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Ava Elghanayan

Professor Bernardino

HIST 142

14 December 2022

The Truth About 20th Century America

When considering the United States in the 20th century, people often think of a time of

achievement, unity, expansion of technology and increase in strength for the United States.

Events such as the Gilded Age, the United States’ participation in winning both World Wars, and

the first human being to set foot on the moon are often regarded and leaders such as Franklin

Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy are celebrated for their roles in improving the country. However,

the experiences of most groups and individuals living in the United States in the 20th century are

often overlooked. Today, many people celebrate the achievements of white leaders without

considering the minorities with whom our success as a country is possible. People think only of

the experiences of the typical white, upper class individuals without considering the racism and

prejudice that was faced by so many others, and the fighting that so many people had to partake

in simply to get their voices heard.While people consider the 20th century a time of prosperity, it

was also a time of great hardship and suffering for many individuals. It is impossible to discuss

20th century America without considering the experiences of minority individuals, including

Black Americans, Asian Americans, and Americans who identify as part of LGBTQ+

community.
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While many people believe that racism ended prior to the 20th century with the abolition

of slavery, this could not be farther from the truth. Racism towards many minority groups was

widespread. White Americans held prejudices towards all non white people and believed them to

be inferior. The White Man’s Burden, a poem written by Rudyard Kipling, encapsulates the

feelings of superiority 20th century white Americans felt towards Black people and all people of

color. In the poem, Kipling describes the “white man’s burden” as a duty of all white people to

save people of color. He refers to people of color as “half devil and half child,” “sullen peoples,”

and “savages,” encouraging a stance of superiority among white Americans. By referring to

people of color as “devils” he encourages the belief that people of color are anti- American

because they go against American Christian values. This poem has a similar ideology to

Theodore Roosevelt’s speech, “Hyphenated Americans.” In the speech, Roosevelt claims, “There

is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans” (Roosevelt, 166). Roosevelt defines

“Hyphenated Americans” as individuals who were not born in the United States who maintain

and celebrate the traditions of their home country instead of assimilating to the American culture.

He states that all non American born citizens must speak English and possess allegiance to the

country in order to not be considered a hyphenated American, and thus rejected from American

white society. As the president, Roosevelt’s ideals match the ideals of the general American

population, and he has a major influence over Americans, so it is evident that this speech

represents most Americans’ views towards non-native born Americans and Americans of color.

This speech emphasizes the racism towards all people who immigrated to the United States and

all people of color living in the United States during the 20th century.
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Many people believe that the Civil Rights era in the 60’s was the only point throughout

the 20th century where Black Americans fought for justice and equal treatment against racism.

However, this is not the case as Black people suffered from many forms of racism and

discrimination such as voter discrimination, lynchings and other forms of violence, prejudice in

the work place, and were generally believed to be inferior to white people. Sojourner Truth, a

Black female activist, wrote the speech, Ain’t I a Woman? in which she considered how Black

women were not treated with the same dignity and equality to white women. In her speech, she

alludes to the point that Black women are tired of being excluded from the women’s rights

movement because of their race. Through the repetition of the refrain, “Ain’t I a Woman?,” she

challenges the white leaders of the women’s rights movement to expand the movement to fight

for the rights of Black women. She also compares the societal view of white women to Black

women, claiming that Americans believe that white women“need to be helped into carriages,”

while she as a Black women has “ploughed and planted,” “bore the lash,” and ate when she

“could get it” because that was what is expected of her. This speech was written in 1851, but the

message Truth hoped to convey carried into the 20th century, that Black women should be

included equally in the women’s rights movement and were treated with prejudice.

Ida B. Wells also discussed racism towards Black people in her speech, Lynch Laws in

America. Specifically, she focuses on how white superiority complex enables white people to

believe that they have the right to murder Black Americans. She discusses the “unwritten law” of

which white people believed gave them superiority over Black people and enabled them to lynch

Black people. She states that this unwritten rule, grounded in racism, “justifies them in putting

human beings to death without complaint under oath, without a trial by jury, without opportunity
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to make defense..” This demonstrates the racism in the 20th century judicial system, that white

Americans knew that there weren’t any actual written laws that enabled their attacks on Black

people, but they understood that it was nonetheless socially acceptable and would be backed up

by the legal system. This is exemplified in the case of Ossian Sweet, a Black man who was

placed on trial for defending himself from a violent white mob in a predominantly white

neighborhood in 1925. In his book, Arc of Justice: a Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in

the Jazz Age, author Kevin Boyle discusses how this unwritten law was largely created by white

people after opportunities for employment decreased in the 1920’s. He claims that this

encouraged white people to believe that they could exclude Black people from public places such

as restaurants, stores, and public buildings. Boyle claims that this created redlining, which is

segregation of Black people into non white neighborhoods. It is evident that the white mob

which attacked Sweet was inspired by redlining and racism and wished to maintain their white

neighborhood. They knew that the white police would support them, even though there weren’t

any actual written laws that enabled redlining. According to the NAACP poster titled For the

Good of America, “3436 people were lynched between 1889 and 1922, and twenty-eight people

were publicly burned by American mobsbetween 1918 and 1921”. While many people don’t

consider lynching when they think of America in the 20th century, it was clearly very prevalent

and a major part of the Black experience in 20th century America, and little to nothing was done

to prevent it and stop it from happening.

The experiences of other Americans of color in the 20th century are often overlooked as

many people only consider the racism faced by Black Americans. However, it is important to

acknowledge the oppression faced by all groups during the century. Asian Americans also faced
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extreme racism and violence in the 20th century. The political propaganda in “By Soil or By

Blood” depicts Chinese people being excluded from America and treated with discrimination by

white Americans. The first one shows a long leg with a boot kicking a Chinese person from

California to China. The white person is seen to be in a position of power as only their leg is

pictured, while the Chinese person is fully depicted standing up, appearing small and weak in

comparison to the ominous white person towering over him. The second piece of propaganda is a

children’s toy gun where a white man is seen pulling the hair of a Chinese person and pushing

him off the gun. Both pieces of propaganda embody the idea of white superiority over the

Chinese, and demonstrate the racism and power white people believed they had over Chinese

people. The toy gun shows that this racist superiority and the belief that Chinese Americans were

not welcome in the country was embraced widely by white Americans, since they wanted this

idea to be ingrained in the minds of their children.

Anti Asian sentiment in 20th century America is also seen through Japanese

imprisonment in internment camps during World War II. When thinking of World War II, most

people think of America’s heroic aid in obtaining justice for the Jewish people of Europe, a

clearly targeted minority. However, less people know or think about the racism and

imprisonment that America committed to its own people. In the book, Prisoners Without Trial:

Japanese Americans in World War II, author Roger Daniels discusses how the Japanese

American imprisonment was created by anti- Asian racism in the U.S. This started with racism

against Chinese Americans in the 19th century, as many Americans couldn’t distinguish between

people from different parts of Asia. He claims that this racist attitude was commonly held among

Americans, stating that most Americans would argue that their racist beliefs were “simply
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American” (Daniels, 5). Americans loathed the Chinese and viewed them as competition for

jobs, so when Japanese immigration began, white Americans were threatened that they would

take their jobs. This racist sentiment against all Asians became a widely spread belief that carried

into the 20th century. Daniels mentions the San Francisco Chronicle, the “then most influential

newspaper on the pacific coast” to have described Japanese Americans as “violent towards white

women” and “Japanese spies” (Daniels, 30) This enabled discrimination against Asian people by

white American politicians. Daniels writes that Politicians also supported the anti-Asian

movement and that the Republican, Democratic, and Populist parties “took a stand against all

Asiatic immigration” (Daniels, 22). In addition, he discusses how The California government

resented Chinese, and wanted to create a legislature that would expel Japanese citizens but were

unable to because it was not allowed under the constitution. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor,

anti-Japanese rhetoric drastically increased among white Americans. This, as well as previously

held hostility, inspired American policy makers to believe that they needed to imprison Japanese

to preserve the safety of white Americans, despite Japanese Americans' innocence. According to

class notes from October 27th, Americans began to spread anti-Japanese propaganda through

spreading the trope that they were disloyal to the United States. The government portrayed

detainment as the only option to keep white Americans safe and used census data to track down

and imprison Japanese Americans. 125, 284 Japanese Americans were detained and kept in poor

living conditions. While the detainment centers were being built, Japanese Americans were

forced to live in horse stalls in race tracks and subjected to inhumane treatment while the

government depicted a false narrative to the American people that they enjoyed staying in the

detainment centers.
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Another marginalized group that is not considered in the discussion of 20th century

America are people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. Throughout history, people who

identify as LGBTQ+ have been thought of as sick, mentally insane, and going against

Christianity. Throughout the 20th century, the belief that homosexuality is a sin prevailed and

many people brave enough to “come out” were forced into conversion therapy. According to

class notes from September 29th, the 1917 Immigration Act prevented people in the LGBTQ

community from immigrating to the United States because they were categorized as

“psychopathic inferiors.” In addition, the federal transient program began shortly after the Great

Depression. This was spurred by the belief that men in the armed forces were having sex with

one another as well as the belief that men were engaging in sexual activities in homeless shelters.

According to class notes, the civilian conservation corps was set out to prevent transiency among

men. The anti- LGBTQ+ sentiment was also seen in the AIDS epidemic in the 1990’s, where

men who had sexual relations with other men were targeted and discriminated against because

they were wrongly believed to have created the AIDS epidemic. Gaetes Douglas was vilified as

“patient 0” and blamed for bringing AIDS to over 50 people in the United States. This

encouraged the view of LGBTQ people as dangerous as they were believed to be the cause of

AIDS, and this ideology prevails today.

Overall, while there is much to be celebrated about America in the 20th century, it is

important to acknowledge that most people living in America at the time faced discrimination

and hardships. In this essay, I only mentioned the experiences of three minority groups living in

the United States during the 20th century, but countless of other people belonging to different

groups faced and still continue to face discrimination in America. It is important to consider that
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while it may not be as obvious as lynching or internment, minority groups continue to face

racism and discrimination in America today. White Americans must look back to the 20th

century not only to learn from our mistakes, but listen to the voices of minority individuals who

lived through this time period and acknowledge the hardships that they faced.