Rationale

The topic I chose to present on was The American Reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution, also known as The First Red Scare of 1919-1920. My project consisted of two parts: a poster board and a wiki. The first part, the poster, offered an in depth analysis of an important part of the Red Scare. It contained information on the USS Buford, a ship used to deport Reds from the US. My wiki offered an overall look at the Red Scare, the events that caused it, and how it ended. These two presentation tools combined allowed me to effectively communicate what I learned about the First Red Scare.

Although the poster board is an effective tool for a museum project, I had to make sure I did not use too much text. To do this, I used short captions and large text to make it readable. The left wing of the board appears to have an uncalled for amount of text, however, this is actually an actual account of what it was like on the Buford. I picked pictures of important people on board to Buford, a picture of the actual ship, and political cartoons that all represented the desensitized hysteria that this ship was involved in. The newspaper clipping that the picture of the Buford is on has a caption saying "249 Reds as a Christmas present to Lenin and Trotzky." Information that I included on the board were a brief history of the Red Scare, a history of the Buford and what it was used for during the Red Scare, and an account of what it was like on the ship. However, not everything could be put on the board. I did not include information about the important people on the ship, or about the constitutionality of what happened. This is because I decided this information would be better to discuss during the presentation.

On my wiki, I offered a broader scope of the time period. Although the project was about the 1920s and 1930s, I felt that it was important to describe what was happening during WWI. People often say that the Red Scare began during 1919, but the problems that led up to this began during WWI with the Espionage and Sedition Acts. I also separated my wiki according to topics that people may be interested in learning more about. These topics were WWI, Important People, Events, and Ending. This was the most effective way to break down the Red Scare because people may want to learn about a certain subject, but not want to look through pages of other information. Although I attempted to encompass most of the Red Scare while not making my wiki unwieldy, there were just too many events that contributed to the situation. I only included the events that I felt were most important to this time period. For example, I left out information about The Race Riots because I felt the connection to the Red Scare was not as strong as the bombings and strikes. Also there were so many important people on both sides of the Red Scare that it would be impossible to write about them all. I included several examples that capture the mood of the time on both sides of the issue.

Overall, my project gave a fair sample of what the First Red Scare was like. My poster used primary evidence to show not only the hysteria of the time, but also the conditions aboard the Buford. Although I would have liked to include more on the board, I did discuss these issues in my presentation. On my wiki, however, I offered these topics and more ranging from before the Red Scare to the end. The wiki, while obviously not including everything, gives information about both sides and reasons for why the Red Scare occurred. I felt that I used both parts of my project together to effectively display information about the First Red Scare to many who have never heard of it.