Social Changes

From the Great Migration to women’s suffrage, the Great War had indirectly led to many social changes in the United States, and the school attempted to raise the students’ awareness of these ongoing changes.

Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage

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Mr. Carter's address

On January 20th, 1918, Mr. Carter talked to the Episcopal students on current events, placing emphasis on the two Constitutional Amendments that had recently been passed by the Congress. Refraining from expressing his own opinion on the given issue, Carter elaborated on the proposals behind the Eighteenth Amendment, pertaining to the prohibition of alcoholic products and Nineteenth Amendment, pertaining to the women’s suffrage. He further explained that the prohibition, that it would not affect distilleries that had already been shut down.

It would take, however, another two years for the Nineteenth Amendment, to get ratified by the state legislatures and thereby to be finally added to the Constitution. As the Woman Suffrage Movement intensified, it became harder for the student body to simply ignore. A cartoon in the Whisper of 1920-1921, the school year after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, included a cartoon portraying the suffragist in the “Lectures and Entertainment” section, further reflecting the students’ awareness of the social change.

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The cartoon figure is standing on top of a soap box, a stereotypical depiction of suffragists protesting on soap boxes on streets.

Segregation

When addressing the students, Mr. Carter also described a recent Supreme Court case on race and segregation. While the Chronicle did not refer to the name of the case, it was most likely Buchanan v. Warley, which was decided in November, 1917. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Supreme Court, in an unanimous decision, invalidated the residential segregation ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky, that forbade African Americans from living in white-majority quarters. While it failed to end the de jure segregation and racially restrictive covenants continued to segregate housing in the U.S., Buchanan v. Warley still represented an important civil right victory. Carter commented on the case that “doubtless it would be quite a while before [the effect of the case] can be felt, since custom, poverty and ignorance stood in the way.”

Labor Movements