Progressive era pt 2

Overview of the Progressive Movement

  • Discussion on the emergence and key figures of the Progressive Movement.
  • Focus on different aspects: women's involvement and disenfranchisement of African-Americans.
  • Key historical references: Teddy Roosevelt's candidacy in 1912 with the Progressive Party.

Context and Conditions for Progressivism

  • Progressivism arose in response to various social issues:
    • Urban poverty.
    • Inequality.
    • The rise of monopolies (trusts).
    • Poor working conditions exemplified by events like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Key Topics of Discussion

Women's Role in the Progressive Movement

  • **Importance of Women:
    • Women played a significant role in galvanizing progressive activism.
    • Jane Addams as a leading figure in the movement.
  • Jane Addams:
    • Well-educated, believed in the obligation of middle-class people to live and work among the lower class.
    • Inspired by European settlement houses that provided social services.
    • Founded Hull House in Chicago.
Hull House Functions
  • Services provided included:
    • Nurseries for infants.
    • Kindergartens and after-school programs.
    • Sports clubs for children.
    • Cultural and social events.
    • Political initiatives to expose bad working conditions, advocate for workers' rights, and conduct community surveys.
  • Defined poverty and industrialization as a "social crime."
Progressive Attitude Towards Social Issues
  • Distrust of labor unions, similar to monopolies:
    • Viewed as self-interested and in opposition to societal well-being.
    • Advocated for federal government mediation in labor disputes.
    • Emphasis on social harmony instead of class warfare.

Anti-Imperialism and Jane Addams

  • Jane Addams was an anti-imperialist:
    • Critiqued militarism that arose from American foreign policy.
    • Argued against the notion of America having a moral duty to intervene abroad.
    • Advocated for resource allocation toward domestic issues rather than military excursions.
    • Opposed U.S. entry into WWI; received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Racial Equality and Women's Suffrage

  • Addams co-founded the NAACP in 1909.
  • Advocated for racial equality, contributing to women's suffrage movement:
    • Women’s right to vote consolidated support in the Progressive Era.
    • By 1911, only six Western states had granted women suffrage.
  • Woodrow Wilson's Support:
    • Endorsed women's suffrage by 1918; 19th Amendment ratified in 1920, granting women voting rights.
Prohibition Movement
  • Many women in the Progressive Era also supported prohibition:
    • Believed alcohol correlated with social issues (poverty, abuse, divorces).
    • Carrie Nation famously protested against alcohol in 1900 by vandalizing bars.
    • Women's Christian Temperance Union formed in the 1870s, gained national significance by the 1890s.
  • Anti-Saloon League (formed in 1912) blamed alcohol for various social problems.

Disenfranchisement of African Americans

  • Emergence of legal disenfranchisement practices post-Reconstruction from 1890 to 1908:
    • Systematic exclusion of African Americans from political life using anti-corruption rhetoric.
    • Example: Alabama had 180,000 qualified African American voters but only 3,000 registered by 1900.
    • Methods of disenfranchisement:
    • Poll taxes.
    • Grandfather clauses.
    • Literacy tests (often arbitrarily enforced to exclude voters).
    • All-white primaries preventing African Americans from voting in Democratic primaries.
  • Many white progressives exhibited ambivalence towards African American disenfranchisement.

African American Activism

Ida B. Wells
  • Born into slavery, became a journalist and civil rights advocate:
    • Documented lynchings as acts of political terrorism in "Southern Horrors, Lynch Law in All Its Faces."
    • Co-founded the NAACP, pushed for anti-lynching legislation in Congress.
Booker T. Washington
  • Born in Virginia, educated at an HBCU, founded Tuskegee Institute:
    • Advocated for economic independence through vocational training.
    • Delivered the Atlanta Compromise speech advocating acceptance of segregation in return for minimal rights.
W.E.B. Du Bois
  • A prominent figure who opposed Washington's accommodationism:
    • Born in Massachusetts, first African American to earn a PhD from Harvard.
    • Co-founded the NAACP; encouraged activism for civil rights and opposed racial discrimination.
  • Created the Niagara Movement advocating against disenfranchisement and segregation.
  • Authored significant works including "The Souls of Black Folk" which critiqued the status quo.

Conclusion

  • The Progressive Era was characterized by the expansion of government roles and reforms addressing societal issues.
  • While it built foundations for regulatory bodies and supported suffrage, it simultaneously marked profound racial disenfranchisement and ambivalence towards African American rights.
  • The reformist nature of progressivism contrasts with radical approaches; it aimed to maintain stability rather than challenge the existing political structure.