| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation will focus on the First Red Scare in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The First Red Scare was a wave of mass panic and hysteria directed against suspected radicals, leftists, anarchist, and Communist groups that swept across the United States from roughly1919-1920. Following World War I, and the rapid spread of Soviet Bolshevism in Russia, many in the U.S. government, media, and populace feared a hostile Communist takeover. The ensuing event resulted in deportations, mass deprivations of civil liberties, race riots, and exacerbated racial and ethnic hatred. State governments, media, and populations in the Great Plains, notably from Kansas and Oklahoma, and from the Borderlands, including New Mexico and Texas, contributed to the hysteria. Through the actions of these groups, the U.S. came close to a war with Mexico over suspected radical elements, and the nation experimented with repressive labor laws as a cure for left-wing radicalism. The Great Plains and U.S.-Mexico Borderlands became a key center of focus during the First Red Scare, and helped shape the national narrative. While several historians have written directly about the First Red Scare in the U.S., they have generally focused on the east and west coasts. Few have analyzed the event in the Great Plains and U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. This dissertation restores these regions to their rightful place in the historiography, and shows how they became influential in driving policy decisions during the event, leaving a lasting legacy of repression, fear, and hatred. | en_US |
