Before insulin existed, diabetes was one of the deadliest diseases in the world. Many children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes died only months or years after learning they had the disease. Doctors understood that diabetes affected blood sugar levels, but they had no reliable way to treat it. Instead, patients were placed on extremely strict diets that often left them weak and starving.

The article History of Insulin explains, “Before the availability of insulin, the life expectancy of children with diabetes mellitus was short and the prognosis for the adult onset diabetes was very poor.” Because doctors had no effective treatment, “physicians Allen and Joslin endorsed fasting and calorie restricted diets for diabetes.” These starvation diets sometimes delayed death, but they could not cure the disease. Patients often became dangerously thin because they were forced to eat very little food in order to survive longer.

Scientists knew that the pancreas played an important role in diabetes, but they struggled to isolate the substance responsible for controlling blood sugar. According to the Diabetes UK article, “Attempts had been made to extract insulin from ground up pancreas cells, but they’d all proved unsuccessful.” The problem was that other tissues inside the pancreas destroyed the insulin before it could be used.

During the early 1920s, however, a small group of researchers in Canada changed medical history forever. Frederick Banting, Charles Best, John Macleod, and James Collip worked together to isolate insulin and develop it into a treatment that could save human lives. Their discovery quickly became one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century.

Diabetes Before Insulin

Before insulin was discovered, diabetes was extremely difficult to treat. Patients with severe diabetes often experienced constant thirst, rapid weight loss, weakness, and exhaustion. Children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes almost always died because their bodies could no longer produce insulin naturally.

Doctors understood some parts of the disease, but they did not know how to stop it. Most treatments focused only on reducing symptoms instead of curing the condition. Starvation diets became one of the main methods used by doctors because reducing food intake sometimes lowered blood sugar levels temporarily.

The History of Insulin article explains that these treatments “resulted in some improvement of glucosuria and acidosis, decreased coma, and delayed death among children with diabetes.” Even so, patients still suffered greatly, and most eventually died from the disease.

Scientists continued studying the pancreas because they believed it released a substance that controlled blood sugar. The article explains, “Long before the discovery of insulin, it was hypothesized that the pancreas secreted a substance that controlled carbohydrate metabolism.” Researchers spent years attempting to isolate this substance, but impurities and toxic materials inside pancreatic extracts caused experiments to fail repeatedly.

Frederick Banting and the Beginning of Research

The breakthrough finally began in 1920 when Frederick Banting developed a new theory about how insulin could be isolated safely. Banting was a Canadian surgeon rather than an experienced scientist, but he became interested in diabetes research after reading medical articles about the pancreas.

The Diabetes UK article explains that Banting read research suggesting “insulin producing cells in the pancreas are slower to deteriorate than other pancreas tissue.” Banting realized that this discovery might allow scientists to destroy harmful pancreatic tissue while preserving the cells that produced insulin.

The article explains, “Banting realised that this might allow for the removal of insulin by breaking down the pancreas in a way that would leave just the cells that produce insulin intact.” 

Although Banting believed strongly in his idea, he knew he needed scientific support to test it. On November 7, 1920, he met with John Macleod, a professor at the University of Toronto who specialized in diabetes research. Macleod agreed to provide laboratory space, experimental dogs, and a student assistant named Charles Best.

The History of Insulin article explains that Macleod “granted him laboratory space, ten dogs for his experiments, a student research assistant (Charles Best), and provided supervision and guidance.” 

This partnership became the beginning of one of the most important scientific discoveries in modern medicine.

Early Experiments and Insulin

The insulin experiments officially began in May 1921. According to the Diabetes UK article, “On 17 May 1921 Banting, Best and Macleod first got together to begin their research.” 

The researchers worked mainly with dogs. They tied off pancreatic ducts to destroy parts of the pancreas while keeping the insulin producing cells alive. Afterward, they created pancreatic extracts and tested them on diabetic dogs whose pancreases had been removed.

The History of Insulin article explains that “the experiments began on May 17, 1921.” By September, the experiments began showing successful results. The article explains that “intravenous injection with their pancreatic extract, which they named isletin, lowered the blood glucose.” 

These results were extremely important because they proved that pancreatic extracts could lower blood sugar levels in diabetic animals. For the first time, researchers had strong evidence that insulin could become a treatment for diabetes.

The experiments were difficult and time consuming. Many failed completely, but Banting and Best continued working every day in the laboratory. According to the Diabetes UK article, “Progress was initially slow.” Still, the researchers noticed regular improvements in blood sugar levels during successful experiments.

The article explains that “By November, they’d successfully treated a dog with diabetes with their insulin extract for 70 days.” This achievement demonstrated that insulin could keep diabetic animals alive much longer than before.

James Collip and Purifying Insulin

Although the experiments on dogs were successful, another major problem still existed. The insulin extract was not pure enough for use in humans. Impurities inside the extract caused dangerous side effects and made the treatment unreliable.

To solve this problem, biochemist James Collip joined the research team in December 1921. The Diabetes UK article explains, “James Collip, a biochemist, joined the group to work on purifying insulin so it would be safe enough to be tested in humans.” 

Collip worked constantly to improve the insulin extract. His goal was to remove impurities while keeping the insulin effective. According to the article, “With his help, a more concentrated and pure form of insulin was developed.” 

This purification process became one of the most important parts of the entire discovery because insulin could not be safely tested on humans without it.

Leonard Thompson and the First Human Injection

In January 1922, the researchers attempted one of the most important medical experiments in history. A fourteen year old boy named Leonard Thompson became the first human patient to receive insulin treatment.

The Diabetes UK article explains, “In January 1922, Leonard Thompson, a 14 year old boy dying from type 1 diabetes, became the first person to receive an injection of insulin.” 

Leonard was extremely sick and close to death because of diabetes. Doctors hoped the insulin extract might save his life.

The first injection showed both promise and problems. According to the History of Insulin article, “The first injection of the pancreatic extract to a 14 year old boy by Banting and Best on January 11, 1922, caused a sterile abscess.” The injection lowered blood sugar somewhat, but the extract still contained impurities that caused complications.

Collip immediately continued purifying the insulin. He worked day and night to improve the extract before another injection was attempted.

Later in January, Leonard received a second injection. This time the results were historic. The Diabetes UK article explains, “This time it was a complete success and Leonard’s blood sugar levels become near normal, with no obvious side effects.” 

The article then states, “For the first time in history, type 1 diabetes was not a death sentence.” 

The successful treatment of Leonard Thompson changed medicine forever. Doctors now had a treatment capable of saving patients who otherwise would have died.

The International Announcement of Insulin

After the successful human treatments, news about insulin spread quickly throughout the medical world. Researchers and doctors recognized immediately that the discovery could transform diabetes treatment permanently.

The Diabetes UK article explains, “On 3 May 1922, Macleod announced the discovery of insulin to the international medical community.” Macleod presented the research at a meeting of the Association of American Physicians in Washington.

The article also explains that this was “the first time the team used the word ‘insulin’.” 

Doctors and scientists responded with excitement because the treatment offered hope to diabetic patients around the world.

Insulin Belongs to the World

As insulin became more successful, questions arose about patents and ownership. Banting and the other researchers believed insulin should remain available to everyone who needed it instead of becoming a private source of profit.

The Diabetes UK article explains, “On 23 January 1923, Banting, Collip and Best were awarded U.S. patents on insulin and the method used to make it.” However, instead of keeping the patents for themselves, the researchers sold them to the University of Toronto for only one dollar each.

The article explains, “Banting famously said, ‘Insulin does not belong to me, it belongs to the world.’” 

This decision helped insulin become widely available much more quickly.

Mass Production and Worldwide Expansion

As reports of insulin’s success spread, demand increased rapidly. Pharmaceutical companies began working with the researchers to produce insulin on a much larger scale.

According to the Diabetes UK article, “Eli Lilly become the first manufacturer to mass produce insulin.” In October 1923, the company began shipping commercial insulin supplies.

The History of Insulin article explains that early insulin production still faced challenges. “Eli Lilly began producing insulin from animal pancreas but fell short of the demand, and the potency varied up to 25% per lot.” 

Scientists continued improving insulin production methods to make the medicine more reliable and more widely available. The article explains, “The development of an isoelectric precipitation method led to a purer and more potent animal insulin.” 

Insulin also spread internationally during 1923. The History of Insulin article explains, “In 1923, August Krogh, from the University of Copenhagen, met with Banting and Macleod to learn more about insulin because his wife had diabetes mellitus.” 

Krogh later helped establish insulin production in Scandinavia, allowing the treatment to reach even more patients.

The Nobel Prize

The discovery of insulin quickly became recognized as one of the greatest medical achievements in history. In 1923, Frederick Banting and John Macleod received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The Diabetes UK article explains, “In recognition of their life saving discovery, Banting and Macleod were jointly awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.” 

The Nobel Prize helped make the insulin researchers internationally famous. Banting shared part of his prize money with Charles Best, while Macleod shared his portion with James Collip. This reflected the teamwork involved in the discovery.

The Significance of Insulin

The discovery and development of insulin during the 1920s completely transformed medicine. Before insulin, severe diabetes almost always led to death. After insulin became available, millions of people gained the chance to survive and live much longer lives.

The History of Insulin article explains, “The discovery of insulin in 1922 marked a major breakthrough in medicine and therapy in patients with diabetes.” 

The development of insulin also demonstrated the importance of scientific cooperation. Banting, Best, Macleod, and Collip all contributed different skills to the project. Without their combined efforts, insulin might not have been discovered when it was.

The success of insulin encouraged future medical research as well. Scientists realized that diseases once considered hopeless could potentially be treated through careful experimentation and teamwork.

Today, historians continue studying the discovery of insulin because it remains one of the most important medical breakthroughs in modern history. Millions of people around the world still rely on insulin every day, and the events of the 1920s permanently changed diabetes treatment forever.

Timeline of Events

1918 – Doctors mainly use starvation diets to treat diabetes.

7 November 1920 – Frederick Banting meets John Macleod to discuss insulin research.

17 May 1921 – Banting, Best, and Macleod officially begin insulin experiments.

September 1921 – Researchers discover insulin extracts lower blood sugar in dogs.

10 November 1921 – Scientists successfully treat a diabetic dog for 70 days.

12 December 1921 – James Collip joins the research team to purify insulin.

11 January 1922 – Leonard Thompson receives the first insulin injection.

23 January 1922 – Purified insulin successfully treats Leonard Thompson.

3 May 1922 – Insulin is officially announced to the medical community.

23 January 1923 – Banting, Best, and Collip sell insulin patents to the University of Toronto for $1 each.

15 October 1923 – Eli Lilly begins mass production of insulin.

25 October 1923 – Banting and Macleod receive the Nobel Prize.

Works Cited

DIABETES UK. 2024. “100 Years of Insulin.” Diabetes UK. 2024. https://www.diabetes.org.uk/our-research/about-our-research/our-impact/discovery-of-insulin.

Quianzon, Celeste C, and Issam Cheikh. “History of insulin.” Journal of community hospital internal medicine perspectives vol. 2,2 10.3402/jchimp.v2i2.18701. 16 Jul. 2012, doi:10.3402/jchimp.v2i2.18701

At first, Hitler appeared to be a failed revolutionary whose political career had ended. He attempted to overthrow the German government by force, failed badly, and was arrested. However, the months that followed changed history. During his imprisonment in Landsberg Prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, a book that explained his beliefs about nationalism, race, propaganda, leadership, and Germany’s future. Although many people ignored the book at first, it later became one of the most influential political writings of the twentieth century.

Who Was Adolf Hitler?

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and served as a soldier during World War I. After the war, he joined a small political group called the German Workers’ Party, which later became the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also known as the Nazi Party.

Hitler quickly became an incredibly powerful speak. He blamed Germany’s problems on the Treaty of Versailles, communists, democratic politicians, and Jewish people. His speeches were emotional, angry, and dramatic. Many Germans who felt hopeless after the war listened carefully to his promises of national rebirth.

During the early 1920s, Hitler believed Germany was weak enough for a revolution. Inspired by Benito Mussolini’s successful march on Rome in Italy, Hitler hoped he could seize power in Bavaria and eventually take control of Germany.

Germany After World War I

Germany lost the war in 1918, and many Germans blamed the new democratic government for the defeat. The Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1919, forced Germany to pay massive reparations, reduce its military, and give up territory. Many Germans believed the treaty humiliated the country.
The German government during this period was called the Weimar Republic. Although it was democratic, many citizens viewed it as weak and unstable. Political groups on both the left and the right fought in the streets. Communist uprisings frightened conservatives, while nationalist groups claimed the government had betrayed Germany.

Economic problems made conditions even worse. By 1923, hyperinflation destroyed the value of German currency. Prices increased so quickly that ordinary people struggled to buy food. Workers carried wheelbarrows filled with money to stores because paper currency became almost worthless. Families lost life savings in only a few weeks.
These conditions created an environment where extremist political movements could gain support. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party used fear, anger, and nationalism to attract followers.

The Beer Hall Putsch

On November 8, 1923, Hitler and his supporters entered a large beer hall in Munich where Bavarian leaders were giving speeches. Hitler interrupted the meeting and announced that a revolution had begun. He hoped government officials and military leaders would support his movement.
The next day, Hitler and thousands of supporters marched through Munich. The march ended violently when police confronted the Nazis near the Feldherrnhalle. Shots were fired, several people died, and the coup collapsed.

The Beer Hall Putsch failed completely. Hitler was arrested two days later and charged with treason.
At first glance, the event looked like the end of Hitler’s political career. Instead, it became the beginning of his national fame.

Hitler’s Trial and Public Attention

Hitler’s trial began in February 1924. Rather than being ashamed, Hitler used the courtroom as a political stage, giving long speeches defending his actions and attacking the German government. Newspapers covered the trial closely, and many Germans became familiar with Hitler for the first time. Some citizens viewed him as a dangerous extremist, but others saw him as a passionate nationalist trying to restore German pride.

The court treated Hitler surprisingly lightly. Although he was convicted of treason, he received a sentence of only five years in Landsberg Prison and served less than one year.
This soft punishment reflected how sympathetic some judges and officials were toward nationalist politics during the 1920s.

Writing Mein Kampf

While imprisoned in Landsberg Prison, Hitler began writing Mein Kampf, published in 1925, which translates to “My Struggle.” Rudolf Hess helped organize Hitler’s ideas and prepare the manuscript. The book combined autobiography with political theory. Hitler discussed his childhood, his experiences during World War I, his hatred of communism, his nationalism, and his beliefs about race and power.

Historian R. C. K. Ensor explained that Hitler wrote the first part of the book while in prison “during a period of detention in a fortress to which Hitler was sentenced for his part in the Munich Putsch fiasco of November 1923.”¹ The prison sentence gave Hitler time to reflect on why the putsch had failed. He decided that the Nazi Party should no longer attempt to seize power violently. Instead, the party would gain influence legally through elections, propaganda, and mass political support.

Inside Mein Kampf, Hitler described how he believed propaganda should work on the public. He argued that political movements succeeded when they appealed to emotion instead of complex ideas. Hitler wrote that large groups of people responded more strongly to forceful and repeated messages than careful debate. These ideas later became central to Nazi propaganda during the 1930s.

The book also revealed how Hitler developed his racist and antisemitic beliefs while living in Vienna before World War I. In one section, Hitler described encountering Jewish communities in Vienna and claimed that his views changed over time. These passages later became some of the most infamous sections of the book because they helped shape Nazi racial ideology.

Hitler also focused heavily on nationalism and German identity. He believed Germany’s defeat in World War I had humiliated the country and argued that national unity and obedience were necessary for Germany to become powerful again. Much of the book attacked democracy, compromise, and political opposition. This strategic change became one of the most important results of Hitler’s imprisonment.

The Main Ideas Inside Mein Kampf and Nationalism

Although many people today know the title Mein Kampf, fewer understand what the book actually argued. Hitler presented several major ideas that later became central to Nazi Germany. One major theme was nationalism. Hitler argued that Germany had been humiliated after World War I and needed to become powerful again. He attacked the Treaty of Versailles constantly and promised national rebirth.
Many Germans connected with these ideas because they felt embarrassed by defeat and frustrated by economic hardship.

Racism and Antisemitism

Another major part of the book focused on race. Hitler falsely believed Germans belonged to a superior race and claimed Jewish people threatened Germany’s future. These hateful and false beliefs later became central to Nazi policy.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote extensively about antisemitism and claimed that Jewish influence harmed German society. While living in Vienna, he claimed his opinions changed after observing Jewish communities and reading antisemitic political writings. These sections became extremely important later because they revealed ideas that eventually influenced Nazi racial laws and propaganda.
The racism inside Mein Kampf was not hidden or unclear. Hitler openly described these ideas years before becoming dictator.

Propaganda

Hitler also discussed propaganda in detail. He believed repeated messages could shape public opinion and influence the masses. He understood how newspapers, posters, speeches, and rallies could create emotional reactions.

The article by Ensor explains Hitler’s views by quoting him directly: “The mentality of the people at large is not sensitive to anything hesitant and weak.”² This quote helps explain Hitler’s belief that people respected strength more than compromise.

Leadership and Power

Hitler believed democracy was weak because it depended on debate and compromise. Instead, he argued that Germany needed one powerful leader who could unite the nation completely.
This idea later became known as the Führer principle, where total loyalty to one leader became central to Nazi ideology.

Why Mein Kampf Mattered During the 1920s

At first, many readers ignored Mein Kampf. The book was long, repetitive, and difficult to follow at times. Ensor even described it as “a hotch-potch of the most varied ingredients.”³ Still, the book became important because it clearly explained Hitler’s goals.

Ensor wrote, “Very few great men of action have ever disclosed beforehand so clearly as Adolf Hitler the principles and purposes that guide their acts.”⁴ This observation is important because Hitler openly described many of the ideas he later put into action.

The book mattered during the 1920s because Germany was unstable. Even after hyperinflation slowed down in the middle of the decade, many Germans still feared economic collapse and political violence. Democratic governments changed often, and confidence in the Weimar Republic remained weak. The Nazi Party used this instability to spread its message.

The Great Depression and the Growth of the Nazi Party

During the late 1920s, the Nazi Party was still relatively small compared to other political groups. However, everything changed after the American Great Depression began in 1929. Millions of Germans lost jobs. Businesses closed, banks failed, and poverty spread rapidly throughout Germany in the 1930’s. Once again, many citizens lost faith in democratic leaders.

Hitler and the Nazi Party used this crisis to attract more support. Their propaganda promised jobs, national pride, and strong leadership. The ideas first written in Mein Kampf suddenly reached a much larger audience. What had once seemed like a fringe political movement became a powerful national force.

The Significance

The story of the Beer Hall Putsch and Mein Kampf remains important because it shows how quickly democracy can weaken during times of crisis, similarly to today’s day in age.

Germany during the 1920s faced economic collapse, political violence, and public fear. Hitler used those conditions to spread extremist ideas and gain support.

The event also reminds people that dangerous political movements do not always begin with immediate success. Hitler’s coup failed, and he went to prison. Yet the failure gave him national attention and the opportunity to reshape his strategy.

Today, historians study these events carefully because they demonstrate the dangers of propaganda, political extremism, and public desperation.

Timeline of Events

1918 – Germany loses World War I.
1919 – Treaty of Versailles is signed.
1920 – German Workers’ Party becomes the Nazi Party.
1923 – Hyperinflation crisis spreads across Germany.
November 8–9, 1923 – Beer Hall Putsch takes place in Munich.
November 11, 1923 – Hitler is arrested for treason.
February 1924 – Hitler’s trial begins.
April 1924 – Hitler is sentenced to prison.
1924–1925 – Hitler writes Mein Kampf in Landsberg Prison.
1929 – Great Depression begins and Nazi support increases rapidly.

Map of Key Locations

Munich, Germany – Site of the Beer Hall Putsch.

Feldherrnhalle – Location where police stopped Hitler’s march.

Landsberg Prison – Prison where Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.

Berlin – Capital of the Weimar Republic.

Citations:

Ensor, R. C. K. “‘Mein Kampf’ and Europe.” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939) 18, no. 4 (1939): 478–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/3019298.

General Research Division, The New York Public Library. “Mein Kampf.” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 13, 2026. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/192a4b10-c5b8-012f-2fd4-58d385a7bc34

When thinking of toys that have tested the fate of time, none are as prevalent as the yo-yo. It’s a simple toy that is two disks tied together with a string that people can perform increasingly difficult tricks with. The average person in the 21st century is aware of Duncan Toys Company and the various yo-yos they sell, but they don’t know who brought the modern concept to the United States.

What many people don’t realize is that the story of the first commercialized yo-yos is one of immigrant success during a time of hatred and nationalism. Despite the surplus of anti-Filipino riots throughout the United States and the eventual stock market crash, Pedro Flores created a product that lasted long after his death, and his name and story deserve to be acknowledged by the public sphere.

The Creator

Pedro Flores was born in 1896 in Vintar, a municipality in the Philippines. It’s very likely he did not have the best childhood growing up, as his home country was transitioning through a period of war and turmoil. They had been part of the Spanish–American War, with a naval battle happening in Manila bay, and many Filipinos fighting alongside the Americans.

When they were free from the chains of Spanish rule, the United States annexed them, and they soon found themselves in the Philippines-American War after revolting against their new colonial power, until the Philippines surrendered in 1901.

What he did gain from everything, despite his rough childhood, was the precursor to the modern yo-yo.

In 1915, at around 19 years old, Flores moved from the Philippines to the United States, landing himself in California in order to pursue an education at San Francisco’s High School of Commerce.¹ Afterwards, he studied law at the University of California’s law school, but dropped out and moved to Santa Barbra, working odd jobs in order to survive.²

While working as a bellboy, he decided to “[demonstrate] a toy that he had carved out of wood during his lunch break.”³ After reading of a man who made money off of a rubber ball attached to a string, he thought back to the yo-yo and figured it had market potential, stating “I do not expect to make a million dollars, I just want to be working for myself. I have been working for other people for practically all my life and I don’t like it.”⁴

From there, he set his pursuits on starting up a yo-yo company. He had no luck asking for assistance from wealthy Filipino countrymen, so Flores focused on receiving a certificate to conduct business, which he received on June 9th 1928. From there, he started the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, California.⁵

The Production

Although its modern iteration comes from Pedro Flores, the idea of the yo-yo has been around for centuries in Ancient Greece and China, showing up in pots and paintings respectively.⁶ In the 18th century, it was a popular toy among aristocrats and, in English, was referred to as a “bandalore” or “quiz.”⁷⁸ A popular theory states the yo-yo was used as a weapon in the Philippines, but there is no evidence to back up this claim.

Additionally, many people incorrectly claim that “yo-yo” is a word from Tagalog that translates to “come-come” or “to return” in English. In Tagalog, the word does not exist. “Halika dito” (come here) and “bumalik” (with a person, to return) are actual words in Tagalog, but not “yo-yo.”

Another theory is that the word comes from Ilocano, but I am not familiar enough with the language, nor do I know anyone who can speak it. This makes the question of where the word “yo-yo” comes from unanswered, but the simplest answer could be that Flores came up with something catchy that would help the toy sell. Unfortunately, no one can know for sure.

After the creation of the Yo-Yo Manufacturing Company, Flores created a dozen yo-yos that he sold to the neighboring children on June 23, 1928.⁹ Some quick math reveals that each yo-yo likely took a day to create. By November of that same year, 2,000 yo-yos were produced. This attracted financiers James Lewis and Daniel Stone, who helped him create a new company in Los Angeles that had machines.[] He finally didn’t have to carve yo-yos by hand. By November 1929, he also had Flores Yo-Yo Corporation in Hollywood, and was producing 300,000 yo-yos daily.

What helped propel the yo-yo’s popularity was the yo-yo contests held. The first contests happened in 1928, and were hosted by Pedro Flores himself in Santa Barbara. These original contests were a test to see “who could make the yo-yo go up and down the most times without stopping.”¹⁰

There were also contests to see “who could throw their yo-yo the farthest with a complete return to the hand, and who could perform the most perfect spins in five minutes.”¹¹ These fun tricks one could do with a yo-yo attracted the attention of various people, going as far out as interesting Donald F. Duncan, the man behind Duncan Toys Company.

After the success of the yo-yo, Flores sold the product to Duncan in 1930 for around $25,000 to $250,000—though many agree the price to be on the lower end of the spectrum.¹² He is quoted with saying “I am more interested in teaching children to use the yo-yos than I am in manufacturing of yo-yos,” and did promote the toy for Duncan after the fact.¹³ Flores continued to attach himself to the yo-yo, helping people such as Joe Radovan sell the Chico Yo-yo, and even started Flores Corp. of America in 1954, where he temporarily produced more of the toy.¹⁴ Unfortunately, many of these companies are gone, and Flores eventually passed in 1964, but Duncan still sells yo-yos of varying skill levels to this day.

Significance

Immigration and Racism

Pedro Flores was an immigrant from the Philippines. He isn’t unlike other immigrants who came to the United States; he likely traveled across the Pacific Ocean to seek a better life outside the Philippines. However, as a Filipino immigrant, his experience is more unique from other immigrants.

After the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War, the United States controlled the Philippines behind the scenes. This included Filipino education, where they taught the new generation English, and that all men are created equal. As a result, Filipinos did not see themselves as aliens when they immigrated to the United States and “existed, rather, in a midway zone between Filipino and American identity.”¹⁵

Filipino immigrants were also unaffected by the Immigration Act of 1917, which imposed literacy tests on Asian immigrants. This is likely due to the Philippines being controlled by the United States.

Numbers rose as more Filipinos immigrated to the United States, with a large population of them settling in California—it is the closest state to the Philippines, after all. However, as immigration rose throughout the United States, the Ku Klux Klan rose to fight for nativism. They were one of many groups to lobby for restrictions on immigration.¹⁶ Additionally, despite their focus being against black Americans and Catholics, they also targeted immigrants, such as Filipinos. The KKK stirred much anti-Asian sentiment within America, causing anti-Filipino riots to occur in America.

For example, in 1927, one of the biggest anti-Filipino riots happened in Yakima Valley, Washington. A mob of white people was demanding that Filipino farmworkers be driven out from the valley, believing that “since the Filipinos were brown-skinned and Asian, they should not be permitted to approach white women or compete with white men for jobs.”¹⁷ This is, obviously, not true and only serves to objectify Filipinos, but people believed it at the time, and these mobs eventually chased them out after threatening their deaths. The perpetrators were arrested, but only received ten days of jail time.

Something similar happened in Wenatchee Valley, Washington in 1928 and 1929, where Filipinos were chased out of the valley.¹⁸ What happened at these riots, and many other anti-Filipino riots throughout the decade, is disgusting. This isn’t even the worst of what I found, as more violent acts have been committed in different riots, but the fact that white people were willing to chase these Filipinos down because they looked different is a testament to the hatred of the decade, even with the pluralism of the time.

Despite this anti-Filipino sentiment along the West Coast, Pedro Flores still made a name for himself. This is an amazing accomplishment that should be celebrated alongside other famous figures of the decade. He made a noteworthy contribution to culture then and now, and his name deserves recognition as well.

Reflection of Culture

When reflecting upon consumer culture, the creation of the modern yo-yo for American audiences is an interesting case. Especially when compared to objects like the Form Model T.

Pedro Flores created a product based on the culture he knew, and managed to sell it through demonstration. According to Lynn Dumenil, blue-collar workers helped shape consumer culture, while white-collar workers were more susceptible to consumer culture through things such as advertising.¹⁹²⁰

As stated before with Filipino immigrants being the midway point of their Filipino and American identities, Flores’s yo-yos exist as him contributing his culture, that being a toy from the Philippines, while also successfully advertising it to the public.

The Modern Temper specifically discusses how advertisements in the 1920s utilized “the personal approach, the tendency to include “you” in the text.”²¹ He managed to encapsulate this perfectly with his yo-yo competitions. If a person wished to participate, they needed a yo-yo, and Flores Yo-yos were the only yo-yos available for a while. These competitions eventually spread outside Santa Barbara and outside California, furthering his product’s reach, and getting more people to buy his yo-yo.

On top of that, yo-yos were relatively cheap to make, meaning they could easily be produced and sold to the public. Even when the Great Depression hit, “[inexpensive] toys with high play value, such as the yo-yo and the Radio Flyer Wagon, were very lucrative investments. Whereas other American entrepreneurs lost fortunes, toy inventors such as Pedro Flores and Antonio Pasin acquired millions.”²² The yo-yo surviving the Great Depression is an incredible feat, but it’s thanks to the fact that it’s simply two wooden disks, a wooden axel, and a piece of string. Anyone could hypothetically create a yo-yo if they had the skill and patience.

What this meant for the 20s (and beyond?)

Ever since, the yo-yo has been a popular toy among children. In the late 90s, Yomega partnered with Bandai, causing a bunch of advertising of the yo-yo to spread like wildfire and reignite the craze for the toy.²³

The toy became so popular that National Yo-yo Day is celebrated on June 6th to commemorate Donald F. Duncan. While this is an amazing achievement for a toy to have, what about the man who brought the toy to the United States?

I’m not suggesting we change National Yo-yo Day to be on Pedro Flores’ birthday, but it is a shame that Duncan is celebrated before Flores.

The story behind the modern yo-yo is a story of Filipino success that should be celebrated. Considering the toy’s 100th year anniversary is coming up as of writing this blog post, Duncan Toys Company should commemorate the toy’s origin by retelling Pedro Flores’ story. That way, his name isn’t just a footnote in the toy’s history, as he had a huge role in bringing the toy over from the Philippines.

They also used to have a history page back in the early 2000s that mentioned Pedro Flores, but have since removed it as the years have gone by and website standards change. I personally believe they should bring their history page back, so that people curious about the origin of the yo-yo have a starting point and understand that Duncan shouldn’t be taking all the credit from Flores.

After all, to quote Lucky’s Collectors Guide to 20th Century Yo-yos: History and Values, “Although Duncan is now the name most frequently associated with the popularity of the yo-yo, Pedro Flores fueled the original yo-yo fire.”²⁴

Citations

Footnotes

1. Naomi Hirahara, Distinguished Asian American Business Leaders (Bloomsbury Academic, 2003), 57. ︎
2. Hirahara, 57. ︎
3. Hirahara, 57. ︎
4. Lucky J. Meisenheimer, Lucky’s Collectors Guide to 20th Century Yo-Yos (Lucky J’s Swim & Surf, 1998), 99. ︎
5. Meisenheimer, 99. ︎
6. Mark Fischetti, “String Theory,” Scientific American 291, no. 3 (2004): 110. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26060692. ︎
7. Fischetti, 110. ︎
8. Meisenheimer, 34. ︎
9. Meisenheimer, 99. ︎
10. Meisenheimer, 36. ︎
11. Meisenheimer, 100. ︎
12. Meisenheimer, 61. ︎
13. Meisenheimer, 100 ︎
14. Meisenheimer, 100. ︎
15. Kevin Starr, Golden Dreams (Oxford University Press, 2011), 450. ︎
16. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York, Ny: Hill and Wang, 2007), 207. ︎
17. Steve Ross, “Ninety Years Ago in Washington, a Wave of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Resulted in Horror for Filipinos,” Slate Magazine (Slate, August 4, 2017). https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/ninety-years-ago-in-washington-a-wave-of-anti-immigrant-sentiment-resulted-in-horror-for-filipinos.html?pay=1778139475174. ︎
18. Ross. ︎
19. Dumenil, 82. ︎
20. Dumenil, 86. ︎
21. Dumenil, 90. ︎
22. Sharon M. Scott, Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2009), xxiv. ︎
23. Dr. Yo-Yo’s Emporium of Wonderful Things, “AYYA: 10 Years and Throwing – the Unreleased Documentary,” YouTube, November 4, 2012, 30:36. https://youtu.be/EeYhGP92ESI?si=ufsyMmG1iAuFIyvR. ︎
24. Meisenheimer, 100. ︎

Bibliography

Dr. Yo-Yo’s Emporium of Wonderful Things. “AYYA: 10 Years and Throwing – the Unreleased Documentary.” YouTube, November 4, 2012. https://youtu.be/EeYhGP92ESI?si=ufsyMmG1iAuFIyvR.

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

Fischetti, Mark. “String Theory.” Scientific American 291, no. 3 (2004): 110–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26060692.

Hirahara, Naomi. Distinguished Asian American Business Leaders. Bloomsbury Academic, 2003.

Meisenheimer, Lucky J. Lucky’s Collectors Guide to 20th Century Yo-Yos. Lucky J’s Swim & Surf, 1998.

Ross, Steve. “Ninety Years Ago in Washington, a Wave of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment Resulted in Horror for Filipinos.” Slate Magazine. Slate, August 4, 2017. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/ninety-years-ago-in-washington-a-wave-of-anti-immigrant-sentiment-resulted-in-horror-for-filipinos.html?pay=1778139475174.

Scott, Sharon M. Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, 2009.

Starr, Kevin. Golden Dreams. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Eryn Argonza

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

The 1925 Tri-State Tornado outbreak lasted from March 17-18 1925, and it is one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in recorded history. It was given its name because it traveled across three different states, that being Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. The distance being 219-mile-long (352 km). The reason why it’s considered to be the deadliest tornado is because at least 751 men, women, and children died and 2,2298 were injured. While we can consider the Tri-State Tornado to be a natural disaster, to fully understand this catastrophic event, we should place it in the broader context of the 1920s. The 1920s was a decade that’s often associated with economic growth, flappers, the jazz era, technological advances, and lots of cultural change. The tornado revealed a lot of strengths and weaknesses of what society was like during the twenties, rapidly modernizing but still very vulnerable to natural disasters. 

The 1920s: A Time of Unpredictability

The 1920s, also known as the “Roaring Twenties,” was a time of significant economic expansion, especially in urban areas. New technologies such as automobiles, radios, and telephones changed the way people lived their everyday lives. Lynn Dumenil, who wrote the book The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s, describes the decade as a time when Americans embraced “speed, efficiency, and innovation” in ways that significantly transformed both work and leisure.¹ However, the progress in some areas was not the same as the progress in other areas. Rural communities, especially in the Midwest and South, often fell behind cities in infrastructure, communication, and access to emergency services. This uneven development is very important when understanding the devastation of the Tri-State Tornado. While cities were becoming more modern, there were a lot of smaller towns that still relied on older systems of communication. Weather forecasting in 1925 was also very limited. The U.S. National Weather Service did not issue tornado warnings at the time, partly because officials feared causing panic. As a result, lots of different towns and communities in the tornado’s path had little to no warning before the storm struck. Additionally, the cultural atmosphere of the 1920s focused more on modernization and human experience rather than nature. Scientific progress and industrial growth gave many Americans confidence that technology could solve most problems. Yet, disasters such as the Tri-State Tornado challenged this belief. As Lynn Dumneil said, modernity created both optimism and anxiety, as Americans confronted forces they could not fully control in the 1920s.² The tornado showed everyone in the midwest that nature is still just as powerful and unpredictable despite the technological advancements we make.

The Tornado and its Path

The Tri-State Tornado began in southeastern Missouri and moved through southern Illinois and into southwestern Indiana. It traveled at speeds estimated to exceed 60 miles per hour. This gave residents absolutely zero time to prepare for the tornado.³ Entire towns were destroyed within minutes, whether or not people were ready. One of the towns that was hit pretty hard by the tornado was Murphysboro, Illinois, where over 200 people were tragically killed. Contemporary newspaper accounts described scenes of total devastation. In the article “The Murphysboro Tornado” by W.O. Blanchard states “The description of the tornado’s approach by eye-witnesses varied with the position of the observer, the time of the observation and his mental state at the time. The rapid approach of such a huge death-dealing phenomenon provides conditions hardly conducive to calm and careful observation.”⁴ Many newspapers and primary accounts highlight the suddenness and intensity of the disaster. Eyewitnesses often struggled to describe what they saw due to how traumatic the event was. Statements from many survivors include: “A tornado is a unique kind of horror, with the ability to conjure up apocalyptic and downright bizarre scenes. Your house might be flattened, whilst your neighbor’s is untouched. The person you’re sitting next to might die, and you live.” and “From the time you realize a tornado is going to hit, you’re living with the absolute certainty that every second might be your last. When the outer bands reach you, you’re in almost complete darkness and your house is being soaked in torrential rain and hammered with debris. And when it strikes with a defining roar, there’s nothing to do but hold on and wait, and hope you come out alive.”⁵ What the people saw reflected the terrifying and unfamiliar nature of tornadoes for many people at the time, especially given the limited time noticed before the disaster struck. 

News Coverage and Reactions

Newspaper articles from 1925 provide insight into how people experienced and understood the disaster. Newspapers across the country very quickly started to report on the destruction, often emphasizing the scale of the tragedy. Eyewitness News had this to say about the event “In total, 695 people lost their lives. The town of Griffin, among others, was destroyed but rebuilt. A Main Street building is believed to have survived the tornado. The school, destroyed, but later rebuilt as well. What’s left of that school still stands today, along with memories of the town’s resilient spirit,”⁶ the high death toll, countless injuries, and widespread damage were proof of how deadly and traumatizing the tornado was. Relief efforts also reveal a lot of information about this era. Organizations such as the American Red Cross played a huge role in providing aid for those affected. After the tornado, the Tri-State region demonstrated remarkable strength and compassion. Survivors, victims’ families, and affected communities showed resilience as they endured, grieved, and began to rebuild. Rescue workers and neighboring communities provided essential food, temporary housing, and medicine to support recovery efforts.⁷ There were also lots of volunteers who distributed food, clothing, and medical supplies, showing the importance of national relief organizations in times of crisis. Local governments, churches, and civic groups also participated in relief efforts. In many cases, communities relied heavily on volunteer labor rather than formal emergency systems. This reliance reflects the limited role of the federal government in disaster response during the 1920s. Unlike today, there was no centralized agency equivalent to modern emergency management organizations. Personal letters and survivor testimonies further illustrate the impact the disaster had on those living in the area. Many accounts describe families searching for missing relatives or attempting to rebuild their homes with limited resources. These sources remind us that beyond the statistics, the tornado caused profound personal loss.

Has Modernity Caused Problems in the Long Run?

The Tri-State Tornado also shows us how much people contradicted themselves in the twenties. On one hand, the decade was characterized by technological progress and optimism. On the other hand, the disaster exposed the limits of that progress. As Dumenil explains, modernity in the 1920s often created “a sense of both excitement and unease,” as Americans navigated rapid change.⁸ The Tri-State Tornado tells us what Dumenil meant by “a sense of unease”. For example, while railroads and telegraphs allowed news of the disaster to spread quickly, it didn’t help with preventing the disaster from happening. Similarly, advances in engineering had not yet led to tornado-resistant buildings. Many structures in the affected areas were poorly constructed and unable to withstand extreme winds. Another important factor was the absence of a coordinated national response. The federal government in the 1920s generally followed a policy of limited intervention in local affairs. As a result, disaster relief depended heavily on private organizations and state governments. This approach often led to uneven recovery efforts, with some communities receiving more assistance than others.

Social and Economic Impact

The economic impact the Tornado had on the midwest was severe, especially in smaller towns that relied heavily on agriculture and local businesses. Unfortunately, crops were destroyed, livestock killed, and infrastructures were damaged. In many cases, local towns and communities were going to be struggling for years. We can highlight areas where the economic hardships are most notable through the broader prosperity of the 1920s. During this time, America was split in two; some Americans enjoyed rising incomes and consumer goods, while others faced ongoing challenges. The tornado disproportionately affected rural populations, highlighting inequalities within American society. Many farmers were already dealing with the prices of their crops dropping during the 1920s, and this natural disaster only made their situation even worse. In the social aspect, the disaster brought communities together. Neighbors helped one another rebuild, and aid from local organizations provided support for those in need. However, recovery was very slow during this time, and many families never fully regained what they had lost during the time the tornado struck. Several communities were almost completely demolished, which required them to be rebuilt immediately, which altered the psychical and social landscape of the region.

Making a Change

One of the many long-term effects of the Tri-State Tornado was its impact on scientific research and public policy. Meteorologists began to study tornadoes more seriously than ever before. They wanted to understand a tornado’s formation and behaviors. Over time, the extensive research contributed to improved forecasting techniques that will greatly help citizens if another tornado were to attack. Although these changes were not immediate and they would take some time. The disaster did however greatly shift how we predict the weather. Eventually, the U.S. government became more willing to invest in meteorological research and warning systems. By the mid-20th century, tornado warnings became more common, significantly reducing the death tolls in future storms. This natural disaster also greatly influenced architecture and construction. People in affected areas advocated for sturdy homes and structures. Although it would take a while to build, people got to work with constructing stronger buildings that would hold up during a tornado.

Interpretations

Historians and scholars have analyzed the Tri-State Tornado from various perspectives. While some historians liked to focus on its meteorological significance, with how tense and scary the tornado was. Other historians liked to examine the social and historical context. Scholarly studies show that the high death toll was not only due to the storm being unusually fast (60-70 mph), but it also struck rural areas and residents had zero warning beforehand. These interpretations align with Lynn Dumenil’s broader arguments that the 1920s were a time of transition, where old traditions and new traditions coexisted.⁹

The Legacy of the Tri-State Tornado

There’s a lot of things the Tri-State Tornado can be known for, it’s the deadliest tornado of all time, and it also holds the record for the longest path length in history. It led to increased interest in tornado research and eventually contributed to the development of how we get natural disaster warnings. Over time, scientists gained a better understanding of severe weather and because of this, we can help reduce the impact future storms may have. The disaster also serves as a reminder that the rapid technological advances did not eliminate the vulnerability that was still present. Even if the twenties were filled with modernization, natural disasters were able to have devastating effects on people.

Conclusion

The Tri-State Tornado outbreak of 1925 was more than just a natural disaster; it also serves as a reflection of the broader tensions of the 1920s. While the decade is often remembered for its prosperity and innovation, the tornado revealed the limits of that progress, especially in rural areas in America. By taking a look at news and weather reports that happened during this time, and scholarly interpretations, we can see how the events fit into a larger context of the 1920s. At the end of the day, the Tri-State Tornado highlights how important it is to prepare for incoming storms and natural disasters, to properly inform citizens that something dangerous is coming, and how scientific understanding on the weather is important. It reminds us that even in times of growth and optimism, societies must remain aware of their vulnerabilities. The disaster still remains relevant today as we are still facing environmental challenges and it still holds many records to this day. 

Bibliogrpahy

1. Atteberry, Todd. 2025. Tracing the Scars of Hell.
2. Bailey, Cody, and Isaiah Calalang. 2025. “Remembering the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.” Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW). March 18, 2025. https://www.tristatehomepage.com/news/local-news/posey-county/remembering-the-1925-tri-state-tornado/.
3. Blanchard, W. O. “The Murphysboro Tornado.” The Scientific Monthly 23, no. 5 (1926): 434–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/7421.
4. Dumenil, Lynn. 2007. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill And Wang, [Ca.
5. Museum, Evansville. 2025. “The Tri-State Tornado: Tragedy and Resilience | Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science.” Emuseum.org. 2025. https://www.emuseum.org/exhibitions/the-tri-state-tornado-tragedy-and-resilience.
6. US Department of Commerce, NOAA, National Weather Service. 2020. “1925 Tornado.” Weather.gov. 2020. https://www.weather.gov/pah/1925Tornado.

1. Dumenil, Lynn. 2007. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill And Wang, [Ca.
   ‌ ︎
2. Dumenil, Lynn. 2007. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill And Wang, [Ca. ︎
3. US Department of Commerce, NOAA, National Weather Service. 2020. “1925 Tornado.” Weather.gov. 2020. https://www.weather.gov/pah/1925Tornado. ︎
4. Blanchard, W. O. “The Murphysboro Tornado.” The Scientific Monthly 23, no. 5 (1926): 434–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/7421. ︎
5. Atteberry, Todd. 2025. Tracing the Scars of Hell.
   ‌ ︎
6. Bailey, Cody, and Isaiah Calalang. 2025. “Remembering the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.” Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW). March 18, 2025. https://www.tristatehomepage.com/news/local-news/posey-county/remembering-the-1925-tri-state-tornado/.
   ‌ ︎
7. Museum, Evansville. 2025. “The Tri-State Tornado: Tragedy and Resilience | Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science.” Emuseum.org. 2025. https://www.emuseum.org/exhibitions/the-tri-state-tornado-tragedy-and-resilience.
   ‌ ︎
8. Dumenil, Lynn. 2007. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill And Wang, [Ca. ︎
9. Dumenil, Lynn. 2007. The Modern Temper : American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York, Ny: Hill And Wang, [Ca. ︎

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

Comparison – Economy

In “The Golden Twenties,” They explain how the twenties were a horrible time for farmers. While industry thrived, farmers were in agricultural distress. Farmers struggled with falling prices and heavy debt from wartime land investments. Despite the creation of the Federal Farm Board in 1929, farm prices continued to trend downward.² The author primarily defines the era through the lens of production and credit. The 1920s are portrayed as the “second Industrial Revolution,” where the success of the decade is measured by the “producing power of industry” and the rise of large, standardized corporations. While in “Affluence and Anxiety,” the author talks about the economic boom in the twenties and how it was beneficial for modern corporations.³ The article explains that “The “second Industrial Revolution” was powered by electrification, which transformed industrial productivity and brought labor-saving gadgets like washing machines and vacuum cleaners into two-thirds of American homes.” While one historian explained the benefits of the economic boom in the twenties, the other explained how it negatively affected farmers.

Comparison – Politics

According to David J. Goldberg, most of the political events that took place in the 1920s can be traced back to the presidential administrations during that time.⁴ In “Affluence and Anxiety,” the author analyzes the Palmer Raids, which were a series of raids that took place from November 1919 to January 1920 under the Woodrow Wilson administration to capture suspected socialists, anarchists, and communists and deport them from the United States. This perspective frames the 1920s as a time when “unreasoned fear” of foreigners and radicals dictated government policy and judicial outcomes.⁵ “The Golden Twenties,” explains how the Harding administration was marred by significant scandals, including fraud within the Veterans’ Bureau led by Charles R. Forbes.⁶ The text emphasizes the role of the federal government in shaping the decade’s character. It focuses on legislative actions, specifically tariffs and tax reductions that directly influenced national prosperity and international trade. As stated previously, most political events can be traced back to presidential administrations, whether its for judicial or legislative outcomes.

Conclusion

Due to how many major events happened in the twenties, there’s so many different ways historians can interpret this era. “Affluence and Anxiety” mainly focused on how the 1920s began with a significant shift away from the social progressivism of the war years, replaced by suspicion and fear, and “The Golden Twenties” details the evolution of the American economy and government after the First World War.

1. David J. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives,
   OAH Magazine of History, (July 2007), pp. 7-10. ︎
2. 1960-Our Nation’s Story – The Golden Twenties ︎
3. 2004 – The American People – Affluence and Anxiety ︎
4. David J. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives,” OAH Magazine of History, (July 2007), pp. 7-10. ︎
5. 2004 – The American People – Affluence and Anxiety ︎
6. 1960-Our Nation’s Story – The Golden Twenties ︎

The textbook From Colony to World Power was written less than two decades after the end of the 1920s, and almost exclusively focuses on political history. In the aftermath of World War II, the isolationist and nationalist movements that grew exponentially during the 1920s were relevant to public discourse once again. This is reflected in how frequently the textbook discusses the League of Nations, and the chaos of European politics after World War I. From an educational perspective in 1947, it would have seemed exceptionally important to teach students of American history that the country had been entangled in international war once before, and had come out the other side without the economic or physical destruction that was wrought upon the old world.

This focus on drawing a continuous historical line between World War I and World War II allows the textbook to avoid covering cultural and demographic developments during the 1920s, which were not considered important to educational narratives in 1947. It is only in a post-Civil Rights Movement world in which authors began to dedicate space to the activities of minority communities during the early 20th century. As noted by David J. Goldberg, topics such as the Harlem Renaissance and rural-urban migration are thoroughly discussed in books from the 1970s and 1990s, whereas American literature from the 1920s receives historical praise as soon as the 1930s.¹

From the perspective of the 2004 edition of The American Pageant, the 1920s is a time period where the very makeup of American society was radically changed. Regardless of the geopolitical storm that was brewing in the interwar era, new patterns of migration and evolving concepts of the government’s role in the daily lives of citizens fundamentally redefined the nation’s identity. The book also covers negative aspects of this time period with more earnestness. The KKK, anti-radicalism, and religious intolerance all have their own section within the chapter on the 1920s, and are directly juxtaposed with discussions of economic prosperity.² Also, concepts such as the rise of consumerism and the modern corporation are placed in the larger political and economic context of the decade. In the textbook from 1947 these aspects of 1920s American society are mentioned, but are not treated with as much historical significance as in 2004. These broader cultural trends had not yet been thoroughly analyzed in 1947, and in many ways were still developing.

By the 21st century, historians and textbook authors had constructed a new canon of what aspects of society were integral to American history, and this new ideological framework rebalanced political and cultural topics. Goldberg notes this shifting focus to more holistic representations of the United States during the 1920s, and writes that the new framework creates “a fuller and more well-rounded portrait of a society where class, ethnic, racial, regional, political, and cultural divisions remained quite sharp.”³ As the function and focus of American history is reshaped by subsequent social climates, the significance of the 1920s will undoubtedly fluctuate accordingly in textbooks.

1. David J. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s: Historians and Changing Perspectives,” OAH Magazine of History 21, no. 3 (July 2007): 10. ︎
2. Thomas A. Bailey, David Kennedy, and Lizabeth Cohen, The American Pageant (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004), 783-784. ︎
3. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920s,” 7. ︎

Chris Flug

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

The textbook chapters from The Story of Our Country (1948) and The Americans (2005) largely reflect the topics historians were writing about during their respective time periods. The Story of our Country focuses more on business than The Americans does, as demonstrated in the visualization to the right. This was fairly consistent with the historical scholarship written shortly after the textbook was published. Some of these monographs include The Dollar Decade: Business Ideas in the 1920s by James Warren Prothro and The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith. These books were both written in 1954 and they address the corporate ideology of the 1920s and the leadup to the Wall Street Crash respectively. ¹ This focus on business reflects the concerns of historians at the time. One way that The Story of Our Country does not fit neatly into the historiographical timeline Goldberg outlines is in its discussion of World War I. The only book that Goldberg references that discusses the war is his own 1999 monograph Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s, which “emphasizes the extent to which conflicts during the decade emanated from World War I.” ² The textbook’s focus on conflict is an outlier in the historiographical discussion of the decade because most books written around the same time focus on business and the economy.

The Americans has a stronger emphasis on people than it does business, which is demonstrated in the word cloud to the right. Ideas about minorities, including women and Black Americans, are featured more heavily in this chapter than they are in The Story of Our Country. Both of these trends are consistent with the books published 10 to 15 years before the textbook. For example, Kristi Andersen’s 1996 book After Suffrage: Women in Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal examines the lives of women after the 19th Amendment was ratified, and the 2002 books “We Return Righting:” The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age by Mark Robert Schneider and Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics and Citizenship of Jim Crow Virginia by J. Douglas Smith examine Black Americans in the North and South respectively. ³ The textbook’s discussion of people that have been excluded from the historical narrative in the past is consistent with much of the scholarship that was published in the years preceding it.

The textbooks have very different focuses when compared to one another. The Story of Our Country has a stronger emphasis on business and the war, taking a broader approach that focuses less on what life was like for everyday people during the 1920s. Voyant’s reader tool (below, left) demonstrates the book’s emphasis on what happened in the war itself rather than how it impacted people. Similarly, the bubbleline tool (below, right) indicates how much more important conflict was in the 1948 textbook’s narrative than it was in 2005. The Americans takes a much more in-depth look at the lives of specific demographics in 1920s society. For example, it has a more robust discussion of the lives of Black people during this time. Even accounting for the outdated descriptions of raced utilized when The Story of Our Country was written, it contains far less description of Black history than The Americans. The latter includes more information about Black experiences during the 1920s, although the organization of its bubbleline indicates it was largely relegated to a single section. Still, comparing the two textbooks demonstrates the vastly different priorities of the time they were written in. Specifically, it shows a concern for business and war in the late 1940s and a focus on the lives of minorities in the mid-2000s.

The reader tool (left) shows how The Story of Our Country discusses war. The bubbleline (right) shows the difference in how both textbooks discuss Black history.

While older history is not necessarily less professional than what scholars produce today, knowing when a historian writes helps to evaluate and understand a source. Society’s values and priorities have shifted drastically over the years and they will only continue to do so; acknowledging what most historians considered important during a certain time period allows readers to understand why scholars may include some information and ignore others. It may also reveal an author’s personal biases, as it is very difficult for anyone, including historians, to completely disregard the prejudices and values of their time when writing. Understanding the era a source was created in allows researchers to recognize not only what a scholar was writing about but why and how they chose to do so.

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 responses from the public made clear that the technological innovations of the time enforced the identity of some, whilst also releasing the identities caused by some innovations. The completion of the flight was an important ideal for white settlers in South Affrica, they saw the flight as an example of the superiority of western technology. However it also revealed many of their racial anxieties, fearing that the natives and black people of the community would rebel against such innovations, thus reinforcing their control over British territories. Native and black people of South Africa were very hesitant of their acceptance of the flight, since it meant it brought them closer to the British Empire. Public fascination with the journey transformed aviation into a spectacle, reinforcing Dumenil’s argument that modern societies increasingly sought meaning and satisfaction not in work itself, but in the prestige, and excitement made possible by modern production. At the same time, the flight reflects the “acids of modernity” discussed in Chapter IV, as it symbolized growing confidence in science, engineering, and human mastery over nature.

Although the completion of the flight was greatly celebrated, it also causes some civil and social unrest due to the racial divides it unintentionally enforced. As rapid technological change deepened the sense that the modern world was breaking irreversibly from the past. In this way, the trans‑African flight encapsulated both the optimism and the anxiety of the 1920s. As  a whole this flight is the perfect example of the negative impacts that incredible technological innovations have had on culture and society. Due to the media sensation that became of the flight the divide that came as a result was blatant. And such divide only emphasizes several negative themes that are so often brushed over when discussing the 1920s.

Citations:

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper. Hill and Wang, 30 June 1995, Chp6.

madison

Madison is currently a senior at the Ramapo College of New Jersey, who took this course in the spring of 2026. She has a major in Visual Arts, with a concentration in Art History, along with a double minor in Anthropology and Museum and Exhibitions Studies. After graduating Madison hopes to continue her education in order to become an Archaeologist or Museum Educator.