Modernity and Its Discontents

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Archibald Motley, Blues, 1929
Painter Archibald Motley (1891–1981) was born in New Orleans but arrived in Chicago as a small child, when his family — like thousands of other African Americans — moved north in search of opportunity. Motley was able to study at the Art Institute of Chicago and by the 1920s also showed his work in New York City. Many of his paintings depicted life in the predominantly African American neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side that was widely known as the Black Belt. This piece, Blues, was painted when Motley was living in Paris. It shows the powerful impact jazz had on European listeners. Art Institute of Chicago.

World War I had a powerful domestic impact in the United States. The Great Migration brought African Americans northward, and Mexicans across the U.S. border, to take up wartime jobs. A full-blown modern consumer culture also emerged by the 1920s as radio, cars, and Hollywood movies transformed leisure pastimes. While many Americans embraced consumer culture, others expressed deep fear and antagonism toward a new modern sensibility, especially secularism and sexual freedoms. Repressive impulses also came from above; during World War I, the federal government introduced new laws to police dissent, and the country took a sharp right turn. A Red Scare, rollback of labor and immigrant rights, and rising nativism marked the political scene. A resurgent nationwide Klan arose to target Catholics and Jews as well as African Americans. Many cultural conflicts emerged: the teaching of evolution in the schools angered religious fundamentalists, while “wets” and “drys” debated the prohibition of liquor.

Later events showed that racism took many forms: the U.S. government deported hundreds of thousands of people of Mexican descent during the Great Depression, including American citizens, and temporarily imprisoned Japanese Americans in a mass relocation policy during World War II. These, too, represented battles over what a diverse, modern nation would look like. We explore these conflicts in Chapters 21, 22, and 24.