Question

The passage of the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 and the movement to prevent the teaching of evolution in public schools in the 1920s could be best seen as:-
a. conservative responses to social changes
b. Marxist responses to economic dislocation
c. liberal responses to the rise of Ku Klux Klan
d. Democratic responses to the success of the Republican party

Answer 1

Hint: The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 in the United States was an act which decided a numerical digit on the number of immigrants that could come to the country. The movement to prevent the teaching of evolution in the public schools of America was when conservative Christians started to protest against the teaching of evolution in schools as they thought it would have severe social impacts.

Complete answer: - The Emergency Quota Act and the anti-evolution movement were conservative responses to social changes.
 - After World War I, the fear of increasing radicalism and pressure on the White House introduced the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 by which immigration could be restricted. It was based on ‘scientific research’ and it only limited immigration from some countries.
 - Annual quotas for each country of the immigrants was calculated at 3 percent of the total number of foreign-born persons from that country recorded in the 1910 census. This approach to immigration restriction was immediately effective in controlling the population of immigrants.
 - The anti-evolution movement started in the 1920s by the conservative Christians.
The efforts to outlaw the teaching of human evolution in the public schools of America began in the early 1920s, in the next 10 years twenty-three state legislatures had debated this. Only three states—Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas—made the teaching of human evolution illegal. By 1928 legislators, tired of debating the advantages of evolution, were turning their attention to other matters. Local school boards and state textbook commissions occasionally took up the issue, but anti evolution bills remained off legislative agendas until the late 1960s when the Arkansas law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
Therefore, Option a is correct.

Note: The Arkansas law was a law adopted by the state of Arkansas in 1928, which declared the teaching of evolution in the public schools of that state as illegal. In 1968 the US Supreme court declared this statute unconstitutional.