Hello, I'm Mr. Marchant, and thank you for joining me for today's history lesson.

I'll be guiding you through all of our resources today, and my top priority is to make sure that by the end of our lesson you're able to successfully meet our learning objective.

Welcome to today's lesson, which is part of our unit on the boom years in the USA where we've been asking ourselves, how did the boom affect the lives of American people? By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to explain how some groups in the USA lost out during the boom.

So we're really thinking about how particular groups may have experienced the 1920s in America differently from the majority of the population.

There are five key words which are gonna help us navigate our way through today's lesson.

Those are discrimination, reservations, segregated, ghetto, and quota.

Unfair treatment of someone because of their gender, race, sexual orientation, age, disability, or religion is described as discrimination.

Reservations are areas of land set aside for use by Native Americans.

Groups of people are segregated if they're separated from one another.

In the USA, people were often segregated based on their race.

A ghetto is an area of a city where people of a particular race or religion live, especially a poor area.

And a quota sets a maximum or minimum number for the amount of people who can do something.

Today's lesson will be divided into three parts, and we'll begin by focusing on agriculture and coal.

Although the US economy was growing in the 1920s, not all groups enjoyed the boom.

Two major parts of the American economy struggled.

These were agriculture and the coal industry.

Almost a third of the American workforce was employed in these two areas in 1920, so their struggles over the 1920s were very significant.

Three key issues affected American agriculture and the coal industry: overproduction, tariffs, and competition.

We'll think about each of these issues in turn.

So let's start by considering overproduction.

The use of machinery like tractors and combine harvesters made farming more productive.

However, these new technologies made agriculture so productive that more food was grown than was needed, so prices fell.

And as prices fell, the incomes of farmers fell too.

In 1924 alone, 600,000 farmers lost their farms. Overproduction was also a problem in the coal industry, leading to prices falling and, again, to the closure of some mines.

So let's reflect on what we've just heard.

Why was overproduction a problem? Was it because prices fell, which meant businesses could no longer meet their own running costs; because prices rose, which meant people stopped buying the products that businesses made; or was it because it required more employees than were available for work in the USA at the time? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was A.

Overproduction was a problem because it led to a fall in prices, which meant businesses could no longer meet their own running costs, and many started to close.

So now we can think about the second key issue affecting these industries, tariffs.

During World War I, American farmers had been able to sell to both US consumers and consumers in Europe.

After the war, some European nations introduced tariffs on crops exported by American farmers.

Now this was a significant problem because it increased the price of American crops, and as the price of American crops increased, it became more difficult for farmers to sell their extra crops abroad.

And this also had a big impact on the incomes of farmers.

So to make sure we have a really secure understanding of the problem we've just heard about, I want you to write the missing word in the following sentence, "Tariffs on American exports made them more blank "so foreign consumers were less likely to buy them." So what's the missing word? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the missing word was expensive.

Tariffs on American exports made them more expensive, so foreign consumers were less likely to buy them.

This is one of the major issues which affected especially the agricultural industry in the USA.

And so now we can think about a third major problem with the US economy in the 1920s.

This was competition.

The demand for electric power rose significantly in the United States in the 1920s.

Now for the coal industry, this had some benefits because coal could be used to generate electricity.

However, alternative fuels like oil and gas were more popular for generating electricity, so increasingly, oil and gas were used as fuel instead of coal.

It suffered from this competition.

Similarly, coal-powered railway travel declined as more people purchased petrol-powered cars.

Petrol is derived from oil.

So again, some of these major changes which were taking place in the American economy in the 1920s benefited rival industries to coal and left it with less demand.

So we have a statement on the screen that says, "Most transport was coal powered in the 1920s." Is that statement true or false? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that, that statement was false.

But we need to be able to justify our response, so two justifications have appeared on the screen.

The first says that cars were fueled by petrol and trams were often electrified.

The second says that most trains and trams were electrified during the 1920s.

So which one of those two justifications is correct? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was A, cars were fueled by petrol and trams were often electrified.

This meant that increasingly during the 1920s, the most popular forms of transportation relied on other fuels rather than coal.

So now we're ready to put all of our knowledge into practise.

I want you to match each type of economic problem experienced in agriculture and the coal industry with its correct example.

So the three key problems we've got are competition, overproduction, and tariffs.

You need to match each one with the example that demonstrates that problem.

Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, well done for all of your effort on that task.

So I asked you to match each type of economic problem experienced in agriculture and the coal industry with its correct example.

For competition, the example you should have identified was, "Oil and gas became more popular than coal as fuel, "especially for generating electricity." For overproduction, you should have matched it with the example that says, "Tractors and combine harvesters increased food output "so much that it outstripped demand." And so for tariffs, you should have matched it with, "European governments placed extra taxes "on American food exports." So really well done for your work on that task, especially if you matched up all three problems and examples correctly.

So now we're ready to move on to the second part of our lesson where we are gonna focus on Native Americans and African Americans.

Native Americans and African Americans were both minority groups in the USA.

Both groups had faced a long history of prejudice and discrimination in the United States.

Both groups continued to face significant challenges during the 1920s.

Native Americans were indigenous to the territories which became the USA.

That is to say they were the original inhabitants of the land that became the United States of America.

Despite this, Native Americans had been dispossessed of most of their land by the end of the 19th century and had been forced onto reservations.

These reservations segregated Native Americans.

In 1928, the US government produced the Meriam Report.

This report revealed that Native Americans had much shorter life expectancies than white Americans due to issues such as poor food supply and poor healthcare facilities.

The report also explained that most Native Americans lived in poverty.

This poverty was linked to the poor quality land on reservations.

The Meriam Report noted that even a trained and experienced white man could hardly make a living from these lands.

Native Americans faced other forms of discrimination as well.

Many Christian Americans argued that Indigenous beliefs were not a proper form of religion, and so many Indigenous acts of worship remained illegal under US law during the 1920s.

So let's make sure we have a secure understanding about what we've just heard.

What did the Meriam Report say about the land on Native American reservations? Was it that it would be better if experienced white farmers were given the land on Native American reservations; that Native Americans needed to learn to farm their reservation land like experienced white farmers; or that reservation land was so bad that even experienced white farmers would struggle to make a living from it? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said the correct answer was C.

The Meriam Report of 1928 said that reservation land was so bad that even experienced white farmers would struggle to make a living from it.

This gives a really clear indication of some of the challenges that Native Americans were having to live with in this period.

The majority of African Americans lived in the American South during the 1920s.

Many worked in agriculture, which meant that as the farming industry suffered, African Americans were disproportionately affected and millions lived in poverty.

Life in the South was made worse by racism.

State laws known as Jim Crow laws were enforced which segregated African Americans from whites.

Furthermore, organisations like the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK, worked to intimidate and attack African Americans.

Membership of the KKK reached 5 million by 1925 and its actions, though frequently illegal, often went unpunished by white authorities.

Lynchings, where white mobs killed people without putting them on trial first, occurred frequently in the South and mostly targeted African Americans.

59 Black people were lynched in 1921 alone.

So reflecting on what we've just heard, I want you to write the missing value from the following sentence, "By 1925, the KKK, "which often attacked African Americans in the South, "had blank members." So what's the missing word? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said the missing value was 5 million.

By 1925, the KKK, which often attacked African Americans in the South, had 5 million members.

Challenged by poverty and white racism, hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated from the South to cities such as New York and Detroit in northern states in hope of achieving better lives.

This mass movement became known as the Great Migration.

States in the North did not have Jim Crow laws in place, and some employers, such as Henry Ford, did offer equal wages to Black and white workers.

However, many Black people found that they could only find work in low-paid jobs when they arrived in northern cities.

And even in these jobs, African Americans were often paid less than white workers.

African Americans were also often only able to find poor quality housing, forcing them into ghetto neighbourhoods such as Harlem in New York.

Nevertheless, the number of African Americans living in the North increased rapidly.

The Black population of both Chicago and New York more than doubled between 1900 and the 1920s.

So let's check that we've got a clear understanding of what we've just heard.

We have a statement on the screen that says, "The Great Migration failed to help "many African Americans escape discrimination." Is that statement true or false? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that, that statement was true.

But we need to be able to justify our response, so two justifications have appeared on the screen.

The first says that African Americans in northern US cities often had little choice but to work in low-paid jobs and live in ghettos.

The second says that lynchings and segregated spaces were just as common in northern cities as in the American South.

So which one of those two justifications is correct? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct justification was A, African Americans in northern US cities often had little choice but to work in low-paid jobs and live in ghettos.

In this way, we can tell that regardless of whether they were living in the North or in the South, discrimination was a common experience for African Americans in the 1920s.

So we're now ready to put all of our knowledge about the experiences of Native Americans and African Americans into practise.

I want you to study each of the seven statements numbered below.

For each of those statements, I want you to identify whether they describe the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, or both.

So you'll need to write each number in the relevant part of the Venn diagram to indicate whether the statements refer to the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, or both groups.

Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answers.

Okay, well done for all of your hard work on that task.

So, I asked you to write the numbers of each statement into the relevant part of the Venn diagram to indicate whether it was describing the experiences of Native Americans, African Americans, or both groups.

For our first statement, you should have been saying that that related to African Americans.

They were the main targets of the KKK.

Where it told us that they were frequently segregated from white Americans, well, that refers to the experiences of both Native Americans and African Americans, so that you should have put number two in the middle of your Venn diagram.

It was Native Americans who lived on reservations.

And poverty was widespread for both Native Americans and African Americans, so you should have put number four in the middle of our Venn diagram.

It was African Americans who took part in the Great Migration, and it was also African Americans who lived in ghettos such as Harlem.

However, when it comes to many acts of worship being outlawed, well, that was a form of discrimination suffered by Native Americans.

So well done for all of your effort on that task, especially if you got every single one of those seven statements identified correctly.

So now we're ready to move on to the third and final part of our lesson for today where we're gonna focus on the experiences of recent immigrants.

The USA was often called the land of opportunity.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, more people migrated to the USA than any other country in the world.

The US has often been considered a nation of immigrants.

Around 40 million European immigrants arrived in the US between 1850 and 1914.

By the 1920s, the US was populated by established and recent immigrants.

So let's think about some of the key characteristics of these two groups.

When we're talking about established immigrants in the US, we're referring to people who were traditionally from Western Europe, especially Britain, Ireland, and Germany.

They made up most of the established population of the USA by 1900, and they were sometimes referred to as WASPs, meaning White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

So that tells us about both the racial background and also the religious background of these established immigrants.

However, if we think about the recent immigrants to the USA by the 1920s, well, they were mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, so countries such as Italy and Russia.

People from these backgrounds made up the majority of immigrants arriving in the USA by the 1920s.

And these recent immigrants often spoke English poorly, as well as usually being Catholic or Jewish.

So we can see just by studying our key bullet points here that there were some major differences in the key characteristics between established immigrants and the recent immigrants who were arriving in the USA by the 1920s.

So let's just check that we have a secure understanding of what we've just heard.

The statement on the screen says, "Most recent immigrants to the USA in the 1920s "were very similar to established immigrants." Is that statement true or false? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that, that statement is false.

But we need to be able to justify our response, so two justifications have appeared on the screen.

The first says that recent immigrants were often Jewish and Catholic rather than Protestant.

The second says that recent immigrants were often Protestant rather than Jewish or Catholic.

So which one of those two justifications is correct? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct justification was A.

Recent immigrants were often Jewish and Catholic rather than Protestants, so their religion was one of many characteristics that clearly signalled them out as having differences to the established population of immigrants in the USA.

And let's try another question.

I want you to write the missing acronym in the following sentence.

An acronym is an abbreviation that can be pronounced as a word.

So for example, LOL for laugh out loud.

So our sentence says, "Established groups of immigrants in the USA "were often referred to as blank." So what is the missing acronym? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to check your answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the missing acronym was WASPs.

Established groups of immigrants in the USA were often referred to as WASPs, meaning White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

That referred to both the common religion of most of these established groups of immigrants, Protestantism, and also their racial background, white Anglo-Saxons, so often people from Germany or the British Isles.

All US citizens were immigrants, but new immigrants arriving in the 1920s often faced intolerance from longer established WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, because of their social differences.

Many recently arrived immigrants in the 1920s ended up living in slums because they were discriminated against when looking for housing.

As a result, immigrant communities tended to concentrate in ghettos such as Little Italy in New York.

Immigrants were also frequently exploited by American employers, so treated unfairly.

These employers often made recent immigrants work long hours for low wages.

Because they were poor and desperate for work, the immigrants had little choice but to accept these working conditions.

This situation led to even more tensions as some workers and trade unions accused recent immigrants of stealing jobs from Americans.

Government laws also reflected growing intolerance towards recent immigrants.

In 1921, the Immigration Quota law declared that only 350,000 immigrants would be allowed to enter the USA each year.

The law also favoured immigrants from countries like Britain and Germany over those from Southern and Eastern Europe.

In 1924, the National Origins Act restricted immigration further by cutting the quota to just 150,000 immigrants per year.

So let's make sure we have a secure understanding of what we've just heard.

Which statement is most accurate, that neighbourhoods in cities like New York often ended up segregated because of discrimination; that neighbourhoods in cities like New York were segregated by law; or that neighbourhoods were segregated in the South but were always diverse in cities like New York? So pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was A, neighbourhoods in cities like New York often ended up segregated because of discrimination.

Housing discrimination left African Americans living in ghettos such as Harlem and recent immigrants living in their own ghettos such as Little Italy in New York.

And let's try another question.

Which statement about immigration quotas during the 1920s is most accurate? The government introduced quotas to encourage immigration; the government introduced quotas to limit immigration; or the government introduced quotas to limit immigration but favoured recent immigrants? Pause the video here and press play when you're ready to see the right answer.

Okay, well done to everybody who said that the correct answer was B.

The government introduced quota to limit immigration.

For instance, the 1924 National Origins Act restricted immigration to just 150,000 immigrants per year.

So we're now ready to put all of our understanding about the experiences of recent immigrants into practise.

We're gonna divide Task C into two parts.

For the first part, I want you to describe two problems faced by recent immigrants in the USA in the 1920s.

Ensure that your two differences are distinct.

Each difference should also be supported by specific evidence.

So pause the video here, write your answers, and press play when you're ready to reflect on your responses.

Okay, well done for all of your work on that task.

So I asked you to describe two problems faced by recent immigrants in the USA in the 1920s.

Your answer may have included, "Recent immigrants in the USA "suffered from exploitation by employers.

"Because many recent immigrants were poor "and desperate for work, "employers often hired them to work long hours for low pay." Your answer may also have included, "Recent immigrants also faced discrimination, "including when looking for housing.

"For example, many recent immigrants had to live "in slum housing and ghettos "such as Little Italy in New York." So really well done if your own responses looked something like those models which we've just worked through.

And that means we're ready to move on to the second part of Task C.

We have a statement that says, "Racism was the only problem "which led to some groups in the USA "losing out during the boom." Is this statement accurate? I want you to justify your answer.

You may use the following sentence starters to help: "The statement is or is not accurate," "For example," and, "This shows that." So pause the video here, write your response, and then press play when you're ready to reflect on your own answer.

Okay, well done for all of your hard work on that task.

So we had the statement which said, "Racism was the only problem "which led to some groups in the USA "losing out during the boom." And I asked you whether that statement was accurate and for you to justify your answer.

So your answer may have included, "The statement is not accurate.

"For example, 600,000 farmers across the USA "lost their farms in 1924 alone.

"Although this disproportionately affected "African Americans, as many worked on farms, "the cause of these closures was overproduction.

"This shows that some people in the US "lost out during the boom because of economic issues, "not just because of racism." So well done if your own response looked something like that model.

There are other details you may have focused on, but the important thing is, is that you backed up your judgement with clear evidence and an explanation of how your example backed up your original judgement.

And that means we've now reached the end of our lesson for today, so we're in a good position to summarise our learning.

We've seen that agriculture and the coal industry struggled due to problems with overproduction, tariffs, and new competition.

Native Americans suffered from poor conditions on reservations and were also discriminated against by US laws.

African-Americans faced poor economic prospects across the USA and were also subject to racist violence from the KKK.

Immigrants mostly came from Southern and Eastern Europe by 1920.

And recent immigrants suffered from social, economic, and political intolerance.

So really well done for all of your work during today's lesson.

It's been a pleasure to help guide you through our resources, and I look forward to seeing you again in future as we think further about the boom years in the USA and ask ourselves, how did it affect the lives of the American people?.