United States History from 1877
to the Present Day
An Online United States History Course
Crime and Punishment In America (1 and 1/2 Weeks)
Sacco and Vanzetti
The Roaring Twenties and The 18th and 21st Amendment
The lawless and brash 1920’s was a unique time-period in U. S. History. The decade began with several issues. Women gained the right to vote under the 19th Amendment which also opened up the roles that women could fill in society. They began cutting their hair short, wearing more revealing clothing and bathing suits, and even smoking and drinking. It began with prohibition. Prohibition ended the open sale and manufacture of alcohol. This left the gangsters to import and manufacture alcohol and run illegal taverns and casinos. They also controlled other vices and money-making crime ventures. The Twenties were named “the Roaring Twenties” and the Jazz Age. Performers of jazz music and jazz dance were performed in the illegal clubs which gave employment for many African Americans. The clubs were called “Speakeasies” because a secret word had to be said in order to gain admittance. People would whisper the word which would tell the owner they were not revenue officers. Repeal of prohibition in the 21st Amendment ended the “Speakeasies” but not the crime and mob bosses who still provided illegal actives.
Link to Page
Dorthea Dix
The Temperance Movement
Link to Page: Pictures of the Temperance Movement
The Death Penalty
Link to Page
Link to Page: The Death Penalty Information Center
Link to Page: www.youtube.com
John T. Scopes and
The Monkey Trial
John Scopes was a teacher accused and found guilty of presenting evolutionary theory or Darwinism while teaching biology in his high school from a textbook not authorized for use by the state of Tennessee. The ensuing trial was dubbed the “the Monkey” trial because opponents mistakenly believed that Darwin was saying that man evolved from apes. It was forbidden to teach anything other than the Adam and Eve story known as "creationism" from the Bible. He was fined 100 dollars but most states began to allow biology and sientific thoughts about human developed to be studied in the classroom. The trial pitted the famous lawyers of Clarence Darrow, presidential candidate and Bible expert against William Jennings Bryan, the fast talking expert debater who had a reputation of not losing cases.
Link to Page
Link to Page: A Monkey Trail Timeline
Plays, Books, Magazines, Radio, Television and Crime Drama
Link to Page
Americans have had a great appetite for crime drama. From illustrated newspapers showing victims in the early 1800's to radio serials such as Ellery Queen Mysteries and The Shadow to Televison such as SUV and Hawaii- 5O , plus countless movies. Americans have loved their murder mysteries and who-done-its.
The extraordinary case of the Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian immigrants, stand alone in history. They were accused and quickly found guilty of robbery of a show factory where a guard and paymaster were shot and killed in Braintree, Massachusetts. Most felt that because neither Sacco nor Vanzetti could speak English well they did not receive a fair trial. Writers and artists protested the murder conviction and called for a new trial, but appeals to higher courts failed to overturn the murder convictions. A popular book at the time period proved to add prejudice to their case. Many people believed the story in the book was actually Sacco and Vanzetti's story, but it was not. Many people believe the book caused the jury to convict innocent men of murder. Many scholars believe the book greatly prejudiced the jury to hand down a conviction of murder.
The Temperance Movement Video
The Temperance Movement was a reform movement that began in the early 1800's to do away with alcohol or to slow down its use. The movement was largely populated by women who had seen the effects of alcohol on families. Domestic violence, poverty, illness, and dysfunction were all parts of what cause families to become devastated by alcoholism. Very few women drank any alcohol at the time period and not to excess. Men would get paid on a Saturday and head immediately to one of the saloons and spend all the pay leaving nothing for food for their families. Carrie A. Nation and Susan B. Anthony were strong followers of the movement and protested the saloons and distilleries. They called for a boycott of alcohol and prohibition of all saloons and liquor distilleries. Later in 1919, an Amendment to the U. S. Constitution banned most of the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages over a small amount of alcoholic content.
Link to Page: The Volstead Act or National Prohibiton Act of 1919
The Lendbergh Kidnapping
The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping has been described as the trial of the 20th Century. Charles Lindbergh, famous for his solo air flight over the north Atlantic in 1928, found that his 20-month old son was missing from his second-floor nursery on March 1, 1932. After the kidnapping, muddy footprints and two seconds of a collapsible home-made latter were found. Later the gruesome discovery of a mutilated baby was uncovered under leaves and fallen branches in a crudely fashioned grave. The murder and kidnapping was blamed on a local handyman, Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Many believed that he did not commit the crimes. In spite of the weak and circumstantial evidence, Hauptmann was electrocuted on April 3, 1936.
Read More: PBS
Carrie A. Nation
Link to Page: View the really
The Prison Reform Movement
--Short Student Project
Dorothea Lynde Dix was an American reformer who worked to clean-up and cimprove prisons and insane assylums in America. A school teacher who also worked with other reform movements she lobbied state legislatures and the United States Congress and was able to create the first generation of American mental asylums. Often the insane were put in dungenous prisons with little care and their children placed in the same cells with them. She opened more the 30 hospitals for the poor who were diagnosed with mental illness. When she was young she visited a prison where a mentally ill woman was being kept and then worked to keep the insane aways form harened criminals. She became a champion of nurses, as well.
Around noon time on November 22, 1963, the world stopped and stood still as news that the American president John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shoot and killed, almost 100 years after Abraham Lincoln had been killed by an assassin's bullet. Many similarities exist in the two shootings and two men.
The Warren Commission, given the task of investigating the crime and any conspiracy, placed all blame on Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman and mastermind of the shooting.
Prison in the 1800's
The Great Gatsby by
F. Scott Fitzgerald
O. J. Simpson on Trial
Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson, also nicknamed "The Juice", is a retired American football player, broadcaster, actor, and convicted felon currently in jail in Nevada on unrelated charges of armed theft for a conviction of stealing sports trophies that were sold at auction to pay debts. O. J. Simpson, was tried on two counts of murder after the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her boyfriend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, in June 1994. Simpson led Los Angeles police on a chase in the infamous white Bronco SUV before surrendering and going to jail. The trial lawyer for Simpson was the celebrity, Johnnie Cochran. Cochran was a favorite of late night talk show hosts. He was famous for the repeated use of the phrase, "If the glove does not fit, you must acquit." A large part of the defense was a dress glove, "The Bloody Glove," that prosecutors claimed belonged to Simpson. When Simpson tried on the gloves in the courtroom, they did not fit his hands. The Prosecution team failed to protect much of the evidence and failed to secure the crime screen, making much of the evidence inadmissible in court. The case has been described as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. FOX news has stated that the O. J. Simpson trial, more than 20 years ago, changed the face of television.
In addition to John F. Kennedy, the governor of Texas, John Connelly, was also shot but it was not fatal. Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a former Sheriff's Detective and night club owner. The case has been controversial ever since.
Lee Harvey Oswald
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Gangster Films Become Popular
With the invention of moving pictures crime became a good plot subject. When movies first began, Hollywood played up the cowboy as the American hero. When audiences began to tire of "western" pictures, they turned to the gangster. These movies were pretty much the same as cowboy movies, but set in the big cities with car chases and machines guns, giving way to six-shooters and horses.
Theatrical trailer for Little Caesar (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson.
The Godfather became a favorite film throughout the world and is considered a classic, one of the one-hundred best movies ever. It grossed $133,698,921 with the first film and inspiring two other Godfather movies, together grossing over $100,000,000. The digital remastered DVD brought in over 1 million dollars. The films featured top box office stars such as Al Paccino, James Cann, and Marlon Brando. They were directed by Francis Ford Coppola and were based on the book with the same name written by Mario Puzzo who also wrote the screen plays.
Be it resolved that The United States should do away with the death penalty for any and all crimes, even premeditated murder?
Unit Seven Debate:
Study Guide Questions:
1. Describe the fascination with crime and violence in the
United States and most of the world with dramas and
books about evil doings.
2. How did John F. Kennedy die? What are some of the
conspiracy theories about his death?
3. Describe five major issues in the debate over the death
penalty.
4. What is the impact of the Great Gatsby today?
5. What is the significance of the 18th and 21st
Amendments to the U. S. Constitution in United States
History?
6. What did Sacco and Vanzetti do for a living and what
crime were they accused of committing?
7. What is temperance and who did it relate to the
passage of prohibition of alcohol?
8. Why did the O. J. Simpson trial captivate people from
around the world to watch the news coverage? LINK
9. Who was Dorothea Dix and what were her major
achievements?
10. Describe the impact John T. Scopes had on education
and science?
A Time to Kill trailer, starring Matthew McConaughey
Robert Francis Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy was the younger brother of John F. Kennedy. Joseph Kennedy, their father had told people that Joseph, Jr. would be president in the future. Joseph was killed in World War II. The next in line in the Kennedy family, John, did run and win the presidency, but was killed by an assassin. His brother Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, who was Attorney General for John, took up the Kennedy banner and ran for President in 1968. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan; Kennedy died in early hours of June 6. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning. In 1969, Sirhan was convicted of Robert F. Kennedy's murder and was sentenced to death. In 1972, the sentence was transmuted to life imprisonment after the California Supreme Court invalidated the state's death penalty as it existed at that time. Sirhan is still in prison.
Robert F. Kennedy Assassination.
The Green Mile Trailer from the Stephen King novel made into a movie
The End of Unit Seven
Al Pacino has made an acting career in playing the crime boss, detective, and underworld crime figure in many movies. He is famous for playing the Cuban crime boss, Scarface, and Michael Corleone in the Godfather.
