The Intolerance of American Society in the 1920s American society was going through great changes at the beginning of the 20th century. The world was changing and America should not be left behind. The twentieth century brought with it the age of consumption to America, and although technology was becoming more advanced, was society really progressing with the times and becoming as "civilized" as people liked to believe? America had previously been a very intolerant society, with slavery as one of its key industries, and although it operated with an open-door "melting pot" policy, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) society was indeed as open as he liked to believe in white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant (WASP) society. diversity of other cultures? The purpose of this essay is to try to explore how tolerant American society really was, examining the key areas of racism, political intolerance, and religion. In the 1920s, political intolerance in America increased dramatically, not only with the reforming of racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but also with Congress passing immigration laws and events like the Palmer Raids. Before the 1920s America had a "melting pot" policy, which meant that anyone was welcome to immigrate to the United States, and they would be welcome. People would blend different cultures together to form an “American” culture. However this did not work, as even as people migrated, they did not blend their cultures together and instead continued to follow the traditions they had grown up with. Americans like the WASPs began to feel threatened by immigrants and began to see them as cultural and political threats. Particularly f... middle of paper... society was tolerant in the 1920s, I think you have to look at different areas of society individually. In the North new ideas were more easily accepted as these were mainly industrial areas, and although racism was common here it was not as bad as in the South where "Jim Crow laws" were enforced. The American South consisted mostly of rural areas and so traditionalists tended to live here and wanted America to remain filled with a WASP society with its own morals and values. However times were changing and although the North was becoming more tolerant in an attempt to keep up with the rest of the world, the South was not. In the 1920s America was quite intolerant of new ideas, however when it came to civil rights, especially in the north of the country, many wanted to respect not only the law but also religion..