One Summer: America, 1927

by Bill Bryson

It was not a good time to be either a radical or an alien in America, and a positively dangerous time to be both. America was in the grip of something known as the Great Red Scare. In 1917 and 1918, Congress had enacted two startlingly restrictive laws, the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act. Together these provided severe penalties for anyone found guilty of displaying almost any kind of disrespect to the American government, including its symbols—the flag, military uniforms, historic documents, or anything else in which was deemed to repose the glory and dignity of the United States of America—and these were imposed with a harsh and punitive zeal. “Citizens were imprisoned for criticizing the Red Cross at their own dinner tables,” one commentator noted. A clergyman in Vermont was given a fifteen-year jail term for handing out half a dozen pacifist leaflets. In Indiana, a jury took just two minutes to acquit a man who had shot an immigrant for speaking ill of America.