Life at the Turn of the Twentieth
Century (1870-1915)
Chapter 9
Section 1
THE EXPANSION OF
EDUCATION
The Growth of Public Schools
1870- only 2% of all 17 year-olds
graduated from high school
 By 1900- 31 states had laws requiring
children between the ages of 8-14 to
attend school
 Early 1900s- about ½ of nation’s children
attended 1 room schools (like Little
House on the Prairie)

Immigrants and Education
Literacy
 Assimilation

◦ American standards
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Thrift
Patriotism
Hard work
Cook traditional American foods
American games- i.e. baseball
Some immigrants sent children to religious
schools where they could learn their own cultural
traditions in their own languages so children
would not forget their cultural heritage
Uneven Support for Schools
Whites and Af. Am. Attended diff. schools
 Schools of Af. Am., Mexicans, and Asians
received less funding

Higher Education Expands
1880-1910- more American colleges and
universities opened allowing college enrollment
to increase
 By 1915- some middle-income families were
beginning to send their children to college
 Few colleges admitted Af. Am.- many attended all
Af. Am. institutes
 After Civil War, there was a call for greater
educational opportunities for women resulting in
the establishment of private women’s colleges

◦ Faced social prejudice
◦ Fewer scholarships available
◦ Unequal treatment in coeducational colleges
Perspectives on Af. Am. Ed.

Booker T. Washington- founded Tuskegee Institute
◦ Told Af. Am. To put aside their desire for political
equality for now and instead focus on building
economic security by gaining vocational skills
◦ Up from Slavery

W.E.B. Du Bois- black leader/part of NAACP
◦ Argued that the brightest Af.Am. Had to step forward
to lead their people in their quest for political and
social equality and civil rights
◦ Helped found the Niagara Movement- a group of Af.
Am. That called for full civil liberties, an end to racial
discrimination, and recognition of human
brotherhood
Section 2
NEW FORMS OF
ENTERTAINMENT
Vaudeville
Inexpensive variety show
 Based on ethnic/racial humor; song and
dance routines; magic acts; and
performances by ventriloquists, jugglers,
and animals
 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/v
audeville/movies.html

Movies
Silent and often accompanied by a live
piano player
 Started as short slapstick comedies and
grew in length with popularity
 The Great Train Robbery
 http://archive.org/details/the-greattrainrobbery

Other forms of Performance and
Recreation


The Circus
Sports
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Boxing
Horse Racing
*Baseball *
Football – adapted from European Rugby
Basketball – only major sport of exclusively
American Origin
Amusement Parks
◦ Mechanical rides developed from trolley
technology
◦ Coney Island’s Luna Park
Print

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Magazines
Popular Fiction
Newspapers
◦ Publishers created larger and more interesting
publications with features such as
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Comics
Sports sections
Sunday editions
Women’s pages
Stories “hot of the wires”
Graphic pictures
◦ Yellow journalism- sensational news coverage (refers
to the yellow ink used in a popular comic strip of the
era)
Yellow Journalism

The term yellow journalism came from a popular
New York World comic called "Hogan's Alley,"
which featured a yellow-dressed character named
the "the yellow kid." Determined to compete
with Pulitzer's World in every way, rival New York
Journal owner William Randolph Hearst copied
Pulitzer's sensationalist style and even hired
"Hogan's Alley" artist R.F. Outcault away from the
World. In response, Pulitzer commissioned
another cartoonist to create a second yellow kid.
Soon, the sensationalist press of the 1890s
became a competition between the "yellow kids,"
and the journalistic style was coined "yellow
journalism."
Music

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The Negro Spiritual- Fisk Jubilee Singers
introduced spirituals to white audiences and
earned enough money to save Fisk
University
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JtD_Ypy
XYU
Ragtime- music originating among black
musicians in the South and Midwest in the
1880s featuring melodies with shifting
accents over a steady, marching-band beat
Jazz originated in New Orleans
Jubilee Singers
Section 3
THE WORLD OF JIM
CROW
Jim Crow Laws Overview
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1st appeared in Mass. In the 1830s
Became firmly est. in southern states after
Reconstruction
Required the separation of blacks and whites
in schools, parks, public buildings, and public
transportation
Declared legal by Supreme Court in Plessy v.
Ferguson decision
Battled against by the Nation Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP)
Jim Crow
A short video showing images of Thomas Rice
as "Jim Crow," minstrel inspired toys, and
clips from minstrel performances.Video
features the "Jump Jim Crow" tune.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FpK
AxQNKU&feature=youtu.be

Voting Restrictions
Property or pay a poll tax- a special fee
that must be paid before a person was
permitted to vote
 Literacy tests (blacks were given much
more difficult tests than whites)
 Grandfather clauses exempted men from
certain voting restrictions if they had
already voted, or if they had ancestors
who had voted prior to blacks being
granted suffrage

Segregation
Separation of people by race
 Ensured Af.Am were treated as secondclass citizens
 When this separation is the result of
custom, it is called de facto segregation
(meaning the condition exists in fact, but
not in law)
 In the South, segregation was required by
statutes called Jim Crow laws

Plessy v. Ferguson


Af. Am. Homer Plessy argued that his right
to “equal protection of the laws” was
violated by a Louisiana law that required
separate seating for white and black citizens
on public railroads
Court held that segregation was legal as long
as the separate facilities provided for blacks
were equal to those provided to whites
◦ The equal part of the decision was difficult to
enforce
Results of Plessy v. Ferguson

Violence could result if blacks did not follow
racial etiquette meant to keep blacks “in their
place”
◦ Always show deference to whites
◦ Blacks had to remove their hats or step off the curb
to let whites pass

Lynching- murder of an accused person by a mob
w/o a lawful trial
◦ about 1,200 Af.Am. Were lynched between 1882-1892

Race riots erupted NYC in 1900 and Springfield,
IL in 1908 as a result of white’s fears of racial
equality
Lynching
NAACP

National Association
For the Advancement
Of Colored People

Founded in 1909

Purpose was to abolish segregation and
discrimination, to oppose racism, and to gain
civil rights for Af. Am.
1st victory in 1914 when the Supreme Court
declared grandfather clauses in voting laws
unconstitutional

Section 4
THE CHANGING ROLES
OF WOMEN
The Woman Question
A wide-ranging debate about the roles of
women in society
 Equality

◦ Right to vote
◦ Right to control and own their own property
and income
◦ Access to higher education and professional
jobs
Reality of women’s lives at the turn
of the century
Women worked in most sectors of the
economy and in many areas of public life
 Work in the home was still essential
 Small number of women were earning
advanced degrees and entering
professions
 Others built volunteer organizations

◦ Reformed education
◦ Labor relations
◦ Public health
Women’s Work in the Home

Technological revolution made housework less
physically taxing and time consuming
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Washing machine
Electric vacuum
Carpet sweeper
Foods in tin cans
Ready-made clothing
1908 book The Cost of Cleanliness
Removing dust and tracked-in dirt from an eight
room house = 18 hours/week
 Furnace, fireplaces, and oil lighting = 27
hours/week
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Producer to Consumer

More and more ready-made goods became
available commercially
◦ Food, clothing, furnishings
Stores, catalogs, and advertising geared to attract
women’s business
 Department stores- large retail establishments
that carried such a wide variety of goods they
were divided into departments

◦ Marshall Field; Macy’s

Chain Stores
◦ F.W. Woolworth’s

Brand names became popular
Producer to Consumer

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Rural free delivery
(RFD)- free mail delivery
in rural areas gave farm
families access to
manufactured items at a
low price
Mail-order catalogsprinted materials
advertising a wide range
of goods that could be
purchased by mail
◦ Montgomery Ward
◦ Sears

Money-back guarantees
earned customers’ trust
Working Outside the Home
Most working women were single between
the age of 16-24
 Earned 30-60% a week less than men
 Common jobs- nurses, teachers, typists,
telephone operators
 Most of American society believed that
women did not have the mental capacity for
professional training
 Domestic work and important source of
income- 1 in 15 households employed live-in
servants (mostly immigrants and African
Americans)

Volunteering

Women formed hundreds
of clubs and associations to
facilitate their activities
◦ studied subjects of common interest; gave talks;
heard lectures; promoted specific causes like
temperance and girls’ edu; established new
libraries and playgrounds; etc.
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Clubs gave women members invaluable
experience in speaking, writing, and finance
Helped increase self-confidence and take
first steps toward public life
Woman Question Expands

Lifestyle Changes
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Dress and behavior
Shorter hairstyles
Raised hemlines
Wear skirts and blouses suited
to new jobs/activities
Courting and marriage customs
◦ Dated w/out supervision
◦ Rise in divorce
◦ Birth control

Increased support for suffrage