African Americans and Women
During the Progressive Era
• Industrialization led to smaller families and
greater opportunities for women to work
outside of the home
• Jobs were mainly in the textile industry,
although women also worked as telephone
operators, secretaries and typists.
• Women’s universities opened throughout the
nation.
• International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
•
•
•
•
1911
Windows, doors and fire exits were blocked
146 women died
Led to greater reforms in the conditions of
garment factories in NY
• Mother Jones continued to work for the rights
of railroad workers and coal miners.
Political Rights
• 1900- Carrie Chapman Catt became president of
the National American Woman Suffrage
Association
– Argued that if women were given the right to vote,
they could support Wilson’s causes
– Catt eventually formed the League of Women Voters
• Alice Paul broke from NAWSA to form the
National Women’s Party
– More militant
– Picketing, hunger strikes
– Eventually began advocating for passage of the ERA
• WWI
– Many women filled jobs that men left when they
went to fight
– War split the women’s movement
• Some women, like Alice Paul, were pacifists and
protested against “Kaiser Wilson” and the war
• Others supported the war and used it to argue for
expanded rights
– Some additional states such as NY granted woman suffrage
– Permanent Women’s Bureau in the Dept. of Labor
created
– After war most women gave up jobs
p678
19th Amendment
• 1920
• Supported by Wilson
• Granted women suffrage
Other issues
• Margaret Sanger advocated birth control
education (movement evolved into Planned
Parenthood)
• Educational equality
• More liberal marriage and divorce laws
• Property rights
• Reducing discrimination in business and the
professions
• Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act (1921)
• Provided federally financed instruction in maternal and
infant health care
• Expanded responsibility of federal government for
family welfare
• Supported traditional role of women as mothers
Resources
• Women’s Suffrage
– http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/11/08/vintag
e-anti-suffrage-postcards/
• 1913 Woman’s Suffrage Parade
– http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/03/100-yearsago-the-1913-womens-suffrage-parade/100465/
• Women of the Progressive Era
– https://www.nwhm.org/educationresources/resources/lesson-plans-home/progressive-era/
• Wilson and Woman’s Suffrage, The American
Experience
– http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/portrait/wp_suffr
age.html
African Americans
• 1896- Plessy v. Ferguson
– Separate but equal
• Segregation
• Loss of political rights (poll taxes, literacy tests,
etc.)
• Violence/lynchings
• Many progressives ignored the plight of African
Americans
• Wilson issued an executive order to segregate
federal buildings
• Birth of a Nation- glamorized the KKK
• “Colored Troops Disembarking,” 1898 Edison
film during the Spanish American War
• http://www.loc.gov/item/00694179/
• “Do the colored people of the United States
deserve equal consideration with the Cuban
people at the hands of your administration,
and shall they, though late, receive it?”
-I.D. Barnett et. al, Open Letter to President
McKinley by Colored People of Massachusetts, October 3, 1899
• “If it is a white man’s government, and we
grant it is, let him take care of it. The Negro
has no flag to defend.”
-Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E.
Church, “The Negro Should Not Enter the Army,” May 1, 1899
Ida B. Wells
-Fought for African
American rights
-Wrote articles against
lynching
-Opposed Booker T.
Washington’s policy of
accommodation
Laboratory at Tuskegee Institute, 1902
Booker T. Washington
• Head of the Tuskegee Institute
• Most influential African American at the turn
of the century
• Atlanta Exposition Speech (1895)
• Continued to argue that African Americans
needed the skills necessary to work within the
white world- “accommodation”
W.E.B. Du Bois
•
•
•
•
Distinguished scholar and writer
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Demanded equal rights
While Booker T. Washington took a pragmatic
approach to economic advancement, Du Bois
was more militant
– This would frame the debate throughout the 20th
century
Niagara Movement
• 1905
• W.E.B. Du Bois held a meeting in Niagara Falls
• Believed that African Americans should
demand social and political equality
• 1908 Group joined with other African
Americans and whites to form the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP)
National Urban League
• Formed 1911
• Helped African Americans migrating from the
South to the North
• Emphasized self-reliance and economic
advancement
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica
Moved to America in
1916
-Formed the Universal Negro
Improvement Association
-it became an international organization
-emphasized racial pride and economic
empowerment
-known for “back to Africa” movement
-deported in 1927
Great Migration
• 1910-1930
• Millions of African Americans moved from the
South to northern cities in search of jobs and a
better life
• Reasons- deteriorating race relations in the
south; destruction of the cotton crop by the boll
weevil; job opportunities especially during WWI
• The fight against discrimination was just as
difficult in the North
• Various cities experienced race riots (Chicago
1919)
Resources
• W.E.B. Dubois
– http://www.webdubois.org/wdb-sources.html#sstc12
• African Americans during the Progressive Era, LOC
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsan
dactivities/presentations/civilrights/learn_more.html#progressiveera
• Wilson and African Americans, The American Experience
– http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/portrait/wp_african.html
• Marcus Garvey, The American Experience
– http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/p_garvey.html
• The Great Migration
– http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/landing.cfm;jsessionid=f83
03419881424710104642?migration=8&bhcp=1