams blamed victims of the shooting by claiming that Scherf had only “ordered his men to fire only when it appeared that his own life and those of his deputies where in jeopardy.” ³²

Public Anti-Reform Sentiment

The public reaction to the Massacre also demonstrates America’s hostility towards the reform movement in the 1920s. During the First Red Scare, when the workers’ rights movement was tainted with the threat of communism, most Americans were afraid of or unsympathetic towards workers and unions. ³³ Newspaper articles from the wake of the Massacre show the animosity many people held towards striking works. For example, one headline refers to the protesters as a mob and writes that the strike officers were “protecting the Columbine Mine.” ³⁴ The antagonistic manner in which the strikers are discussed, combined with the heroic characterization of the state strike police, exhibits the strong anti-reform sentiment seen during the 1920s. Recognizing the push against reform allows for a deeper understanding of what led to the 1927 Columbine Mine Massacre.

Citations

Bibliography

• “1,000 Coal Miners Are Affected by Columbine Award.” Rocky Mountain News. (Denver, CO), October 29, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=RMD19271029-01. 
• “2 Miners Die, 3 Hurt As Police Fire on Mob.” Brooklyn Daily Times. (New York, NY), November 21, 1927.
• “Campbell-Hale, Leigh. Remembering Ludlow but Forgetting the Columbine: The 1927-1928 Colorado Coal Strike. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2023.
• “Columbine Miners Not Satisfied with Wage Increase Given Them.” Daily Times. (Longmont, CO), October 29, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=TDT19271029-01. 
• “Company Makes Reply to Columbine Miners.” Daily Times. (Longmount, CO), October 28, 1927. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=TDT19271028-01. 
• “Coroner’s Jury Blames Strikers for Deaths Columbine Mine Battle.” Fort Collins Coloradoan. (Fort Collins, CO), November 25, 1927.
• Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill and Wang. 1995.
• “Four Strikers Killed in Riot in Coal Fields.” Buffalo Evening News. (Buffalo, NY), November 21, 1927. 
• “Gov. Adams Meets Striking Miners Not Affiliated With the I. W. W.” Boulder Daily Camera. (Boulder, CO), October 27, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=BDC19271027-01. 
• “Industrial Commission Investigates Demand of Weld County Miners.” Daily Times. (Longmont, CO), October 27, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=TDT19271027-01.
• “Miners In North Field Accept Pay Increase.” Rocky Mountain News, (Denver, CO), October 30, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=RMD19271030-01. 
• “Miners Returning to Work at Columbine Mine, Force Gains 60 Since First Day of Strike.” Longmont Daily Call. (Longmont, CO), November 2, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=LDC19271102-01. 
• “Thousands of Colorado Coal Miners Strike Under Orders of I. W. W.” Boulder Daily Camera. (Boulder, CO), October 18, 1927. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=BDC19271018-01.2.9.

Suggested Resources

• “Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.” Colorado State Library. Accessed May 5, 2026. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=p&p=home&e=——-en-20–1-byDA-img-txIN%7CtxCO%7CtxTA-columbine+mine——-0——.
• “Columbine Mine Incident Collection.” University of Colorado Boulder Libraries, Rare and Distinctive Collections, https://archives.colorado.edu/repositories/2/resources/518.
• Kerwin, Hugh L. “Industrial Disputes: Strikes and Lockouts in the United States in November, 1927.” Monthly Labor Review 26, no. 1, (1928): 111-120, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41860658.

Grace Martinez

Grace Martinez is a Ramapo college history major with a minor in museum & exhibition studies.

www.linkedin.com/in/%20grace-martinezz

The Shanghai Massacre of April 12, 1927, is an event that embodies the sheer chaos of political party rivalries in China during the 1920s and the potency of anti-communist ideologies around the globe. On this day, right-wing forces within the Chinese Nationalist Party gathered up and executed any known members of the Chinese Communist Party and anyone associated with the left-wing faction of the nationalists who supported an alliance with the Communist Party. As part of the much larger conflict between nationalist reformers and radical revolutionaries that consumed China for nearly the entire first half of the 20th century, the massacre marks a crucial turning point. After this violent suppression of Communist leaders and other political dissenters in major cities such as Shanghai, the Chinese Communist Party was fundamentally weakened, and the Chinese Nationalist Party was divided into those who condoned the violence and those who still favored diplomacy.

In a global context, depictions of the Shanghai Massacre in newspapers throughout Europe and the United States (or the mere lack of depictions) reflect how communism as a political concept conjured vastly different fears and anxieties depending on the preexisting cultural climate of a region. Both geographical proximity to the newly formed Soviet Union and an underlying social turmoil in regard to the government’s role in public life shaped the clash between Communists and non-Communists in China into a bloody struggle for political control. Although Western media during the 1920s was in a frenzy about the existential threat posed by the spread of communism, these fears did not take into account the violent oppression that encouraged even the average Chinese citizen to embrace revolution of any kind.

The story of how an internal divide began brewing amongst Chinese nationalists, and how the Chinese Communist Party was initially formed, comprises countless political decisions in both China and the Soviet Union throughout the early 1920s. The first such event that specifically set the stage for the violent spring of 1927 was the contact between Russian Comintern agent Hendrik Sneevliet and Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen in December of 1921.¹ Yat-sen had been instrumental in overthrowing the Qing dynasty a decade earlier, and Sneevliet viewed him as the perfect candidate for helping communism catch on in China. As the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party, Yat-sen recognized the newly formed Chinese Communist Party as a legitimate political party and pursued a diplomatic alliance. This combination of Communists and those in the nationalist party who supported their political existence became known as the “First United Front.”²

While Sneevliet’s influence upon the formation of the First United Front is obviously impossible to quantify, the Soviet Union’s geopolitical game plan was soon impacted by preexisting rivalries between Chinese nationalist leaders. In June of 1922, one of the most influential military leaders within the Nationalist Party, Chen Jiongming, renounced Yat-sen’s authority and forced him to withdraw from Guangzhou and flee to Shanghai.³ Although Sun Yat-sen ultimately returned to Guangzhou with support from the Communist Party, it had become clear that not everyone shared his willingness to include Communists in contemporary Chinese society. As Yat-sen continued his push towards unifying China under one nationalist government, he faced heavy resistance not just from local warlords but from dissenting officials within his own party. After his death from cancer in 1925 left an empty place at the top of the Nationalist Party, this power struggle intensified dramatically.

On the right-wing side of the Nationalist Party and in command of the National Revolutionary Army was Chiang Kai-shek: a hardened military commander with his sights set on political and ideological domination. On the left-wing side of the party was a prominent politician and poet, Wang Jingwei, who embraced collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party and the Soviets. As these two factions battled for control of their party, Kai-shek was continuing Yat-sen’s military campaign to conquer Northern China. Unable to counter his use of the military, Communist-supported leaders asserted that the Central Executive Committee held ultimate power over the nationalist government. On March 10, 1927, the Committee met without Kai-shek and resolved to strip him of his power, citing his dismissal of their authority and anti-Communist sentiments.⁴

Infuriated by this move to curtail his power, Chiang Kai-shek redirected his military campaign through Northern China towards Shanghai and planned to take the city as a display of his personal authority. However, in late March Communist-led workers assumed control of Shanghai, and other Nationalist generals were withholding their attacks out of fear of foreign intervention from the Soviet Union. Upon first arriving at the city and observing the strength of assembled Communist forces, Kai-shek did not pursue immediate military action but rather began forging secret alliances with anti-Communist warlords and other Nationalist leaders who favored the right-wing faction.⁵

Meanwhile, Wang Jingwei of the leftist faction had been reassured by both local Nationalist leaders in Shanghai and Soviet officials that with their support, Kai-shek would be unable to take the city.⁶ Unaware of the pending threat of Chiang Kai-shek’s secret network of supporters, pro-Communist organizations proceeded with multiple public strikes and demonstrations on April 12. Nationalist forces seized this moment and engaged in a widespread purge of anyone who was visibly associated with leftist ideology. Even unarmed people who were merely seen demonstrating in the streets were arrested, if not killed for suspected Communist ties. Over the next two months, all Communist cells operating within Shanghai and in other cities where Kai-shek was able to encourage allies to assist with the purge were exposed and crushed. Striking workers, many of whom only opposed the practices of singular companies, were either executed or imprisoned for their associations with the Chinese Communist Party.

Political leaders from both the Communist Party and the leftist faction of the Nationalist Party were hunted down and brought to the same fate. This forced politicians who had been actively engaged in diplomatic negotiations with other leaders of the Nationalist government to flee for friendly provinces in the South, where Kai-shek’s Northern Campaign had no local implications. Some of the local warlords who supported the purge were even more violent and aggressive with the individuals they rounded up. In Kwangtung, Governor Li Chi-shen’s forces gathered approximately 2,000 suspected opponents of right-wing nationalism and had many of them shot publicly.⁷

This violent suppression of Communists across various major cities in China cemented a political divide within the country’s population and leaders. Left-leaning individuals who may have supported some type of alliance between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party were now painfully aware that such collaboration would never be possible, given the standard of confrontation Chiang Kai-shek set in April of 1927. If they chose to relinquish all ties to Chinese nationalism, they would be seen as traitors by the country’s largest military force and would have few other options besides joining the unprepared and under-funded Communist Party. If they chose to ally with the right-wing branch of the Nationalist Party, they would essentially be at the whim of constant scrutiny and suspicion. From within the party, there was no longer any hope of reaching agreements with political minorities, even those that could facilitate an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Chiang Kai-shek’s drastic and destructive action against Communist groups and their allies essentially ensured the length and scope of the subsequent Chinese Civil War. Nationalists were internally divided by the sheer intensity of the anti-Communist violence, and the Communist Party itself now carried with it a story that elicited sympathy from all other political factions. Between the polarization of the Chinese public and the Soviet Union’s obvious support for the Communist Party, the imminent civil war would not be another simple crushing of dissenters. It would be an extenuating violent conflict, lasting from 1927, in the aftermath of the Shanghai Massacre, until the Communist Party’s eventual conquering of nearly the entire country in 1949. Although a 21st-century perspective on history seems to paint the Chinese Communist Party as a massive political and military force with a very blatant agenda, the bloodshed of the April 12th massacre was part of a much larger sequence of events that brought Communists the internal cohesion and popular support needed to amass more power. Perhaps presciently, Kalfred Dip Lum wrote in 1927 that Chinese Nationalist leaders “have started something which they cannot control.”⁸

Significance

The purging of Communist leaders and supporters by the Chinese Nationalist Party in 1927 serves as a grim reminder of the intensity of anti-communist ideology during the 1920s and the stark discrepancies in how this sentiment impacted different regions of the world. Compared to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, which occurred the same year, the Shanghai Massacre represents an entirely different tier of chaos and destruction. Yet due to isolationist attitudes, the violent clash between Communists and Nationalists in China was treated as generally irrelevant throughout the Western world.

In many cases, newspapers in the United States did not even mention that the political factions being suppressed were in fact communist. One Illinois paper referred to the events of April 12th as nationalist troops fighting to disarm “Guerilla gunmen.”⁹ With most American readers struggling to picture what Shanghai even looked like, media outlets had completely free reign over the context in which they placed the violence of the Shanghai Massacre. During a decade when major business interests in the United States would do anything to bar communist ideology from catching any foothold in the public consciousness, the press naturally hesitated from expressing sympathy for communist communities. Publishing more accurate accounts of the Shanghai Massacre would expose American audiences to a situation in which nationalists were violently attempting to crush all forms of political dissent, with no consideration of the Chinese public’s best interests.

The massacre marked the beginning of a ferocious push by Chinese nationalists to eliminate dissent of any kind and highlighted the dangers of organizing widespread initiatives for governmental reform. In the context of Chinese history, it set the stage for a bloody conflict between the Communist and Nationalist parties, which would last for many decades. Placed in a global context, the violence in China serves as a reminder that Europe was not the only setting of destructive ideological conflict during the early 20th century.

Particularly in the United States, changing patterns of immigration and the formation of the Soviet Union sparked a Red Scare during the 1920s. This was largely sustained by wealthy, white Protestants, who were desperate to maintain their political and social authority at a time when American isolationism and the internal culture of the country itself were undergoing fundamental evolutions. While this manifested as an “overwhelming insistence upon conformity,”¹⁰ in the United States, there is no comparison to the violent suppression of Communists in China. Therefore, events such as the Shanghai Massacre paint a very different picture of global anti-communist attitudes during the 1920s than the stories constructed by American businessmen who merely feared losing their fortunes to public ownership.

While historian Lynn Dumenil explains that in the U.S., “The agendas of the business community, voluntary associations, politicians, and the press helped persuade a susceptible public that the Bolshevik menace was a serious one,”¹¹ the Communist Party was by no means a media phantom in China. Influenced by the geographical proximity of the Soviet Union combined with countless cultural factors, communism was able to gain traction in China that was simply not achievable in the United States. Therefore, conservatives within the Nationalist Party, such as Chiang Kai-shek, plunged the country into war in an effort to resist the same revolutionary change that Americans feared.

Although the conflict between new ideologies and strict nationalism embodied the decade of the 1920s in both countries, the sheer differences in scope of that conflict created drastically different legacies of anti-communist sentiment. As Dumenil notes, the Red Scare in the United States was fueled by a broader resistance to social change, which ultimately ebbed and flowed in relevance depending on contemporary economic conditions.¹² However, for interwar China, the clash between Nationalists and Communists set the stage for an extenuating military conflict that would last until 1949 and shape the course of Asian history throughout the entire century. Ultimately, the Red Scare of the 1920s in the United States was largely minimized in history by later clashes with communism, which developed from the aftermath of events like the Shanghai Massacre in China.

Citations

Footnotes

1. David P. Barrett, “The Role of Hu Hanmin in the ‘First United Front’: 1922-27,” The China Quarterly, no. 89 (March 1982): 35. ︎
2. Ibid., 34. ︎
3. Ibid., 36. ︎
4. F. Gilbert Chan and Thomas H. Etzold, China in the 1920s: Nationalism and Revolution (New York: New Viewpoints, 1976), 147-149. ︎
5. Ibid., 150-151. ︎
6. Ibid., 153. ︎
7. Ibid., 157. ︎
8. Kalfred Dip Lum, “Chinese Civil War and Foreign Relations,” News Bulletin (Institute of Pacific Relations) (February 1927): 20. ︎
9. International News Service, “Chinese Nationalists in Frantic Efforts to Strengthen Position; China in a Ferment,” Waukegan News-Sun, April 12, 1927, p. 16. ︎
10. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 218. ︎
11. Ibid., 221. ︎
12. Ibid., 225. ︎

Bibliography

• Featured image: “Communists being rounded up in one of the purges.” April 1927. Accessed May 6, 2026. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Communist_purge.jpg.
• Barrett, David P. “The Role of Hu Hanmin in the ‘First United Front’: 1922-27.” The China Quarterly, no. 89 (1982): 34-64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/653620.
• Chan, F. Gilbert, and Etzold, Thomas H., eds. China in the 1920s: Nationalism and Revolution. New Viewpoints, 1976.
• Chang, Kuo-t’ao. The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party. University Press of Kansas, 1971.
• Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Hill and Wang, 1995.
• International News Service. “Chinese Nationalists in Frantic Efforts to Strengthen Position: China in a Ferment.” Waukegan News-Sun, April 12, 1927, p. 16.
• Lum, Kalfred Dip. “Chinese Civil War and Foreign Relations.” News Bulletin (Institute of Pacific Relations), (1927): 19-22. https://doi.org/10.2307/2485490.
• Wilbur, C. Martin. The Nationalist Revolution in China: 1923–1928. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

More Resources

• Coble, Parks M. The Shanghai Capitalists and the Nationalist Government, 1927-1937. Harvard University Press, 1986.
• Isaacs, Harold R. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. Stanford University Press, 1938.
• Thornton, Richard C. China, the Struggle for Power, 1917-1972. Indiana University Press, 1973.

Chris Flug

A senior at Ramapo College, majoring in American Studies and minoring in Anthropology.

The aftermath of the strikes also reflects the anti-reform sentiment of the time. Dumenil argues that part of the reason for this aggression was “the political and economic climate that strangled union and worker initiative. The considerable power of corporations…gave employers a sympathetic government and public.” ⁴ The state’s involvement in suppressing the strike clearly demonstrates its partnership with corporate powers. The two were so entwined that the government was willing to intervene in order to protect the interests of large companies. Furthermore, Colorado Governor William H. Adams later said that the state police chief had “ordered his men to fire only when it appeared that his own life and those of his deputies where in jeopardy.” ⁵ This demonstrates the anti-labor stance taken up by the government during this time.

Additionally, the lack of any convictions for the killings shows how the public responded to the Massacre. Just four days after the shooting, a coroner’s jury in Colorado ruled that the strikers that were killed had been “assembled and invading the mine property after having been properly and legally warned not to enter,” meaning that the deaths were “not felonious.” ⁶ The verdict of this jury, which was made up of regular Colorado citizens, was a demonstration of how public opinion had turned against labor power in the 1920s. These anti-reform beliefs are also evident in newspaper articles published in the wake of the Massacre. One of these, written and distributed by the United Press, characterized the strike as an attack on police that were “protecting the Columbine Mine.” ⁷ This negative depiction of the strikers and the heroic terms used to describe the police exhibit the widespread anti-labor beliefs discussed by Dumenil.

The 1920s were a time of strong anti-reform sentiment in America. Included in these beliefs were suspicion of and hostility towards unions and pro-labor movements. The Columbine Mine Massacre is one example of a violent reaction to worker strikes. It demonstrates how state governments stepped in to protect large companies and their capital, and also shows the strong anti-labor beliefs held by individual politicians. Additionally, the Massacre’s aftermath, including the lack of a conviction for the killing and the response in the press, illustrates the anti-reform attitude that had taken hold in much of the American populace. Overall, analyzing the Columbine Mine Massacre itself as well as the public and governmental responses to it allows for a deeper understanding of anti-labor beliefs in the 1920s.

Grace Martinez

Grace Martinez is a Ramapo college history major with a minor in museum & exhibition studies.

www.linkedin.com/in/%20grace-martinezz

The massacre marked the beginning of a ferocious push by Chinese nationalists to eliminate dissent of any kind, and highlighted the dangers of organizing widespread initiatives for governmental reform. In the context of Chinese history, it set the stage for a bloody conflict between the Communist and Nationalist parties, which would last for many decades. Placed in a global context, the violence in China serves as a reminder that Europe was not the only setting of destructive ideological conflict during the early 20th century.

Particularly in the United States, changing patterns of immigration and the formation of the Soviet Union sparked a Red Scare during the 1920s. This was largely sustained by wealthy, white Protestants, who were desperate to maintain their political and social authority at a time when American isolationism and the internal culture of the country itself were undergoing fundamental evolutions. While this manifested in an “overwhelming insistence upon conformity,”¹ in the United States, there is no comparison to the violent suppression of communists in China. Therefore events such as the Shanghai Massacre paint a very different picture of global anti-communist attitudes during the 1920s, than the stories constructed by American businessmen who merely feared losing their fortunes to public ownership.

While Lynn Dumenil explains that in the U.S., “The agendas of the business community, voluntary associations, politicians, and the press helped persuade a susceptible public that the Bolshevik menace was a serious one,”² the Communist Party was by no means a media phantom in China. Influenced by geographical proximity of the Soviet Union combined with countless cultural factors, communism was able to gain traction in China that was simply not achievable in the United States. Therefore conservatives within the Nationalist Party such as Chiang Kai-shek plunged the country into war in an effort to resist the same revolutionary change that Americans feared.

While the conflict between new ideologies and strict nationalism embodied the decade of the 1920s in both countries, the sheer differences in scope of that conflict created drastically different legacies of anti-communist sentiment. As Dumenil notes, the Red Scare in the United States was fueled by a broader resistance to social change, which ultimately ebbed and flowed in relevance depending on contemporary economic conditions.³ However for interwar China, the clash between nationalists and communists set the stage for an extenuating military conflict that would last until 1949, and shape the course of Asian history throughout the entire century. Ultimately, the Red Scare of the 1920s in the United States was largely minimized in history by later clashes with communism, which developed from the aftermath of events like the Shanghai Massacre in China.

1. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 218. ︎
2. Ibid., 221. ︎
3. Ibid., 225. ︎

Chris Flug

A senior at Ramapo College, majoring in American Studies and minoring in Anthropology.

Germany In the 1920s

The movie was made in Germany during the era known as the Weimar Republic. This was the government formed after Germany lost World War I. Germany was a mess in the 1920s; they lost the war, they lost land, the economy was terrible, and people were constantly fighting over politics. In the early 1920s, Germany also went through very bad inflation. Prices were rising rapidly, and it seemed like money was losing its value. People often carried large stacks of paper money just to buy food.¹ Although by the mid 1920s, Germany started to become a lot more stable. Cities like Berlin were popular for their art, film, and culture. Lots of new industries and buildings were starting to appear, but despite this, there was lots of tension between the rich and the poor. Many workers were mistreated and had to work long and hard hours in factories. Metropolis highlights these tensions throughout the film. The city of Metropolis is divided into two groups: the powerful and wealthy leaders and the workers who live underground. The workers are the backbone of the city as they operate the machines that keep it running, but they don’t even get a fraction of the wealth the rich people get. German film historian and professor Thomas Elsaesser says the film “dramatizes the fear of social conflict between labor and capital that shaped the politics of the Weimar period.² The city of Metropolis seems beautiful on the outside; it has gorgeous skyscrapers and flying cars, but on the inside, it’s entirely built on exhausted workers.

• 1918 – Germany lost the war and the Weimar Republic Begins.
• 1919-23 – Economic crisis and inflation affect Germany
• 1924 – Cultural growth begins in cities like Berlin.
• 1925 – Fritz lang begins production of Metropolis
• 1927 – Metropolis releases in Germany.

The Rise of Machines

The 1920s were also a time period where machines and industries were very important. Factories, assembly lines, and mass production revolutionized the way people worked. Cities were growing fast, and with the addition of large buildings, bustling streets, and bright lights became common in places like Berlin and New York. While these changes can feel exciting, they can also feel very overwhelming. Metropolis reflects these changes in the city in the film. It features huge skyscrapers, flying cars, and big factory machines. The film also showcases a world where machines control your everyday life, which was actually a common fear among the public in the 1920s. Siegfried Kracauer, a German writer and journalist, wrote that the film’s machines look almost like monsters that control the workers.³ The film features a “Heart Machine,” which is a big engine that keeps the city running smoothly. Although when the main character, Freder, takes a look at the Heart Machine, he hallucinates a monster named Moloch who eats a bunch of workers. This scene represented how industrial labor felt dehumanizing and even dangerous. They felt like they had to overwork themselves in order to keep the economy going. Fritz Lang was criticizing “Taylorism,” which was described as “a method of making factory work as efficient as possible by treating people like parts of a clock.”⁴ At the same time, the film also appreciates technology during the twenties. The city looks big, powerful, and overwhelming in a good way. This mix of excitement and fear of newer technology was very common in the 1920s.

German Expressionism and Film Style

One of the most prominent parts of the film is its visual style. The film was heavily influenced by the art movement known as German Expressionism. German Expressionist art tried to convey emotion through dramatic shapes, shadows, and designs. Many German films of the 1920s portrayed this style. Metropolis utilized large sets and sharp contrast between light and dark, the upper city, where all the rich people are is open and bright, but the underground, where most of the poor people are is crowded and dark. The film also had special effects that were considered advanced for its time. One of the many techniques they used was called Schüfftan. Believe it or not, Metropolis actually popularized this technique. This technique involved positioning a plate of glass at a 45-degree angle between the camera and the miniatures, outlining the area where actors would be inserted, and transferring this outline to a mirror.⁵ This helped a lot with creating the city scenes. Given that these techniques were way ahead of their time, the film was very expensive to make, and it was the most pricey film produced by the German studio UFA during the silent era.⁶

A Divided City

The main conflict of Metropolis is the division between classes. The city is ruled by John Fredersen, a very powerful leader who controls the city from his tower. His very own son, Freder, discovers the harsh reality the workers face and begins to question the system. The workers spend long hours operating machines that control the whole city. They move in strict routines and appear almost like parts of a machine. In Metropolis, the big city divided its citizens into two classes: The thinkers are rich and live in paradise-like skyscrapers. They spend their days enjoying life to the fullest. Then there’s the workers. The workers are the opposite; they’re poor and live deep underground. They walk in straight lines like complete zombies and dress in all black. The workers are shown to pine away in the subterranean machine room, keeping all the giant machines running.⁷ Throughout the film, Freder falls in love with a kind spiritual leader named Maria. Maria tells the workers, “The Mediator of the head and the hands must be the heart.” The film suggests that the “head” represents the wealthy people, such as John Fredersen, and the “hands” represent the workers. Maria is basically saying the only way to talk to the upper class and the people in power is if someone steps in as a mediator between the two. Someone will come to bring the rich and the poor together. In the late 1920s, people were disillusioned with the chaos democracy was bringing them. They wanted a strong leader who would unite everyone. The idea that a single person could be a “mediator” between the classes was later exploited by political parties trying to gain control over their respective country.⁸ Some critics believed this message was way too simple for such a serious problem. Film historian Anton Kaes argues that the ending suggests harmony without solving the deeper social issues.⁹ Despite this, the story reflects the fear of workers starting a rebellion and political conflicts during the 1920s.

The New Woman

The role of women is also a major plot point in the film. Maria represents kindness and moral guidance. She tries her best to help the workers without encouraging violence. However, the scientist Rotwang creates a robot version of Maira. The robot appropriates Maria’s appearance and begins to disobey her creator’s orders. She instead seduces male workers and tricks them into starting violent riots.¹⁰ The robot version of Maria is the complete opposite from the real Maria. Many film scholars define these two versions of Maria as representing the different sides of women in the 1920s. In the 1920s, the “New Woman” was a big thing. In many parts of the world, women started to become more independent, they started getting their own jobs, voting in elections, and completely changing the social norms. While some didn’t mind this change, some traditional men started to become very nervous. When Rotwang decided to create a “bad” version of Maria, who starts riots, the film shows the era’s fear of uncontrolled female power and the way technology could be used to trick or manipulate the public.¹¹ The robot version of Maria reflects these fears from traditional men by showing a modern woman who is chaotic and disrupts social norms.

Is the Film Still Relevant Today?

Despite Metropolis being released almost one hundred years ago, the themes and message of the film still remain relevant to this day. Cities are still shaped by technology, there’s still big industries and corporations out there, and economic inequality is still a thing. Instead of being worried about machines replacing workers, people today are worried about AI replacing workers. Metropolis also talks about social systems and different classes, which are still relevant today. American film historian David Brodwell claims that Metropolis remains powerful because it “combines spectacular imagery with deep concerns about modern life.”¹² After its initial release, the film was actually shortened and censored in many countries. For many years, people only saw an incomplete version of the film. It wasn’t until 2008 that a completed print of the film was discovered in Argentina. The discovery of the completed version of the film allowed a version that’s closer to the original film to be released.¹³ Today, we consider Metropolis to be one of the most important movies in film history. It even influenced other science fiction movies such as Star Wars, The Matrix, and Blade Runner. Robot Maria has also become one of the most iconic robotic characters in film history.

Conclusion

Metropolis isn’t just a science fiction movie. It serves as a reflection of the world from the 1920s. This time was filled with rapid changes, new technologies, and social tensions. The film can also be interpreted as a prediction for the future. They wanted these bright and huge cities with lots of technology, but they also feared what would happen if society became too divided between classes. If we look at Metropolis in a historical context, we can understand the film and the time period that influenced the film. Metropolis reminds us that changes such as new technology, social conflict, and inequality aren’t new and have been a part of the modern world for a very long time. I decided to pick this film because I love dystopian movies, and I thought Metropolis would be interesting to research as it’s described as a prophetic dystopian vision. The film fits into the historical context of the 1920s through the fears of the general public throughout the decade. Its deception of social division, fast urbanization, and the fear of technology taking over were things people worried about. The views on this film have also changed drastically over time since the 1920s. The initial reception was mixed; some didn’t like the ending at all and thought the ideas of the film were too silly. The film was also criticized for its heavy political themes and editing style. The views began to shift later in the 20th century when people began to appreciate the film’s influence on the science fiction genre. Metropolis is now regarded as one of the most influential films ever made. Metropolis also complicates our ideas about the 1920s, as it’s an accurate portrayal of the anxieties people had in the 1920s rather than a celebration of new technologies. The divide between the two creates a dystopian vibe for the movie.

1. Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 53-55. ︎
2. Elsasser Thomas, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (London; New York: Routledge, 2000), 90. ︎
3. KRACAUER, SIEGFRIED. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. NED-New edition. Edited by Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton University Press, 2004. ︎
4. Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. 1997 ︎
5. “The Schüfftan Process: Why Storytellers Need to Embrace Their Inner Magician.” 2017. ScreenCraft. July 20, 2017. https://screencraft.org/blog/storytellers-embrace-inner-magician-schufftan-process/.
   ‌ ︎
6. Kaes Anton, Metropolis (London: British Film Institute, 2000), 8-10. ︎
7. Benesch, Klaus. “Technology, Art, and the Cybernetic Body: The Cyborg as Cultural Other in Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ and Philip K. Dick’s ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’” Amerikastudien / American Studies 44, no. 3 (1999): 379–92. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41157479. ︎
8. KRACAUER, SIEGFRIED. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. NED-New edition. Edited by Leonardo Quaresima. Princeton University Press, 2004. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc77cxj. ︎
9. Kaes Anton, Metropolis (London: British Film Institute, 2000), 54. ︎
10. Huyssen, Andreas. “The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” New German Critique, no. 24/25 (1981): 221–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/488052. ︎
11. Huyssen, Andreas. “The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” New German Critique, no. 24/25 (1981): 221–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/488052. ︎
12. Thompson Kristin and Bordwell David, Film History: An Introduction, 4th edition. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2018), 148. ︎
13. Thompson Kristin and Bordwell David, Film History: An Introduction, 4th edition. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2018), 147 ︎

Overview

Production

The Vitaphone was invented and utilized to create synchronized sound, and was the key tool that made production of The Jazz Singer possible. Originally developed by Bell Laboratories, this device could record and play back sound that was synchronized with a film reel, and amplify that sound throughout a room, provided the audio could be played within it.

On October 6th, The Jazz Singer was released in theaters. Directed again by Alan Crosland it was the first film to utilize synchronized sound and dialogue. However, the public reaction to the film was lukewarm compared to Don Juan. Robert E. Sherwood states that “[it] has a good idea (taken from Sam Raphaelson’s play), but it has been hoked and sugared to a regrettable extent; and Al Jolson as an actor on the screen is only fair.”³

Despite this less than favorable reception, the film showed that synchronized dialogue was possible, and it wasn’t long until films, such as Lights of New York, made use of synchronized dialogue throughout its entire runtime, putting silent films to rest.

Film Summary

The film starts with Cantor Rabinowitz, who represents traditions and religion. He is awaiting his son, Jackie Rabinowitz, who will sing the Koi Nidre for the synagogue. Sara Rabinowitz, Jackie’s mother and the canton’s wife, suggests that maybe Jackie doesn’t wish to be a Cantor. However, he refuses such a notion and suggests he must be a Cantor because it’s tradition to do so.

While this is happening, Jackie, as a young boy, is performing at a local saloon. He represents modernization and secularism. He is then caught by one of his fathers friends, who alerts Cantor Rabinowitz before he goes to take Jackie back home. Jackie threatens to run away if he gets whipped, and does so after he is punished by his father. Later, at the Yom Kippur service, Cantor Rabinowitz denounces Jackie as his son.

Years later, Jackie changes his name to Jack Robin and is now a jazz singer. He is not famous, but his singing of “Dirty Hands, Dirty Face” and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie” leads to him meeting a woman named Mary Dale, someone who’s been on the stage. She compliments his voice and offers to help him get famous.

As that happens, Cantor Rabinowitz is instructing another child on being a cantor as Sara reads a letter from Jack about how he’s currently doing. After the child leaves and tells Sara that the Cantor is angry, she decides to tell him about how Jack is doing. It’s baffling she’s saddened after he denounces Jack once again, as she should have figured telling him would make things worse, but I suppose it’s her life.

After traveling from Portland to Chicago, Mary lands a lead role for a musical in New York City, leaving Jack behind in Chicago. A few minutes later, Jack also lands a role for a musical in New York City and travels there. Back at home, Cantor Rabinowitz celebrated his 60th birthday, and Jack returns home to find his father teaching a class on being a cantor, while his mother works in the kitchen. Sara and Jack hug and catch up before his father catches him. For a third time, his father is upset at Jack for being different, they argue, and Jack leaves the house for a second time.

After that, it showcases April Follies, the musical Jack and Mary are performing in. He’s shocked by her appearance, and rehearsal continues normally. However, Cantor Rabinowitz is sick in bed, and Jack finds out through his father’s friend. He now has to make the choice between performing at the synagogue in place of his dad, or performing on Broadway, which tears him apart before he makes his final decision.

After a few talks with Mary, meeting his mother once again, and seeing his father on his death bed, he ultimately decides to disappear on opening night and sing at the synagogue. This makes his father happy before he dies, and mends Jack’s internal rift between religion and modernity. After the fact, despite being told he would never have another job on Broadway again, the film ends with him performing “My Mammy” on the stage at a later date.

Significance 

Religion and Assimilation

The major conflict within The Jazz Singer is Jack wanting to be a jazz vocalist, while his father wants him to be a cantor. This is reflective of not only secularization, but assimilation as well. The 1920s brought upon change to society, which made Americans more secular. This contributed to poor attendance in various religious institutions and “eroding support for missionary activities.”⁴ As a result of this decline, religions had to change in order to keep with the times and keep attendance rates up.

One way Judaism changed, especially more Conservative congregations, was to modify their “traditional orthodoxy of their Southern and Eastern European parents to make it more palatable to modern Americans.”⁵ Despite it not working as well as they hoped, these attempts to assimilate and appeal to the American public reflect upon Jack’s character in The Jazz Singer as he tries to pursue the theater.

One of the major ways this is shown is Jack’s name, as he was originally named Jacob Rabinowitz. Being the son of a Jewish immigrant, he decided to anglicize his name in an attempt to fit in with the rest of American society. This practice still happens today; immigrants and their children anglicize their names in the United States, typically to fit in in a crowd of mainly white-sounding names. My mother comes to mind as an example; she tells restaurant workers that her name is “Maya” in order to make writing and calling her name easier.

Jack also attempts to appeal to the 1920s public by pursuing the career of a jazz singer instead of a cantor, like his father. This does paint Jack as being secular against his father’s religion, especially as the film shows Jack striving away from being a cantor, reflecting upon the attitude towards religion in the 1920s.

Additionally, the film’s climax shows Jack abandoning the theater to sing at the synagogue, before ending the film with a performance on stage, showing that religion is only a fraction of life, as Jack pursues his goal of being a jazz singer at the end of all. Times change, the world becomes more modern, and Jack is a representation of an assimilationist who, ultimately, decided against Judaism in favor of a more American lifestyle.

Racism

Besides the conflict between an immigrant father and his American-born son, one of the biggest points of The Jazz Singer is Jack’s use of blackface throughout the film. This is likely because “one of the functions of blackface was to offer whites a mask that allowed them to be more expressive than the Victorian norm permitted whites.”⁶ It was also seen as the norm within Vaudeville entertainment, since it derived itself from minstrel shows, where white actors utilized blackface in order to portray racial stereotypes of African Americans.

Additionally, it does make sense considering that anti-Semitism was rampant during the 1920s, especially considering that a handful of immigrants at the time were Jewish people attempting to assimilate into a Protestant country. Jewish people were one of the many groups targeted by the Klu Klux Klan.

I’m not trying to defend blackface. It’s completely acceptable to be uncomfortable with the film’s use of blackface, especially considering The Jazz Singer is accredited with being the film that killed the silent film industry without the other parts of it being mentioned. However, modern audiences should not only be aware of blackface being a prevalent part of The Jazz Singer, but draw their own understanding of why it’s being utilized. There were unfortunate norms during the 1920s, as stated above when discussing Vaudeville as a successor to minstrel shows. On the other hand, Jews were also an oppressed group during the 1920s, meaning Rogin’s interpretation of intersectionality may not be entirely wrong.
At the end of the day, it’s up to audience interpretation as to their thoughts on the presence of blackface within The Jazz Singer. However, the average person in the modern day may agree that it is used to harm instead of connecting with black people.

Reflection of Culture

The Jazz Singer, alongside showcasing assimilation and racism, “reflected and reinforced the consumer culture” of the time.⁸ This is blatantly shown in the film, as the protagonist is pursuing the job of a jazz vocalist. He sings to entertain an audience, which, as stated before, is a point of conflict between him and his father.

This career choice directly reflects upon the way society consumed material goods, especially after the Victorian Era, which promoted traditionalism and restraint. After World War I, societal values began to lax and become open minded in comparison to upholding traditional values. This included secularism, causing those who finished a day at work to have free time on their hands that attending a religious service, such as a sermon, would typically fill.

Since workers didn’t wish to attend religious service, especially as religion began to be pushed farther and farther from society’s minds, consumerism began to fill the void as the 1920s continued on, which has managed to seep into the modern day. As more material goods and services began pandering to a broader public, such as the sale of cars to the everyday worker, there was a sense of abundance that increased the demand for these products among citizens.

This influx in demand created even more goods and services to be created, such as nightclubs and theaters, especially as business owners attempted to cash in on the buzz around such services. This opens up more opportunities for the public to experience these services, ultimately fueling the cycle of consumerism. Jack isn’t an expedition to this cycle, as the career he pursues directly helps to keep it a well-oiled machine. Both in the sense that the film is being released in theaters and Jack himself is a jazz singer, which is one of the many performances people would pay to see.

Although he does perform at the synagogue, he still returns to the theater to sing jazz after his father passes. Religion plays a part in his life, but he still prioritized theater, showcasing secularism and his willingness to continue the cycle of consumerism, whether he knows it or not.

The 1920s and Beyond

At the end of the day, the 1920s as a whole is looked back on with fondness, including the entertainment industry. This has manifested as tributes over the years, with films such as Singin’ in the Rain paying homage to the shift towards dialogue within films.

However, there should still be acknowledgement of The Jazz Singer’s story and how it reflects the 1920s at the time of its production. There’s more to the time period than the entertainment it provides, as there are examples of modernism with Jack’s character and reflections of culture in the job he pursues. Additionally, there’s the issue of racism with the film’s use of blackface and a conflict between religion and secularism that manages to provide the best of both worlds via a mix of a happy ending for both sides at the end of the film.

While it’s not a worldwide event such as the stock market crash, The Jazz Singer is still an intriguing window into the way the people of the 1920s reflected upon changing societal norms and problems.

Citations

Bibliography

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, 2007.

Hall, Mordaunt. “VITAPHONE STIRS AS TALKING MOVIE: New Device Synchronizing Sound With Action Impresses With Its Realistic Effects. NOTED MUSICIANS HEARD Provides Orchestral Accompaniment to Photoplay “Don Juan” With John Barrymore.” New York Times (1923-), 1926. https://ramapo.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/vitaphone-stirs-as-talking-movie/docview/103776000/se-2. 

Koszarski, Richard. “Vitaphone’s First Night.” MoMA 2, no. 2 (1989): 16–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4381092. 

Sherwood, Robert E. “The Silent Drama.” Life 90 (1927): 24 

Rogin, Michael. “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice.” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 3 (1992): 417–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343811. Tankel, Jonathan D. “The Impact of The Jazz Singer on the Conversion to Sound.” Journal of the University Film Association 30, no. 1 (1978): 21–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687409.

Footnotes

1. Richard Koszarski, “Vitaphone’s First Night,” MoMA 2, no. 2 (1989): 17. ︎
2. Mordaunt Hall, “VITAPHONE STIRS AS TALKING MOVIE: New Device Synchronizing Sound With Action Impresses With Its Realistic Effects. NOTED MUSICIANS HEARD Provides Orchestral Accompaniment to Photoplay “Don Juan” With John Barrymore,” New York Times (1923-),(1926): 6. ︎
3. Robert E. Sherwood, “The Silent Drama,” Life 90 (27 October 1927): 24. ︎
4. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, (2007): 170. ︎
5. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, (2007): 176. ︎
6. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, (2007): 95. ︎
7. Michael Rogin, “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 3 (1992): 430. ︎
8. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, (2007): 94. ︎

Eryn Argonza

Eryn is a Ramapo College sophomore majoring in History and minoring in Museum Studies.

With the death of Thomas Salmon, M.D. in a sailing accident on August 13, 1927, the mentally ill lost one of their most respected and influential advocates of that era. Salmon’s journey from failed family doctor to the upper echelons of American psychiatry reflects both his personal drive and his empathy for those struggling with their mental health. He was also a man defined by paradoxes. Although Salmon wore the uniform of the U.S. Public Health and Marine Hospital Service or the U.S. Army Medical Corps for much of his career, he had an allergy to authority of all kinds. (A 1906 investigation by the Public Health Service into his refusal of a direct order on Ellis Island pronounced Salmon “far from loyal, obedient or even consistent” (Unrau 1984, 679).) Later, Salmon would be praised for his superb organization and management of psychiatric services for American soldiers in World War I, yet he was also well-known as one who couldn’t pay his own bills or debts on time.

Early Life

Born in 1875 in Troy, New York, Salmon was the son of a family doctor who had immigrated from England. He graduated from Albany Medical College in 1899 and returned home to establish a medical practice. Salmon was a skilled artist whose work appeared in at least one medical textbook (Gordinier 1899). Salmon’s career as a family doctor was short-lived. He refused to advertise in the local newspapers, despite the highly competitive nature of medicine in that era. Although certainly a competent physician, Salmon proved a terrible businessman. When he did bill for his services, he neglected to chase payments. By the time he left his practice, Salmon had uncollected bills of $15,000-$25,000 (Komora 1937,  McKown interview).

Seeking a steady income for his growing family, Salmon took a position at Willard State Hospital in New York, a mental institution, where he was hired to investigate—and end—a diphtheria epidemic (Russell and Salmon 1905).  Not satisfied with laboratory work, Salmon decided to enter the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service (later shortened to “Public Health Service”). He may have at first failed the highly competitive exam, which took place in Washington D.C. each year over a three-day span, but Salmon eventually passed and entered Public Health and Marine Hospital Service in 1903, and was assigned to Ellis Island.

Ellis Island

While Willard State served as Salmon’s entry into psychiatry, it was at Ellis Island that Salmon became fully immersed in the specialty. Salmon was initially assigned to the immigrant inspection line, where he and other Public Health and Marine Hospital Service physicians did a cursory examination of steerage-class passengers, seeking to identify those with dangerous contagious diseases, mental illness, and “feeblemindedness.” These immigrants would be sent to Ellis Island Hospital, a facility on its own artificial island that would grow to 650-beds, for treatment and observation. Some of them would be refused entry and returned to their home country on the basis of their condition.

Unsettled by the rough handling of insane immigrants, Salmon pushed for better care. Arriving immigrants, particularly in the early 1900s, suffered from the harsh conditions of steerage, without clean water, decent food, and proper sanitation for the 7-21 day journey to the United States. Sleep-deprived, they arrived at Ellis Island homesick, disoriented, and afraid. Salmon noted that a bath, clean clothes, good food, and rest often eliminated their “insanity.”

As there were no special wards for these immigrants, Salmon, with his drawing skills, designed one. It would be built after his conflicts with his superior officers, stemming from his unwillingness to work on the inspection line, resulted in his transfer to the port of Boston. With a growing number of foreign-born patients filling its state mental asylums, in 1911 the New York State Commission in Lunacy approached Salmon, whose work at Ellis Island had grown his reputation, to study its immigrant insane, provide statistics, and create a standardized system of reporting admissions and discharges. Granted a leave of absence from the Public Health Service, and offered a substantially higher salary, Salmon got to work. Salmon was among those who pushed for medical examination of immigrants before they departed from their home countries for the United States, so those with mental illness would not be permitted to come to the United States at all.

Mental Hygiene Movement

Salmon’s work in New York State attracted the attention of Clifford Beers, founder of the mental hygiene movement. A Yale graduate, Beers was himself a former mental patient and told his story in A Mind that Found Itself: An Autobiography, which was published in 1907. Beers exposed that too often the only “treatment” for the insane were straightjackets and violence on the part of the untrained attendants. Beers established the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, which by the next year was renamed the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH). The organization lives on today under the name “Mental Health America” (“Mental Health America: Our History”).

Salmon joined the NCMH, serving as its Medical Director from 1912 to 1922, taking a leave of absence from 1917 to early 1919 to serve in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. With a salary paid by the Rockefeller Foundation, Salmon finally resigned his Public Health Service officer commission at the end of 1914. Salmon’s work at the NCMH exposed conditions in state asylums (“Annual Meeting of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene” 211). In the 1920s, the NCMH wrote and lobbied for model commitment laws (“Mental Health America”), which were passed by the states.

Advocating for “Shell-Shocked” Soldiers

In the  U.S. Army Medical Corps had the daunting task of  setting up psychiatric hospitals and recruiting doctors and nurses to work in France. Upon his return in 1919, Salmon pushed for proper care of soldiers suffering from “shell shock,” what is generally known today as post-traumatic stress disorder. When he learned that such victims would be put in hospitals and institutions without proper psychiatric staffing and treatment, he said that “… you can’t take care of these sick men in facilities like those, just as though they were so many stalls to house so many horses” (Komora 1937, Bryan interview). Salmon became a national figure in the 1920s, giving fiery speeches for the American Legion and testifying before Congress demanding that the country provide for veterans who returned with mental disorders. It put him at odds with the Harding administration and the Public Health Service (which was supposed to care for such men), and alienated the Rockefeller Foundation. But his advocacy helped establish what would eventually become the Veterans Administration.

Practical Psychiatric Treatment

After his return to the United States from France, Salmon became active in the American Psychiatric Association. He also developed a lucrative private practice, which didn’t end his lifelong money woes, but did improve his financial standing. Among his patients was Marion Frankfurter, the wife of the future Supreme Court Justice. Marion Frankfurter suffered from bouts of depression throughout her life. She lauded Salmon for the “extraordinary skill and gentleness with which he led me through the dark wood.” Her interviewer, Paul Komora of the NCMH, wrote, “As Mrs. F. put it, Salmon virtually saved her life” (Komora 1937, interview with Felix and Marion Frankfurter). Salmon turned down $50,000 a year to treat Stanley McCormick, an heir to International Harvester’s family fortune (Komora 1937, Brumley interview). At the time, physicians in private practice earned $5,000 to $10,000 a year (Bendix 2023).

Seeking to improve the teaching of psychiatry as a discipline and interest more capable medical students to enter the field, Salmon joined the faculty of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1921. Psychiatry was very much a rapidly developing field in the first decades of the Twentieth Century, as doctors sought ways to more effectively treat the mentally ill rather than simply warehousing them in institutions. Lynn Dumenil’s 1995 analysis of the forces that shaped the 1920s, The Modern Temper, highlights the work of Sigmund Freud and John B. Watson (146) in its discussion of psychiatry and psychology. Both of these thinkers could be put on the opposite ends of a spectrum. Freudianism, with its emphasis on the unconscious mind, sex, and repressed desires, could be located on one end, while Watson, whose work focused on the study of discernable, measurable behaviors and their manifestation in an individual’s external actions and reactions, could be placed on the other.

Salmon and the mental hygienists are in the middle of this spectrum. Mental hygienists certainly believed in talk therapy (Freud), and they saw the value of identifying behaviors and attempting to understand their relationship to the patient’s environment (Watson). For example, Salmon was called in to treat a boy who was caught tampering with the signal mechanisms of a railroad near his boarding school. Such vandalism could have proved deadly. After spending some time with the child, who was about to be kicked out of his school, Salmon found he displayed an unusual ability in mechanical and electrical work. His “prescription” was to arrange much more time for the boy to study these subjects. In this example there is an attempt to identify the issue and identify a practical solution, rather than delve deeply into a person’s psyche, on the one hand, or reduce them to a simple set of actions/reactions, on the other.

Expanding Psychiatry

This sort of approach was particularly important in the “child guidance clinics” the NCMH set up in cities (Blanton et al., 1927), as well as the work Salmon helped organized in Sing-Sing prison (“Psychiatric Services for Prisoners” 1916). Though neither he nor the mental hygiene movement are mentioned in Dumenil’s survey, Salmon and other leaders were effective in reducing the stigma of mental illness and pushing for treatment of the insane, rather than imprisoning  them in state institutions. They focused on not only ending the abuse and isolation of patients in mental institutions, but sought to end long-term, involuntary incarceration. They pushed for psychiatric treatment in the communities where the mentally ill lived, in an out-patient fashion, before such clinics were widely established. We particularly see the legacy of the mental hygienists in the lessening of the stigma of mental illness as well as the evolution of the principal profession body for psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association.

Founded in 1844 as “The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane” and then in 1892 as “The American Medico-Psychological Association,” the organization finally became “The American Psychiatric Association” (APA) in 1921.  Such name changes signaled the transformation of psychiatry from a discipline concerned with patients in mental institutions to one with broad scope to treat the range of mental disorders (Ozarin and McMillan, “APA History”). In 1923, Salmon was elected the president of the APA, the first one who had not served in a leadership capacity at a state mental institution. “The ideal psychiatrist was no longer the institutional superintendent of the [eighteen] eighties, or even the man of the laboratory of the nineties,” wrote Barbara Sicherman (1967, The Quest for Mental Health in America, 280).  Ever progressive, the new psychiatrist, who worked in schools, prisons, and hospitals, collaborated with social workers and educated laymen, had become an advocate of “science with a public mission,” an apt description of Thomas Salmon.

Bibliography

“Annual Meeting of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene.” 1928. Mental Hygiene. 12: 211.

Beers, Clifford Whittingham. 1907. A Mind that Found Itself: An Autobiography. Doubleday & Company, Inc.

Bendix, Jeffrey. September 28, 2023. “A Century of Primary Care Transformation, Chapter 1: 1923 vs. 2023: A Doctor’s Daily Life.” Medical Economics Journal. 100:10.

Accessed May 4, 2025

Blanton, Smiley and Margaret Gray Blaxton. 1927. Child Guidance. Century Company.

Introduction by Thomas Salmon.

Bond, Earl D. with the collaboration of Paul O. Komora. 1950. Thomas W. Salmon: Psychiatrist. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Chafee, Jr. Z. May 26, 1937. Letter to Paul Komora. Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 1, Folder 1.

Dumenil, Lynn. 1995. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. Hill and Wang.

Gordinier, H.C. 1899. The Gross and Minute Anatomy of the Central Nervous System. Blakiston’s Son & Co.

Komora, Paul. May, 1937. “Visit with Dr. Bryan in New London.” Interview. Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 2, Folder 3.1.

Komora, Paul. (Undated, circa 1937). “Notes from Salmon Dossier in the Public Health Service.” Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 1, Folder 1.

Komora, Paul. (Undated, circa 1937). “Visit with J.F. McKown, Carmel, N.Y.” Interview. Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 1, Folder 1.

Komora, Paul. (Undated, circa 1937). “Visit with Justice and Mrs. Felix Frankfurter.” Interview. Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 1, Folder 1.

Komora, Paul. (Undated, circa 1937). “Visit with Mr. Brumley.” Interview. Thomas Salmon Papers. The Oskar Diethelm Library, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Box 1, Folder 1.

“Mental Health America: Our History.” Undated.

Accessed May 3, 2025.

Ozarin, Lucy, and Gary McMillan. “APA History.” Undated.

Accessed August 31, 2023

“Psychiatric Services for Prisoners.” 1916. The Survey. 36: 444.

Russell, W. L. and T.W. Salmon. 1905. “Report of Epidemic of Diphtheria in the Willard State Hospital.” Reprint.  Annual Report, New York State Commission in Lunacy, Oct. 1904. Brandow.

Sicherman, Barbara. 1967. The Quest for Mental Health in America, 1880-1917. Arno Press, 1980. First published as a PhD dissertation in 1967.

Unrau, Harlan D. 1984. Historical Research Study (Historical Component): Ellis Island Statue of Liberty National Historic Monument New York – New Jersey Volume II. U. S. Department of the Interior/National Park Service.

Brian Scanlan

Brian Scanlan is a former publishing executive with an interests in the history of the immigration and medicine. He has a B.A. in history from Rutgers University.

Across the entire world, the 1920s served as a period of extensive change. Americans experienced the roaring prosperous twenties while Europeans reconstructed from World War I yet Mexico lived through unceasing revolutions. During 1926-1929, both soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the Cristero War to the extent of 90,000 fatalities. The paper analyzes the Cristero War within the historical framework of Mexican society and politics in the 1920s. The United States lived in economic prosperity with cultural freedom at the same time that Mexico faced difficulties applying revolutionary standards which led to widespread population alienation (Meyer, 2008). During the Cristero conflict the worldwide modernization patterns of the 1920s took distinct forms in different societies that produced violent religious upheaval when they confronted traditional cultural identities and beliefs.

Historical Background

After Mexican independence in 1821, the complex dynamics between the state of Mexico and its Catholic Church initiated the Cristero War. Maintaining their belief that progressive reform and democratic progress required diminished Church power, secular reformers pursued measures to reduce the institution’s enormous economic and political capabilities during the 19th century. Anticlerical measures of the 1857 Constitution and Reform Laws by President Benito Juárez finished in nationalized Church properties and separation of state and religion.

In 1910, the Mexican Revolution launched as an opposition against dictator Porfirio Díaz but transformed into several opposing movements that contested Mexico’s prospective direction. Several parts of the 1917 Revolutionary Constitution enforced strict limitations upon religious practices across Mexico (Bailey, 2019). The Mexican Revolution adopted Article 3 to forbid religious education alongside Article 5, which banned monastic orders, and Article 24 limi, ted worship to church buildings as well as Article 27, which legalized all church properties, then denied legal recognition to churches through Article 130 while imposing public dress code limitations on clergy members and demanded civil official approval for clergy during Article 130.

The first post-revolutionary president, Venustiano Carranza, along with Álvaro Obregón, chose not to strictly implement religious opposition laws in order to establish political harmony. Plutarco Elías Calles took over the presidency in 1924 and began systematically enforcing strict measures against the Catholic Church because he believed revolutionary nationalism rejected its religious presence.

The Calles Law and Religious Persecution

The Calles administration established significant changes between the state and church during this period. Calles established the “Law for Reforming the Penal Code” in June 1926 as “Calles Law,” through which he established harsh consequences for breaking anticlerical provisions in the Constitution (Reich, 2018). All priests needed state registration according to the law, while the government maintained limits on religious numbers per state and bans on teaching religion and public worship.

These measures were launched rapidly through forceful execution. Government officials closed monasteries together with convents and religious education institutions. The authorities performed foreign religious staff deportations and created laws against priestly apparel in public while stopping religious parades. Local area officials exceeded federal commands through church closures and religious image destruction. When the government enforced restrictions on Catholic practices, it targeted longstanding Mexican traditions that maintained their essence through rural Catholic communities.

This marked the first time in Mexican history when the Catholic leadership stopped all church-based public worship on July 31, 1926, denying millions of their vital sacraments and religious events. Unpaid religious clerks conducted the “clerical strike” as a peaceful stand that would pressure the government to modify its legislative measures (Rice, 2017). These actions heightened conflicts to a point that sparked military revolt across Mexico.

The Cristero Uprising

In late 1926, several states across Mexico entered into armed conflict with the government because of its religious policies, most notably in the highly Catholic western-central region known as the Bajío. The rebels started using the battle cry “Viva Cristo Rey!” as their war chant. The rebels started using “Long live Christ the King!” as their battle cry and received the nickname “Cristeros.” An initial wave of spontaneous local insurgencies formed into widespread opposition against government religious policies.

Peaceful rural peasants, alongside indigenous people and landowning families, participated in the Cristero rebellion based on their strong connection between Catholicism and their cultural beliefs and social integration. Various Catholic demographics from urban areas united with them by bringing monetary backing, tactical help, and material resources. The “Feminine Brigades of St. Joan of Arc” served as women combatants who managed supply chains and medical aid while distributing ammunition to the resistance forces.

Despite their lack of organization, the Cristero fighters learned to fight through irregular warfare against federal troops. As the conflict grew more intense Generals Enrique Gorostieta regardless of his former stature as a federal general and his skeptic religious views and José Reyes Vega and Jesús Degollado Guízar led the development of the Cristero fighters into a larger fighting force. During 1928, the Cristero fighters successfully ruled across the Mexican states of Jalisco, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Zacatecas, and Colima.

During this time, the government intensified its violent tactics against rebellion supporters. Federal troops conducted executions on captured Cristeros while troops destroyed suspected rebel-supporting villages and forced population relocations to separate the rebels from each other. The Church punished priests through immediate executions when they displayed support for the revolt (Bailey, 2019). Both sides launched a vicious cycle of violence throughout the conflict, which included Cristeros violently targeting government officials and teachers but also federal forces carrying out executions and church desecration of priests.

International Context and U.S. Involvement

During this period, Mexican-American diplomatic relations stood in a state of diplomatic strain. American petroleum industries clashed with the Mexican government through diplomatic conflicts because they objected to provisions in the 1917 Constitution commanding control of natural resource assets. The religious tensions between Mexico and American Catholics became international because of the U.S (Butler, 2007). Catholics defended Mexico’s religious freedom, yet Protestants, along with secular groups, sided with the Mexican government’s church-state separation efforts.

Officially, the U.S. government declared neutrality but concurrently sold weapons to the Mexican government, and at the same time, it instituted an arms embargo against the Cristeros. Under President Calvin Coolidge, America adopted a different approach when he appointed Dwight Morrow as the new ambassador to Mexico in 1927. Morrow devoted his efforts to building better diplomatic ties, which led him to play a decisive role in ending the conflict.

The Cristero War took place alongside the rise of religious conflict, which spread throughout different parts of the world. The 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial in the United States” displayed the battle between tradition and modernity (Rice, 2017). Through the 1929 Lateran Treaty, Italy resolved previous disputes between its state authorities and the Vatican. The modernizing world witnessed worldwide societal responses to religious questions during these simultaneous historical events.

The Mexican Church and State in the Modern Era

The peace treaty that settled the Cristero War developed in June 1929 as the “Arreglos” through diplomatic efforts by U.S. Ambassador Morrow. The agreement enabled religious worship services inside church buildings while allowing religious education activities within church properties, though educational institutions remained prohibited. The Church acquired the right to demand alterations of the existing laws (Meyer, 2008). The Church accepted to silence its criticisms against the government as part of this deal.

The resulting agreement contained solutions that failed to please the groups involved fully. Several Cristeros felt despair after religious leaders failed to bring about formal legal change through their concessions to the government (Young, 2019). The government decided to maintain the Constitutional anticlerical provisions while agreeing to enforce them with reduced strictness. Hardline officials in the government believed the giveaway of concessions was a major mistake.

The agreement ended the primary combat state, although both parties felt unsatisfied. The June 27, 1929 reopening of churches led most Cristero guerrillas to surrender their arms by August of that year (Tuck, 2021). The government reneged on its promise to provide amnesty, so it executed over 500 leaders of the Cristero movement. The federal government’s betrayal of its promises ignited another Cristero rebellion called “La Segunda,” which fought through the 1930s.

Cultural Impact and Legacy

The Cristero War deeply marked Mexican culture and historical memory. The Cristero War motivated Graham Greene to write “The Power and the Glory” in 1940 and filmmakers to produce the divisive “For Greater Glory” in 2012. John Paul II carried out Church canonizations and beatifications of 25 martyrs during the conflict with 25 priests and other laypeople attaining sainthood status in 2000.

During the Cristero War, rural populations showed that revolutionary elites in Mexico City had lost touch with the traditional Catholic beliefs and cultural elements their rural supporters wished to preserve (Butler, 2007). The conflict made the post-revolutionary state soften its approach to secularization as it recognized that Catholicism remained fundamental to Mexican cultural traditions.

During the 20th century, religious tradition, as an element of Mexican politics, battled continuously against the revolutionary anti-religious initiatives. The government altered its opposition to religion through World War II because it needed national unity for survival (Meyer, 2008). Under President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Mexico changed its constitution in 1992 to establish legal religious organization recognition, which enabled public worship outside churches and permitted clergy voting rights along with faith-based education in private schools.

Conclusion

Studies of the Cristero War constitute an essential piece of the North American historical narrative that receives minimal attention. During the 1920s, Americans lived in prosperity and cultural liberation. However, Mexicans faced violent conflicts about how religion should shape their national identity. During the 1920s, modernizing trends of the era created diverse reactions across nations, which prompted opposition toward any threats toward prevailing cultural characteristics.

References

Bailey, D. C. (2019). Viva Cristo Rey!: The Cristero Rebellion and the church-state conflict in Mexico. University of Texas Press.

Butler, M. (2007). Popular piety and political identity in Mexico’s Cristero Rebellion: Michoacán, 1927-29. Oxford University Press.

Meyer, J. (2008). The Cristero Rebellion: The Mexican people between church and state 1926-1929. Cambridge University Press.

Reich, P. L. (2018). Mexico’s hidden revolution: The Catholic Church in law and politics since 1929. University of Notre Dame Press.

Rice, E. A. (2017). The diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico, as affected by the struggle for religious liberty in Mexico, 1925-1929. Georgetown University Press.

Tuck, J. (2021). The holy war in Los Altos: A regional analysis of Mexico’s Cristero rebellion. University of Arizona Press.

Young, J. (2019). Mexican exodus: Emigrants, exiles, and refugees of the Cristero War. Oxford University Press.

In the 1920s, American culture was increasingly becoming more secularized, creating tensions between modernity and traditional religious values. The first “Miss America” pageants embodied these conflicts, as it became both a target of religious resistance and a reflection of a callback to older ideas. Americans struggled to balance adapting to modernity while preserving their traditional beliefs and values. Religion was losing its influence on Americans with many standards straying away from the strictness of Victorian attitudes. Religion and Protestantism was no longer a dominant force in cultural norms and in efforts to maintain religion, urban churches started programs that created places of worship alongside spaces for social, recreational, and educational purposes. However, many religious leaders, including Protestant ministers and Jewish leaders, faced declining attendance and decreasing support for missionary efforts. These leaders viewed the popular culture of the 1920s, dominated by materialism and the pursuit of wealth, as a decline in religious values. Religious fundamentalists and Evangelical Christians also feared that the country was experiencing a moral and spiritual decline.¹ The first “Miss America” pageants of the 1920s serve as an example of an event that religious groups sought to oppose through protests, aiming to dismantle what they considered a moral decline. The “Miss America” pageant included a bathing suit competition, which many religious groups opposed. They sought to combat the rise of swimwear in the 1920s, particularly for women, viewing it as immoral and immodest. Moral outrage from clergymen contributed to the censorship of physical appearances on public beaches, as they insisted that women cover their knees.² This influenced the “Miss America” pageant because of its emphasis on “bathing beauties”. The pageant was met with further resistance with religious groups claiming it damaged the good choices, reputation, and morals of young women. Groups like Southern Baptists and the “Atlantic County Federation of Church Women”, joined in resistance and protest. Not only did they believe it damaged women’s morals, but they also viewed it as the exploitation of women for financial gain and corrupting them by encouraging rivalry among themselves.³ These protests are credited as having an important role in why the pageant was temporarily paused in 1928 through the early 30s.

Ironically, while traditional religious groups opposed the pageant for being “immoral”, it was an event that eagerly promoted a “traditional” and “conservative” idea of femininity. The “Miss America” pageant aimed to uphold the image of a more traditional woman, distancing itself from  the “New Woman,” represented by women in politics and flappers. Before the “Miss America” pageant was established in 1921, suffragettes held suffrage pageants. They dressed up as influential women in history, seeking to raise public awareness and funds for their political efforts.⁴ However, the “Miss America” pageant focused only on beauty, based on what men and the audience viewed as beautiful. In addition, the pageant strived to distance itself from the flapper image. Flappers were young, single women who strayed away from Victorian constraints by wearing bobbed hair, shorter and less shaped skirts, darker makeup, and smoked. In contrast, the “Miss America” pageant praised “non threatening” women who had conservative hairstyles such as longer hair, were more subservient, viewed beauty as an important goal, and demonstrated capability of being a good wife, homemaker, and mother.⁵ Contestants who had longer hair were more often praised than those with bobbed or bobbed-like hair. It was an important characteristic for “Miss America” to have, especially in the earlier competitions. Pageant organizers also tried to portray the event as “above alcohol” or other habits such as smoking. Overall, the pageant wished to portray its winners as symbols of what a 1920s American woman “should be and look like”. While religious traditionalists viewed it as immoral, the pageant still sought to revive a more traditional ideal of Victorian-like femininity and virtue.

Bibliography

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Riverol, Armando. Live from Atlantic City: The History of the Miss America Pageant Before, After, and in Spite of Television. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992.

Latham, Angela J. “Packaging Woman: The Concurrent Rise of Beauty Pageants, Public Bathing, and Other Performances of Female ‘Nudity.'” Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 3 (1995): 149–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1995.00149.x.

Watson, Elwood, and Darcy Martin. “The Miss America Pageant: Pluralism, Femininity, and Cinderella All in One.” Journal of Popular Culture 34, no. 1 (June 1, 2000): 105–26. doi:10.1111/j.0022-3840.2000.3401_105.x.  

Watson, E., ed. “There She Is, Miss America”: The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Bettmann Archive. Policewomen Checking Length Violations. Chicago, Illinois, 1921.

Bettmann Archive. 1924 Miss America from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ruth Malcomson. 1924.

Thomas, Bob. Cinema Personalities, 1923, American Actress Colleen Moore. Popperfoto/Getty Images, 1923.

Featured Photo: Atlantic Foto Service. Contestants of the 1925 Miss America Pageant. Atlantic City, New Jersey, 1925.

Citations

1. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 169-186. ︎
2. Angela J. Latham, “Packaging Woman: The Concurrent Rise of Beauty Pageants, Public Bathing, and Other Performances of Female ‘Nudity,’” Journal of Popular Culture 29, no. 3 (1995): 158, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1995.00149.x. ︎
3. Armando Riverol, Live from Atlantic City: The History of the Miss America Pageant Before, After, and in Spite of Television (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1992), 24. ︎
4. Elwood Watson, ed., “There She Is, Miss America”: The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 28-29. ︎
5. Watson, “There She Is, Miss America”, 32. ︎

grlynn

Grlynn is a Ramapo College senior majoring in history

Women’s lives had changed significantly from the late 19th century into the 1920s. They became more involved in politics and increasingly joined the workforce. This challenged the traditional ideas of women’s roles within society. Social and sexual norms surrounding women had also changed, leading to new ideas about womanhood and femininity. Many women had moved away from restrictive clothing of the Victorian era, as seen with the example of flappers. 

In the 1920s, Nellie Tayloe Ross achieved a historic title. She was elected Governor of Wyoming in 1924. She took office in 1925, becoming the first woman to ever serve as a governor in the U.S.A. Ross represents the “new woman” but in a way that differs from the stereotypical image of the carefree flappers of the 1920s. She was an older woman actively involved in politics. During the late 19th century and into the 1920s, women had entered the political arena. They became political actors, supported suffrage, and sought progressive and urban reforms. One popular reform was prohibition, a law infamously tied to the image of the 1920s. Ross was one of these women. She was a firm supporter of prohibition. Ross had believed that the consumer was just as guilty as the bootlegger. She was even once requested to authorize an investigation of the Park County Sheriff, who had been accused of accepting pay from an alleged bootlegger. 

The “new woman” of the 1920s would agree on one thing: women’s roles within society were changing, and their roles would be different from the old restrictive version of womanhood. However, this did not prevent disagreement and tension. Women’s ideas of feminism and women’s rights were sometimes at odds. Some women, like Julia Lathrop and Frances Perkins, believed in women’s distinctiveness. They believed that women needed special protections that aligned with their sex. While many women supported the Equal Rights Amendment, which promoted equal rights between men and women, many women like Lathrop and Perkins felt indifferent to it. They feared this would create barriers to sex-based labor legislation that specifically protected working women. Ross is an example of a woman who possessed different ideas of women’s newfound roles and power. Feminists and suffragists did view Ross’ election as a victory and a step towards women’s political voices. However, some women’s rights movement leaders were disappointed with Ross’ refusal to prioritize her influence on the movement. She believed in women’s capabilities within the political field but was not a “hardcore feminist”. Echoing the traditional views during the previous century, she stated that a woman’s role as a wife and mother was of the highest importance. She would become cautious with her involvement in feminism because of its negative image within the politics of the time. This cautiousness prevented her from appointing more women in government positions. Nevertheless, Ross firmly believed in women’s roles within the political sphere. While she promoted femininity, she sought to prove it did not have to dismiss a woman’s right to exercise political power. Her status as the first woman governor still inspired other “new women” to get involved in the field of politics. 

Bibliography

Bettmann Archive. USA: Clara Bow in Get Your Man. 1927. Photograph. Bettmann Archive. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/clara-bow-in-get-your-man-news-photo/514892606.

Bettmann Archive. Portrait of Actress Louise Brooks. Photograph. Bettmann Archive. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actress-louise-brooks-poses-for-a-portrait-session-in-news-photo/514205164.

Evening Star (Washington, D.C.). October 24, 1929. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1929-10-24/ed-1/seq-3/.

Bettmann Archive. Activist Julia Clifford Lathrop Posing with Her Supporters. Photograph. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/julia-clifford-lathrop-lead-the-way-for-improving-american-news-photo/517294142.

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995.

Mackey, Mike. “Nellie Tayloe Ross and Wyoming Politics.” Journal of the West 42, no. 3 (2003): 25–34. https://research-ebsco-com.library2.ramapo.edu:2443/linkprocessor/plink?id=f5cae36e-3b49-3ace-ba5b-0cabe6b1f206.

Scharff, Virginia. “Feminism, Femininity, and Power: Nellie Tayloe Ross and the Woman Politician’s Dilemma.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 15, no. 3 (1995): 87–106. https://doi.org/10.2307/3346786.

grlynn

Grlynn is a Ramapo College senior majoring in history