Supporting standards comprise
35% of the U. S. History Test
23 (B)
Supporting Standard (23)
The student understands efforts to expand the
democratic process.
The Student is expected to:
(B) Evaluate vari0s means of achieving equality
of political rights, including the 19th, 24th, & 26th
amendments & congressional acts such as the
American Indian Citizenship Act of 1924
Supporting Standard (23)
The student understands efforts to expand the
democratic process.
The Student is expected to:
(B) Evaluate vari0s means of achieving equality
of political rights, including the 19th
amendment—see 5 A (8) below (& also 9 A [1])
Readiness Standard (5)
5 (A) 8
th
19 Amendment,
1920
Women in the
Workplace. . .
and Elsewhere
•
•
Women at Work
Women in Politics
Agitation for the vote is stirring on both sides of the Atlantic.
It would be after World War I—first in England and then in
the United States—that legislators gave women the franchise.
Women at Work
•
•
•
•
In 1900, 20% of all adult women—5
million—worked
About a third of married women
worked, e.g., in teaching, clerical jobs,
& the garment industry
Most working women worked at lowpaying jobs outside of the professional
occupations (e.g., medicine, law)
Criticisms of women in the work force
Endangered sanctity of the home (e.g., giving them the
financial means to abstain from marriage and/or
divorce; taking them out of the nurturing role of fulltime mother)
Threatened reproductive function
The Women’s
Rights and the
Suffrage
Movement
•
•
•
•
Seneca Falls, New York Conference—1848
Obstacles to Feminism after the Civil War
Planned Parenthood
Merger of the National Woman Suffrage
Association and American Woman Suffrage
Association, 1890
• Arguments in favor of women’s suffrage
Merger of the National Woman
Suffrage Association and American
Woman Suffrage
Association, 1890
• Merger led to greater unity
• Merger led to tighter control through a
national organization
In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt became president of the
National American Woman Suffrage Association formed in
1890. In 1906, Anna Howard Shaw assumed leadership of
the organization.
Arguments in
Favor of Women’s
Suffrage
• It was a natural right owed to both women
and men
• Women were more sensitive to moral issues
than men—their vote would create a better
society
• Passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920
This amendment granted women the right to vote. This is
generally considered the final great act of the Progressive Era
Supporting Standard (23)
The student understands efforts to expand the
democratic process.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 2 Evaluate vari0s means of achieving
equality of political rights, including the 24th
amendment
The Twenty-fourth
Amendment (Amendment XXIV)
prohibits both Congress and the
states from conditioning the right to
vote in federal elections on payment
of a poll tax or other types of tax. The
amendment was proposed by
Congress to the states on August 27,
1962, and was ratified by the states
on January 23, 1964.
The poll tax was part of a series of laws intended to marginalize
black Americans from politics so far as practicable without
violating the Fifteenth Amendment, which required that voting
not be limited by “race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.” The poll tax had the additional impact of weakening
poor white voters who might sympathize with the Populist
Party, though this was downplayed by proponents of the poll
tax for fear of an electoral backlash against them. Passage of
poll taxes began in earnest in the 1890s, as with the end
of Reconstruction in 1877, no federal troops remained to
enforce black voting rights. By 1902, all eleven states of the
former Confederacy had enacted a poll tax. The poll tax worked
in conjunction with a variety of disenfranchising measures, such
as literacy tests, the “white primary,” and threats of violence.
For example, potential voters had to be “assessed” in Arkansas,
and blacks were ignored in the assessment.
Poll taxes appeared in southern states
after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African
Americans from voting, and had been held to be
constitutional by the Supreme Court in the 1937
decision Breedlove v. Suttles. At the time of this
amendment’s passage, five states still retained a poll
tax: Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, & Mississippi.
The amendment made the poll tax unconstitutional in
regards to federal elections. However, it was not until
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v. Virginia
Board of Elections (1966) that poll taxes for state
elections were unconstitutional because they violated
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
The poll tax was largely ignored, at the federal level, from
1900–1937, though some state-level initiatives repealed it. The
tenor of the debate changed in the 1940s. While in the 1890s
and 1900s, politicians had been open about desiring to restrict
the black vote, by the 1940s Southern politicians attempted to
move the debate to Constitutional issues. The Twenty-fourth
Amendment, long proposed, was finally sent to the states for
ratification at the behest of President Kennedy, who brought
the issue back into public consciousness. Ratification of the
amendment took only slightly more than a year, however, as it
was rapidly ratified by state legislatures across the country
from August 1962 to January 1964. President Johnson called
the amendment a “triumph of liberty over restriction” and “a
verification of people’s rights.”
Congress proposed the
Twenty-fourth
Amendment on August
27, 1962. The
amendment was
submitted to the states on
September 24, 1962, after
it passed with the
requisite two-thirds
majorities in the House
and Senate. Ratification
was completed on
January 23, 1964.
Supporting Standard (23)
The student understands efforts to expand the
democratic process.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 3 Evaluate vari0s means of achieving
equality of political rights, including the 26th
amendment—see 8 F (2) below
The Draft
• As U.S. troop strength in Vietnam increased, more young men
were drafted for service there, and many of those still at home
sought means of avoiding the draft.
• There were 8,744,000 service members between 1964 and 1975,
of which 3,403,000 were deployed to Southeast Asia. From a
pool of approximately 27 million, the draft raised 2,215,000
men for military service (in the United States, Vietnam, West
Germany, and elsewhere) during the Vietnam era.
• Of the nearly 16 million men not engaged in active military
service,Widespread
57% were exempted (typically because of jobs
includingresistance
other military service), deferred
(usually for
passage
of
th
educational
reasons),
physical
and
to the
Draftor disqualified (usually
thefor26
mentalstimulated
deficiencies but
records including draft
. .also for criminalAmendment
violations).
.
Readiness Standard (8)
The student understands the impact of significant
national & international decisions & conflicts in the
Cold War on the United States.
The Student is expected to:
(F) 2 Describe the response to the
Vietnam War such as the 26th
Amendment
July 1, 1971
th
26
Amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment
XXVI) to the U. S. Constitution prohibits the
states and the federal government from setting a
voting age higher than eighteen. It was adopted in
response to student activism against the Vietnam
War and to partially overrule the Supreme
Court’s decision in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970,
ruling that Congress could set voter age
requirements for federal elections but not for
state elections). It was adopted on July 1, 1971.
th
26
Amendment
Congress and the state legislatures felt increasing
pressure to pass the Constitutional amendment
because of the Vietnam War, in which many young
men who were ineligible to vote were conscripted to
fight in the war, thus lacking any means to influence
the people sending them off to risk their lives. "Old
enough to fight, old enough to vote," was a common
slogan used by proponents of lowering the voting
age. The slogan traced its roots to World War II,
when President Roosevelt lowered the military draft
age to eighteen.
Supporting Standard (23)
The student understands efforts to expand the
democratic process.
The Student is expected to:
(B) 4 Evaluate vari0s means of achieving
equality of political rights, including
congressional acts such as the American Indian
Citizenship Act of 1924
The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, also known as
the Snyder Act, was proposed by
Representative Homer P. Snyder (R) of New York and
granted full U.S. citizenship to America’s indigenous
peoples, called “Indians” in this Act. (The Fourteenth
Amendment already defined as citizens any person
born in the U.S., but only if “subject to the jurisdiction
thereof;” this latter clause was thought to exclude
certain indigenous peoples.) The act was signed into
law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. It
was enacted partially in recognition of the thousands of
Indians who served in the armed forces in World War
I.
The text of the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act
(43 U.S. Stats. At Large, Ch. 233, p. 253
(1924) reads as follows:
“BE IT ENACTED by the Senate and house of
Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled, That all non citizen Indians born within the
territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby,
declared to be citizens of the United States: Provided That the
granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair
or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other
property.”
The Act granted citizenship to about 125,000
of 300,000 indigenous people in the United
States. Those indigenous people that were not
included in citizenship numbers had already
become citizens by other means; entering the
armed forces, giving up tribal affiliations, and
assimilating into mainstream American life
were ways this was done. Citizenship was
granted in a piecemeal fashion before the Act,
which was the first more inclusive method of
granting Native American citizenship.
Even Native Americans who were granted citizenship rights
under the 1924 Act, may not have had full citizenship and
suffrage rights until 1948. According to a survey by
the Department of Interior, seven states still refused to grant
Indians voting rights in 1938. Discrepancies between federal
and state control provided loopholes in the Act’s enforcement.
States justified discrimination based on state statutes and
constitutions. Three main arguments for Indian voting
exclusion were Indian exemption from real estate taxes,
maintenance of tribal affiliation and the notion that Indians
were under guardianship, or lived on lands controlled by
federal trusteeship. By 1947 all states with large Indian
populations, except Arizona & New Mexico, had extended
voting rights to Native Americans who qualified under the 1924
Act. Finally, in 1948 these states withdrew their prohibition on
Indian voting because of a judicial decision.
Other groups in favor of Native American citizenship
supported it because of the “guardianship” status they
felt the U.S. government should take to protect
indigenous people. They worried Indians were being
taken advantage by non-indigenous Americans for
their land. They advocated that the government had an
obligation to supervise and protect native citizens.
The Indian Rights Association, a key group in the
development of this legislation, advocated that federal
guardianship was a necessary component of
citizenship. They pushed for the clause “tribal rights
and property” in the Indian Citizenship Act, so as to
preserve Indian identity but gain citizenship rights and
protection.
Under the 1924 Act indigenous people did
not have to apply for citizenship, nor did
they have to give up their tribal citizenship
to become a U.S. citizen. Most tribes had
communal property and in order to have a
right to the land, Indians must belong to
the tribe. Thus, dual citizenship was
allowed. Earlier views on the way Indian
citizenship should be granted, suggested
allocating land to individuals.
Fini