Chapter 21 APUSH Terms

Key vocabulary from Chapter 21 in AMSCO

W.E.B. DuBois (Early 1900s)

1) Famous black civil rights activist after the Civil War and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

2) First African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, he initially believed that the study of social sciences could solve the race problem. However, he gradually came to the conclusion that the Jim Crow South could change through agitation and protest.

3) Originally, he agreed with Booker T. Washington. By the 1900s he created the Niagara Movement, which opposed Washington's policies and demanded full political and social equality for blacks immediately.

Taylorism (Early 1900s)

1) A system of scientific management created and promoted by Frederick Winslow Taylor to improve the efficiency of business.

2) Emphasized observing individual workers and eliminating inefficient and time-wasting practices in order to increase productivity.

3) Part of the Progressive Era’s focus on fostering efficiency, it was embraced by reformers and business owners who wanted to increase profits, and Henry Ford’s assembly line was a product of this system. However, it was despised by Unions and laborers who felt that it reduced workers to machines.

Jacob Riis (1890)

1) Muckraking journalist who exposed the desperate conditions of tenements in city slums

2) Wrote a bestselling book entitled How the Other Half Lives

3) His photographs helped lead to urban reforms and a call to improve the living conditions

John Muir (Late 1800s)

1) Influential preservationist and founder of the Sierra Club, which was an environmental organization designed to protect the natural resources and the environment.

2) Has been called “The Father of Our National Parks” and was influential in the creation of Yosemite National Park.

3) Was friends with Theodore Roosevelt and convinced him as President to set aside land for protection.

Booker T. Washington (Late 1800s)

1) Former slave who became a leading advocate of black civil rights during the Progressive Movement

2) Stated in his “Atlanta Compromise” speech that blacks must accept segregation in the short term and focus on attaining economic equality before demanding full political equality.

3) Founded the Tuskegee Institute which taught blacks industrial skills.

Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

1) Federal law that tried to prevent the creation of monopolies.

2) Part of Progressives’ focus of curbing the power of big businesses.

3) Strengthened the Sherman Antitrust Act by closing loopholes that had allowed certain business practices that restricted competition. It also upheld the rights of labor by no longer classifying unions as monopolies.

Ida B. Wells (1902)

1) Influential journalist and black civil rights activist after the Civil War.

2) Risked her own life by leading an anti-lynching crusade, which exposed the horrors of lynch mobs in the Jim Crow South and the attempts by whites to intimidate African Americans.

3) Through extensive research learned about the injustices surrounding the numerous lynchings of blacks and exposed them in her newspaper the Memphis Free Speech.

Robert La Follette (Early 1900s)

1) Wisconsin governor who brought about many democratic reforms in the state’s politics and later became a U.S. Senator.

2) He introduced the idea of direct primaries and the referendum, which empowered citizens to vote on local issues and have more voice in government.

3) His “Wisconsin Idea” was the belief that efficient government should be controlled by voters rather than big businesses and monopolies, and that help from professors in law, economics and natural sciences would produce the most effective government possible. This idea became a model for other state governments during the Progressive Era.

Square Deal (1901-1909)

1) Name of President Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic policy that focused on the 3 C's: control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources.

2) It aimed to help the middle class by increasing the role of the federal government and helped make the Progressivism a national movement.

3) Term was first used in 1902 during a coal miners’ strike when the President sought a fair settlement between the company and workers. This was different than previous government actions, which had favored business over workers during labor disputes.

Gifford Pinchot (Early 1900s)

1) He was a conservationist who believed that natural resources should be used responsibly and not wasted.

2) He helped create the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, which managed the national forests (not national parks). Under his and Roosevelt's leadership, the government developed a land use policy that combined recreation, sustainable logging, watershed protection, and summer livestock grazing on federal land.

3) His policies sometimes came into conflict with preservationists such as John Muir who believed the environment should be left untouched.

The Jungle (1906)

1) Novel written by Upton Sinclair who was a muckraker that exposed the unsanitary meatpacking conditions and poor working conditions in the Chicago slaughterhouses.

2) In response, Teddy Roosevelt pressed Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act, which allowed for the federal inspection of the meat packing industry.

3) Also led to the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, gave the government the power to inspect and regulate the labeling of all foods and drugs intended for human consumption.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911)

1) 146 women were killed when a fire erupted in a shirtwaist factory in New York City. It was a sweatshop that occupied the top three floors of a building in Manhattan.

2) The deaths were largely preventable. Most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The firefighters who attempted to put out the fire could not rescue the victims because their ladders did not reach high enough, and many of the workers jumped out the window to avoid the flames.

3) The event brought widespread attention to the dangerous conditions inside sweatshops and led to calls for more government regulation of working conditions. By 1917, thirty states had established workers' compensation laws, which provided insurance for workers injured in industrial accidents.

Florence Kelley (Early 1900s)

1) A former resident of Jane Addam's Hull House who was deeply concerned about unsafe and unsanitary factory conditions, especially for women and children.

2) She was appointed as the first chief factory inspector for the State of Illinois, and in 1899, she became a leader of the National Consumers League, which mobilized female consumers to push for laws safeguarding women and children in the workplace. Her efforts helped pave the way for the Muller v. Oregon decision (1908) which upheld the constitutionality of laws limiting the hours of women workers. While this was initially viewed as a victory for progressives, the Muller v. Oregon decision was later used to keep women out of "male" jobs.

3) She lobbied Congress to pass the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916, which banned the sale of products created by factories that employed children under 14. This law would later be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but it set the stage for future laws limiting child labor in the United States.

Federal Reserve Act (1914)

1) Created a central banking system, consisting of twelve regional banks governed by the Federal Reserve Board.

2) An attempt to provide the United States with a sound but flexible currency and create stability on a national scale in the banking industry.

3) Still around today, it has helped to curb the number of panics and recessions facing the U.S. economy.

Black Great Migration (1910-1930)

1) Refers to when millions of African Americans moved from the South to North

2) This was caused by the lure of new job opportunities in the North due to World War I openings, crop (cotton) failures in the South, and harsh segregation in the South.

3) Led to an increase in racial discrimination in Northern cities and various race riots in places like Chicago. Many cities such as Chicago put racial restrictive covenants into place, which were used to keep neighborhoods white. African Americans were legally prohibited from buying, renting, or leasing property in certain areas of the city, creating segregated neighborhoods in the North.

Alice Paul (1910s)

1) Famous suffragist and women’s activist who founded the National Women’s Party

2) Militant women's rights leader who led demonstrations and hunger strikes for women’s suffrage. These protests eventually led to her imprisonment.

3) She eventually convinced President Wilson to support women’s suffrage and later fought for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first proposed in 1923, but was never passed.

Nineteenth Amendment (1920)

1) Guaranteed women’s right to vote.

2) Prior to this, women could vote in some states in certain elections but now could vote in every election in all states.

3) Fulfilled the goal of the women's suffrage movement, which began with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.