Behold, America: A History of America First and the American Dream

328 Pages·2018·3.89 MB·English

by  Sarah Churchwell

BEHOLD, AMERICA
ALSO BY SARAH CHURCHWELL
The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Prologue: First, America First
PART ONE 1900–1920
1 The American Dream 1900–1916: The Spirit of American Dreams
2 America First 1900–1916: Pure Americanism Against the Universe
3 The American Dream 1917–1920: What Do You Call That But Socialism?
4 America First 1917–1920: We Have Emerged from Dreamland
PART TWO 1920–1930
5 The American Dream 1921–1923: Salesmen of Prosperity
6 America First 1920–1923: The Simplicity of Government
7 The American Dream 1924–1929: A Willingness of the Heart
8 America First 1923–1929: A Super Patriot, Patriot
PART THREE 1930–1940
9 The American Dream 1930–1934: Das Dollarland
10 America First 1930–1934: The Official Recognition of Reality
11 The American Dream 1934–1939: The Pageant of History
12 America First 1935–1939: It Can Happen Here
13 America First and the American Dream 1939–1941: Americans! Wake Up!
Epilogue 1945–2017: Still America Firsting
Coda
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index
A Note on the Author
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Memorial Day Parade riots in Queens, NY. Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn,
NY), 31 May 1927.
The Times-Dispatch (Richmond, VA), 20 August 1914.
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA), 24 June 1884.
Morning News (Wilmington, DE), 13 November 1894.
Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, NY), 21 April 1915.
The Advertiser (Lawrence, KS), 7 September 1916.
The Allentown Leader (Allentown, PA), 26 January 1916.
Woodrow Wilson campaign poster, 1916.
San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco, CA), 3 October 1918.
The Lynching of Jesse Washington, Waco, Texas (‘The Waco Horror’), 15 May
1916.
Washington Times (Washington, DC), 29 August 1917.
Evening Journal (Wilmington, DE), 7 January 1918.
Washington Herald (Washington, DC), 29 December 1922.
Warren G. Harding campaign poster, 1920.
El Paso Herald (El Paso, TX), 3 July 1920.
The Lynching of Lige Daniels, Center, Texas, 3 August, 1920.
Evening World (New York, NY), 5 July 1922.
Evening World (New York, NY), 6 September 1921.
‘Terrorism’, Philadelphia Public Ledger, reprinted in Los Angeles Times, 9
October 1921.
Courier-Gazette (McKinney, TX), 17 August 1922.
‘Women of America!’, Pamphlet of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan, 1923.
Reputed to be the first photo of Adolph Hitler in a US newspaper. News Leader
(Staunton, VA), 27 September 1923.
Independent Record (Helena, MT), 14 May 1923.
‘The Silent March on Washington’, Anti-Lynching Protest, 1922.
‘Our Own Hooded Kobra’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn, NY), 30 September
1923.
‘Listen!’, Chicago Defender (Chicago, IL), 22 September, 1923.
Oakland Tribune (Oakland, CA), 18 May 1930.
The Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. Muncie Evening Press
(Muncie, IN), 8 August 1930.
‘This is her first lynching’, New Yorker, 8 September 1934.
Decatur Herald (Decatur, IL), 10 October 1930.
Rally of the Friends of New Germany, Madison Square Garden, NY, 17 May
1934.
Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 2 October 1939.
‘German Day’, Madison Square Garden, NY, 6 October 1935.
German-American Bund and Italian fascists parade at Camp Siegfried, Yaphank,
Long Island. Shamokin News-Dispatch (Shamokin, PA), 1 September
1937.
Nazis parade on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The Greenville News (Greenville,
SC), 3 November 1937.
German-American Bund holds an ‘Americanization Rally’, Madison Square
Garden, NY, 20 February 1939.
St Louis Star and Times (St Louis, MO), 5 August 1939.
Swastika hangs on a Confederate Memorial in Danville, VA. Jackson Sun
(Jackson, TN), 7 July 1940.
Charles Lindbergh addresses a rally of the America First Committee, Fort
Wayne, IN, 3 October 1941.
Dr Seuss cartoon of America First: ‘The Great U.S. Sideshow’, Courier-Journal
(Louisville, KT), 11 July 1941.
St Louis Star and Times (St Louis, MO), 16 August 1941.
‘His Most Appreciative Audience’, Des Moines Register (Des Moines, IO), 11
September 1941.
‘America First’ commemorative coin of the Ku Klux Klan, 1965.
Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, 20 July 2016.
Images here, here, here, here, here, here, here © Getty Images Image here ©
Chicago Defender
Image here © Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
Image here © Associated Press
Oh, critic and cynic, dreamer and doubter, behold America, as this day she stands before her history
and her heroes. See her millions of people, her free institutions, her equal laws, her generous
opportunities, her schoolhouses and her churches; you see misfortunes and defects, for not yet is fully
realized the American dream; you surely see her mighty progress toward the fulfillment of her
philosophy.
Oration in honour of President Ulysses S. Grant, 1895
It was an effort toward some commonweal, an effort difficult to estimate, so closely does it press
against us all …
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1933