What Do Historians Think?
Part of Intolerance and Prejudice — GCSE History
This interpretations covers What Do Historians Think? within Intolerance and Prejudice for GCSE History. Revise Intolerance and Prejudice in America 1920-1973 for GCSE History with 10 exam-style questions and 12 flashcards. This is a high-frequency topic, so it is worth revising until the explanation feels precise and repeatable. It is section 8 of 14 in this topic. Use this interpretations to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 8 of 14
Practice
10 questions
Recall
12 flashcards
🔎 What Do Historians Think?
Interpretation 1: Lynn Dumenil argues that the intolerance of the 1920s was not an aberration but reflected deep tensions within American society. The KKK's rapid growth — from 5,000 members in 1920 to 4-6 million by 1925 — was possible because it tapped into genuine anxieties about immigration, urbanisation, and moral change that were widely shared among native-born white Protestants. Intolerance was the decade's dark mirror to its celebrated prosperity.
Interpretation 2: Frederick Lewis Allen, in Only Yesterday (1931), treats the KKK and the Red Scare as symptoms of a post-war hysteria that eventually burned itself out. For Allen, the extremism of the early 1920s was a temporary spasm — society was adjusting to rapid change, and the moderation of the late 1920s showed that democratic values ultimately prevailed.
Why do they disagree? Allen, writing just a few years after the events and from a liberal middle-class perspective, was more optimistic about American democratic resilience. Dumenil, examining the structural causes of intolerance from a later vantage point, sees it as rooted in enduring features of American society rather than a temporary aberration.