Chapter 17 Summary - Key Terms and People

Social Darwinism

An idea, actually formulated not by Charles Darwin but by British philosopher and sociologist Herbert Spencer, that human society advanced through ruthless competition and the “survival of the fittest.”

Eugenics

An emerging “science” of human breeding in the late nineteenth century that argued that mentally deficient people should be prevented from reproducing.

American Protective Association (APA)

A powerful anti-immigrant political organization, led by Protestants, that for a brief period in the 1890s counted more than 2 million members. In its virulent anti-Catholicism and called for restrictions on immigrants, the APA prefigured the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.

Social Gospel

A movement to renew religious faith through dedication to public welfare and social justice, reforming both society and the self through faith-based service. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish denominations and lay leaders all participated.

Fundamentalism

A term adopted by Protestants, between the 1890s and the 1910s, who rejected modernism and historical interpretations of scripture and asserted the literal truth of the Bible. Fundamentalists saw secularism and religious relativism as markers of sin, to be punished by God.

Realism

A movement in literature and art, from the 1880s onward, that called for writers and artists t picture daily life as precisely and truly possible.

Modernism

A literary and artistic movement that questioned the ideals of progress and order, rejected realism, and emphasized new cultural forms. It had great cultural influence in the twentieth century and remains influential today.

Plessy v. Ferguson

An 1896 Supreme Court case that ruled that racially segregated railroad cars and other facilities, if they claimed to be “separate but equal,” were permissible according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Jim Crow

Laws that required separation of the races, especially blacks and whites, in public facilities. The post-Civil War decades witnessed many such laws, especially in southern states, and several decades of legal challenges to them. The Supreme Couty upheld them in Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) giving approval to a system of racial segregation in the South that lasted until the 1960s.

Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)

Introduced in Boston in 1851, the YMCA promoted a new model of middle-class masculinity, muscular Christianity, which combined Protestant evangelism with athletic facilities were men could make themselves “clean and strong.”

Negro Leagues

Professional baseball teams formed for and by black players after the 1890s, when the regular national leagues excluded African American players. Enduring until after World War II, the leagues enabled black men to showcase athletic ability and race pride, but working conditions and wages were poor.

Sierra Club

An organization founded in 1892 that was dedicated to the enjoyment and preservation of Aerica’s great mountains (including the Sierra Nevada) and wilderness environments. Encouraged by such groups, national and state governments began to set aside more public lands for preservation and recreation.

National Park Service

A federal agency founded in 1916 that provided comprehensive oversight of the growing system of national parks, established to allow Americans to access and enjoy sites of natural beauty.

Antiquities Act

A 1906 act that allowed the U.S. president to use exclusive powers to set aside, as federal monuments, sites of great environmental or cultural significance. Theodore Roosevelt, the first president to invoke the act’s powers, used the to preserve the Grand Canyon.

Comstock Act

An 1873 law the prohibited circulation of “obscene literature,” defined as including most information on sex, reproduction, and birth control.

Atlanta Compromise

An 1895 address by Booker T. Washington that urged whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all. Delivered at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta, the speech was widely interpreted as approving racial segregation.

Maternalism

The belief that women should contribute to civic and political life through their special talents as mothers, Christians, and mora; guides. Maternalists put this ideology into action by creating dozens of social reform organizations.

Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

An organization advocating the prohibition of liquor that spread rapidly after 1879, when charismatic Frances Willard became its leader. Advocating suffrage and a host of reform activities, it launched tens of thousands of women into public life and was the first nationwide organization to identify and condemn domestic violence.

National Association of Colored Women (NACW)

An organization created in 1896 by African American women to provide community support. NACW members arranged for the care of orphans and the elderly, undertook campaigns for public health and women’s suffrage, and raised awareness of racial injustice.

National American Woman’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

Women’s suffrage organization created in 1890 by the union of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. Up to national ratification of suffrage in 1920, the NAWSA played a central role in campaigning for women’s right to vote.

Feminism

The ideology that women should enter the public sphere not only to work on behalf of others, but also for their own equal rights and advancement. Feminists moved beyond advocacy of women’s voting rights to seek greater autonomy in professional careers, property rights, and personal relationships.

Herbert Spencer

British philosopher inspired by Darwin, created the doctrine of Social Darwinism.

W.E.B. DuBois

a black intellectual and the fist black American to earn a PhD from Harvard. Director of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), was also a scholar tat the Atlanta university. Challenged the position held by Booker T. Washington that southern blacks should compromise their basic rights in exchange for education and legal rights, along with the notion by Frederick Douglass that black Americans should integrate with white society and believed black Americans should instead embrace their African heritage even as they worked and lived in the US. Was the editor of The Crisis.

Billy Sunday

Successor of Dwight L. Moody who helped bring evangelism into the modern era by taking political stances based on his protestant beliefs. His greatest cause was condemning the booze traffic, but also denounced unrestricted immigration and labor radicalism. Supported some progressive reform causes, he opposed child labor, and advocated voting rights for women.

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

One of America’s most famous writers, had a bleak view on life, wrote some lighthearted stories like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), but also others like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) which indicted slavery and racism, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) which ends with the slighter of Aurthur’s knights. Was on of the bitterest critics of American definitions of progress, and was an outspoken critic of imperialism and foreign missions and eventually denounced Christianity itself as a hypocritical delusion.

Thomas Edison

one of the most famous inventors, operated an independent labratort rather than working for a corporation, focused on commercial success, created the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph as well as the moving pictures.

Ida B. Wells

African American journalist, who refused to leave the ladies car after being told to and was physically thrown off the train. She sued and won in local courts, but Tennessee’s supreme court reversed the ruling.

John Muir

fell in love with the Yosemite Valley in 1869, became the most famous voice for wilderness, raised in a stern Scots Presbyterian family on a Wisconsin farm, knew much of the Bible by heart, keen observer who developed a deeply spiritual relationship with the natural world. In cooperation with his editor at the Century magazine founded the Sierra Club in 1892, the club dedicated itself to preserving and enjoying America’s great mountains.

Booker T. Washington

one of the most famous educational projects in the south was his Tuskegee Institute, founded in 1881. He both taught an exemplified the goal of self-help, as at the time many African Americans lived in deep poverty he saw book education as a waste of time and instead focused on industrial education. Tuskegee sent female graduates into teaching and nursing and men more often entered the industrial trades or farmed by the latest scientific methods. He gained national fame in 1895 with his Atlanta Compromise address. Became the most prominent black leader of his generation, his style of leadership was based on avoiding confrontation and cultivating white patronage and private influence believing money was color blind and whites would respect economic success.

Frances Willard

Leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) which more than any other group during the time launched women into reform and political activism. She knew how to frame demands in the language of feminine self-sacrifice. She called for women’s voting rights, lending powerful support to the suffrage movement that emerged during the reconstruction. She was a prohibitionist. Also confronted poverty, hunger, unemployment and other industrial problems. Declared herself a Christian Socialist and urged more attention to workers’ struggles and advocated for an eight-hour workday and abolition of child labor. She retired and eventually died in 1898 in England.