Conference with you. It is a pleasure to be with you because really, there is no kind of person i more enjoy talking with then teachers of history. Teachers of history have been tremendously important in my life. From high school, from college, and also people who are involved in teaching public history by working and museums and historical sites and so forth. All of them has had a huge influence on my life. I do not think i would be writing History Today were it not for two very good history teachers that i had in high school. Let me tell you a little bit about how i came to the subject that im going to talk about today. I have for a long time, as long as i can remember, been obsessed with the First World War. I had relatives on both sides of my family who fought in it in several different armies. It always has sort of seemed to me, i think the historian simon put it best, when he described the First World War as the original sin of the 20th century. So much of what has afflicted us in the last 100 years comes directly out of that war. I have always been fascinated. I did a book called to end all war wars which came out about ten years ago, about the First World War focused on british experience because that is where britain conflict was sharpest between people who felt the war was a unnecessary crusade, and those who thought it was absolute madness and made the world turn for the worse in every conceivable way. The book that jenny mentioned that i just finished is the story of an American Woman who lived through that period. That kind of woke me up to what life in the United States was like in the First World War and its immediate after matt. That is what i am writing about right now. The thoughts im going to share with you today are from a book and progress. Let us go ahead. I just want to make sure, are you folks seeing my screen . Do i have to click share screen again . Okay. Good. Thats great. Let me go ahead. I want to first describe the usual way that we remember america in the First World War. And then talk about aspects of that history that we tend to ignore. The way the story is usually told the european powers had been battling themselves to a stalemate for nearly three years starting in 1914. The british, the french, the germans. The war produced untold millions of deaths. And even larger number of wounded, and destruction beyond that of any previous european war. It left devastated landscape as well and still, the carnage went on and on, leading leaving the powers of the old world exhausted adjourning german submarine started shrinking american ships. President Woodrow Wilson declared enough is enough. On april 2nd 1917 he went before congress and asked to declare war and congress promptly did so. Wilson picked general John J Pershing to lead the u. S. Troops. Pershing arrived in france and declared famously, lafayette we are here and by mid 1918, sent 2 million american troops that were in europe. They fought bravely, they help to win the war. Swiftly, the armistice came, which was really a german surrender. It was greeted with tremendous fervor here and all the warring countries. Ticker tape parades welcome to the american troops home. General pershing was greeted as a great hero. That is where the chapter on world war one and so Many American history textbooks ends. The countries at peace, the next chapter of American History begins. The 1920s, flappers, prohibitions, speakeasies, babe ruth, the model t ford and so on. But this skips over a great deal. I want to go back and look at the war years more closely, and then at the two years that followed the socalled peace. From the moment the United States entered the war, there was a fierce proper gander. This is a u. S. Army recruiting course. Just look at it for a second. The image of ferocity that it contains dog. There was a tremendous paranoia about spots. Why . Not because there were a lot of german spies in the United States. There had been, but almost all of them had been rounded up fairly early in the war because their pay master made the mistake of leaving his briefcase behind a new york elevated train and it was promptly collected by the american agent who was telling him. There were no real german spies by the time u. S. Entered the war. But there was this tremendous trip paranoia in the air i, think in part because the United States had a huge ongoing population. The first reflection of that was paranoia about spies, then paranoia about everything german. Sometimes mixed with a longstanding antisemitism. Look at this poster for example. The evil spy has a german helmet but, maybe a jewish nose . I heard about the atmosphere at this time from my father who was 25 years old in 1917. He was the son of a jewish immigrant from germany. The family spoke german at home but they were terrified of doing so on the street. Some states actually passed laws against speaking german and public. German language instruction stopped in schools and universities across the country. Signs appeared like this one in a park in chicago. Amazingly, there were burnings of german books. Here is a bonfire outside a high school in baraboo is constant. German language books and textbooks. Another picture of that fire and if you read the slogan it says here lies the remains of german and dhs. Robert was a minor in illinois who tried to enlist and the u. S. Navy. He got turned down because he had a glass eye. He had the bad luck to be german born. One day, in 1918, he was seized by a mob, wrapped in an american flag, forced to sing the starspangled banner and lynched. Here are the people who lynched him. They were put on trial. The jury deliberated for ten minutes and found them innocent while military band played outside the courtyard. There was antigerman craziness in the air in other ways. No more german music was played. Weddings took place without wedding marches. Names were changed. Berlin iowa became Lincoln Hughes germantown pennsylvania became pershing. Hes germantown in indiana became pershing named after the general. It became the hot dog. There was ferocity in the air at the very highest level, for example, this is the former secretary of state, secretary of war, senator of new york, now in 1917 he was a special emissary of wilson. He told the audience in new york in the summer of 1917 that quote, pro german traders northward threatening the war effort. Here is what he said in his own words. There are men locking about the streets of the city tonight who ought to be taking off at sunrise tomorrow. There are some papers published in the city every day. The editors of which deserve conviction and execution for treason. With his hatred, he was right at home in the trump administration. People like him were as fears as they were about the war because there was considerable resistance to and this is what soften left out of our history books. There was a book called the womens peace party that advocated against the war, both before and after the United States. Here is an advertisement for anti or meeting that was to take place on the very eve of the war itself the day before wilson went to congress and asked for the declaration. Two days later, this Organizations Office just two blocks away from the white house was vandalized, and smeared with yellow paint. There were popular anti war songs like this one. There were newspapers, publications that took a strong anti war stand like the socialist newspaper in new york city. A National Magazine that was a strong voice against the war was the masses. It was a popular magazine at the time. It was a magazine that published john reid, walter witman, and many others, many of the best artists and cartoons of the day. It was a precursor of todays new yorker. It published anti war cartoons like this one. Christ being shot by a firing squad. If you look carefully, there are different hats and helmets. All of the war countries are being represented. There were prominent political figures like eugene, fivetime socialist candidate for presidency. The very charismatic emma goldman, charismatic leader, started organizing against the draft. Several u. S. Senators were strongly against the war in which the boldest voice was that of robert. He asked on the floor of the senate, if this is a war to make the world safe from democracy as wilson proudly proclaimed, why should there not be Self Determination for ireland, egypt, india . He told his fellow senators that you could still be a patriot and oppose a particular war. In the 19th century he gave an example of how both Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln had done so. He began receiving this in the mail. He was hanged in effigy at the campus of the university of wisconsin and his fellow senators should he be expelled from the senate . Goldman had worst states but we will come back to that. The government moved quickly to suppress anti war demonstrations. Anyone who refused military service was sent to prison or locked up in camps like this one in fort douglas utah. Here is one such resist or an anti war activist and social worker named roger. He was sent to prison. We will come back to him. One of the things that really characterizes this was the the rise of vigilantes. Organization sprang up around the country. The American Protective League was one of the largest. This was the batch that its members got to where. I think you can read it on the screen. Operative auxiliary u. S. Department of justice. They did indeed have Justice Department support. At the end of 1917, the american productive leak had more than 2000 200,000 members. It was made up of men, only men. They were too old to fight. They wanted to feel like they were defending their country. What did they do . Among other things, they carried out what they called slack or raids to find people who were not registered for the draft and make citizens erect arrest them. Sometimes also a slack or was someone who had failed to buy a war bond. Here for example, are some of the young men who were arrested in a slack or raid in new york city in 1918 in which 60,000 people were rounded up because they had the slack or raids by the american protectively was on the while the mild side of the vigilante. Other expressions were much worse. Cartoons like this one glorified vigilante for violence and sometimes people acted on that. Here is a newspaper headline involving members of the countrys most militant labor group, moderns as they were called. In tulsa oklahoma, men were beaten, what they article doesnt say is that one of the leaders who carried out this action was a local police chief who had tipped off the newspaper in advance to have a reporter on the scene. Here is a photograph of another victim of tarring and feathering. He was a mom farmer from minnesota. He was attacked by a group of masked men in 1918 because he refused to buy war bonds. The men who were who attacked him were put on trial and found innocent. Someone else, a wobbly organizer, he was seized from his bed in montana in the middle of the night and hanged from a railroad bridge outside of town. There is his body. Frank little, 38 years old. His crime was coming to organize workers for them while blurs and the mining town where an underground fire several weeks earlier had taken the lives of more than 160 minors. That brings us to an important point, which is that the real target of repression during this war, during the warriors and the u. S. Was not really draft doctors or alleged pro germans. It was organized labor. This was an era of enormous labor strikes. Starting about 19 nine for the next 10 12 years, there were huge strikes every year in the United States with hundreds of thousands of workers walking off the job each year. They were met with force. Sometimes it was National Guard or state militia that put down strikes. These are state militia and men in massachusetts. They are facing some striking mill workers. They were put down by police. This is someone in chicago being arrested. The war gave the federal government big business. The perfect excuse to crack down on organized slavery everywhere. Theyre impulse to do so was only exacerbated by the rise of the bolsheviks and russia. The american establishment was terrified at the prospect of the russian evolution spreading to the United States. This is what led in 1917 for the next two years or so to the worst period of political repression in the United States since the end of slavery. It is an era i want to emphasize that this political repression happened not just during the First World War, but it continued for more than two years after the war ended. It happened on several fronts. There were a series of laws passed. Most important of which, was the espionage act of 1917. Actually, an amended version of that law is still with us and people Like NationalSecurity Agency whistleblower snowden, had been arrested. The law of 1917, the espionage act that year, among other things, gave the government the power to censor the press. Remember the magazine the masses that i talked about. This issue, august 1917 was its last. That issue was printed and it was banned from the u. S. Mail. Why . Because sensors censored here is one of the cartoons that they rejected. The liberty bell. The best magazine and the country was forced to cease publishing. Over the next four years, spring of 1917 through spring of 1921, more than 400 issues of american newspapers and magazines were banned from 75 different publications. In many cases, that meant the publication shutting down entirely. Who is americas chief press sensor . This guy. Albert. He was the postmaster general and the law gave him the power to censor what went through the mail. He was a former congressman from texas, the first texan to serve. Very conservative and arch segregationist when he was born, his family owned 20 slaves. He loved being the chief censor. Right after the armistice in november 1918, president wilson declared another censorship. The war was over. Why would we need censorship at all . He paid no attention. He kept on banning publications he didnt like. Wilson did not seem to mind. He paid very little attention and on occasion explicitly back him up. Another facet of repression was the way the government moved to jail critics of the war. I earlier showed you a picture of eugene, a socialist leader of the Railway Workers union. Here he is as a federal prison. Like some he was still in jail two years after the war ended. In november 1920, he was convict number nine six five three in the federal penitentiary. He was the socialist Party Candidate for a candidate and receive more than 900,000 votes. Someone else in prison was Keith Richards ohare, socialist Party Activists and in prison she became good friends with emma goldman who we talked about earlier who is also jailed for opposing the war. Goldman spent two years in prison, but after that, the government also employed another weapon against her. It deported her from the United States where she had lived for more than 30 years. She and 248 other radicals the government was eager to get rid of them. They were shipped off to russia just because just before christmas of 1919. The assist before. In a way that feels eerily familiar today in 1919, the United States was struck by frenzy about deporting. No less than three people would find the democratic and republican nomination in 1920, were campaigning on promises of nasty partitions. When this deportation frenzy began in 1919 the war was over, but during that the cost of living had sort. We were in the mid midst of the biggest strike wave in American History. One in five americans went on strike. These are Chicago Police called out because of worker strikes in chicago. The year 1919 was also weird with some of the worst racial violence in American History. Why . In part, because of returning war veterans. 400, 000, and several million lights were competing for jobs. The jobs were scarce because the War Industries had closed down. It was a tough time to be a black person in the United States, and some of the worst violence was in the north. This is a crowd of white people and chicago stoning a black man who. You cannot see him because he is trying to hide and the back porch of that house. And several cities, martial lot was declared, and the state militia was called out. These soldiers are questioning a man on the street in chicago. Again, a lynching in the north. In omaha nebraska. In an attempt to hang the mayor of omaha came when he tried to stop the lynching. He was cut down just in time, but the black man who is trying to save wasnt. Martial law was declared in omaha and in a number of cities in 1919. That year, 76 black americans were lynched. The highest would be more in the decade. The total death toll of 1919 race riots was in the hundreds. All of the handful of the dead were black. I mentioned various people, in 1920, were doing campaigning on the platform of the pouring people. One of them was a mitchell, attorney general. We remember him in connection with in which an estimated 10,000 radicals around the country were arrested, mainly those who palmer hoped would be deported because they were not american citizens. Remember, this was a country filled with recent immigrants, some not so recent, they had come decades before. Many of these folks had never bothered becoming officially naturalized. The country had welcomed them. But now this was a tool that could be used against them. Here are some of the people p