As black Americans stood their ground and fought back, undaunted, against their white assailants in the nationwide race riots of that year, white supremacy appeared vulnerable. As the woman suffrage movement won its seventy-year-long battle for the right to vote, male prerogative no longer seemed assured. As one in every five American workers walked off their jobs to go on strike, the rights of property seemed less clear. And, finally, as Wilson set out to build a global League of Nations, the levers of power moved farther from the hands of non-élite white men than ever before. A middle-class
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