Urban Pluralism
Progressives had more than the problems of blacks on their hands. Woodrow
Wilson faced a daunting challenge as he looked out across his “classroom” on his first
day as political science professor to the nation. All of his students were different from
each other. The first decade of the 20th century was the opening of what historians called
the “New Immigration.” 18 million immigrants came to the US during this one decade,
an amount that would have been significant regardless of their places of origin. The
“New” part came, though, because 80% of them were from South and Eastern Europe as
opposed to the North and Western European stock that made up the first Americans.
Therefore, Wilson was the first American president to try to “encompass the whole” of a
pluralistic American society.
To specify, immigrants now appeared at Ellis Island for “processing” from
countries like Austria-Hungary, Spain, Greece, Bohemia, Armenia, Poland, Syria, and
Turkey. Three million came from Italy. Two million Russian Jews came. Many of these
ethnic groups were Slavic, and remember “Slavic” rhymes with “garlic.” These peoples
were the “garlic-eaters” who did not easily assimilate into Anglo-Saxon America. Four
out of five settled in Northeastern and Midwestern cities where 75% of the population
was foreign-born. The new immigrants took some of the most difficult and menial jobs
including construction, mining, smelting, and factory work. Women who did not work in
factories were house servants.
Pluralism at first implied isolation as segregated neighborhoods developed that
were divided ethnically and religiously. Nativists both feared and exploited immigrant
workers economically and politically. Economic exploitation saw garment workers paid
8¢ per hour. The highest paid immigrant workers worked in the steel industry for only
21¢ per hour. In a 60-hour work week that meant only $12.50. Cigar makers were paid
$3.75 for every 1,000 cigars rolled. These wages left the housing options of immigrants
severely limited. Four hundred people were crammed into dumbbell tenements designed
to hold only fifty. Rows of these buildings became infested with vermin. Ventilation
was poor, and the buildings’ wooden construction made them firetraps. Meanwhile
subcultures sprang up around Old World churches, entertainment, and even food. The
New Immigration was not Americanizing.
Theodore Roosevelt went so far as to say that the “. . . tangle of squabbling
nationalities is the one certain way of bringing this nation to ruin.” The lack of
assimilation belied Israel Zangwill’s play, The Melting Pot in which he said of the
American symphony of nations that the US was “God’s seething crucible from which we
will see the coming superman.” The melting pot seemed a myth despite Zangwill’s
assertion that the US was a nation populated this time by “scores of Mayflowers.”
Randolph Bourne, a student of John Dewey’s, praised the ethnic diversity saying
nationalities coexisted in America without competition like nowhere else in the world.
Still, Progressives feared the weakening of the old American “breeding stock”
which was “being corrupted by lazy Mediterranean blood and ways.” TR had initiated
the Dillingham Commission to compare and contrast the Old and New Immigrants. The
Commission took four years to produce 42 volumes of findings. The conclusion was that
the US needed to restrict immigration, something that was begun in earnest during the
1920s when a quota system was set in place. Quotas calculated a certain percentage of
particular ethnicities’ numbers of immigrants coming in during previous years to be
allowed to come in each new year. Unsurprisingly, North and Western Europeans were
allotted higher percentages than were Southern and Eastern Europeans.
Meanwhile, the only immigrant group that did not want to come to America,
blacks, was struggling under a national belief in “scientific” evidence of their inferiority.
The Populist Revolt had scared powerful whites in the South because black farmers had
belonged to the Southern Alliance of the Grange. That type of organized involvement
threatened to break the ability of sharecropping to “keep blacks in their place,” hence the
whites continued ongoing efforts to disenfranchise blacks despite the 15th Amendment.
On a central moral issue of their day, Progressives were silent. Since they ignored racism
against blacks it appeared that they condoned it whether they did or not.
Some white politicians were openly racist, and we’ve already seen that Woodrow
Wilson liked the film Birth of a Nation. Eighty percent of blacks lived in the South and
were confronted with a tradition of racism. Northern racism drove blacks in northern
cities into “black neighborhoods,” or ghettos. Sadly, as lynching declined in the South,
race riots increased in the North. Social tension spurred widespread racial violence
across urban centers from 1906 on.
The laissez faire attitudes of government from the 19th century endured in this
regard—no further attempts were made by the federal government to aid and elevate the
freedmen until the middle of the 20th century. The United States had taken Frederick
Douglass’s advice to “. . . let the black man alone.” Two black reformers, however, tried
in their own ways to elevate their race. Unfortunately while their approaches could have
complemented each other nicely, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois criticized
each other. Neither approach was widely successful partly because of this division.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave but was so determined to get an
education he, like Lincoln, taught himself to read by writing letters in soot on a shovel
with a nail. This commitment to education went way beyond elevating himself. He
founded Tuskegee Institute for black students in Alabama. Tuskegee was a “Normal and
Industrial School.” While you may not believe it considering who your teachers are,
normal schools were for the training of teachers, and Washington wanted his race to
produce more of them. Industrial schools were like our vocational schools, and
Washington wanted blacks to become so skilled at, say, bricklaying or plumbing to be in
demand, to become economic necessities to America. He believed that in this way blacks
could earn respect and equal treatment and rights.
For this moderate approach to civil rights Booker T. Washington was awarded
with some respect in the white community. Theodore Roosevelt took the remarkable step
of inviting Washington to dine with him at the White House for lunch. Frederick
Douglass had visited with Lincoln, but Washington was the first black man to dine with a
president of the United States. In an unconsciously condescending gesture, TR said
Washington was a “good negro” after the meeting. Washington’s philosophy was best
expressed in a speech he gave now known as the “Atlanta Compromise.” Holding up his
hand he said, “In all things purely social we can be as separate as the five fingers, and yet
one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
Ray Stannard Baker took a bold step as a white Progressive writer in 1908 in
publishing Following the Color Line. His book asked the question—Does democracy
really include negroes as well as white men? The 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy
v. Ferguson seemed to indicate the answer was, “No.” The Supreme Court approved of
racial segregation of schools as long as the facilities were “separate but equal.” Later
debates about the equality of separate educational facilities aside, the separate educational
facilities were rarely of equivalent quality. In almost every southern city residents can
still point to a building that used to be the black high school, and the building is usually
the oldest owned by the school system.
Such injustice outraged W. E. B. Du Bois who was himself a Progressive. Rather
than being born a slave, Du Bois was a New England graduate of Harvard who became a
professor at a university in Atlanta by 1897. As a part of his research in sociology he
conducted surveys in Philadelphia as Jane Addams had done in Chicago. This research
and his own experiences produced The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. Du Bois dismissed
Washington’s moderate approach saying that work and money were less important than
immediate equality and the vote. The problems of blacks were the nation’s problems, he
said.
Furthermore, Du Bois went so far as to suggest that there was a “Talented Tenth”
of his race. Ten percent of blacks were smart enough and educated enough that if the
whole race were provided the immediate equality he demanded, those elites would turn
and help the other 90%. His insistence did not endear him to the white community so
ultimately his approach fell short, too. His most lasting contribution was helping to
found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the first major
civil rights organization in US history. The NAACP is still around today. Unfortunately
Du Bois became so frustrated with the slow pace of change that he abandoned America,
became a Marxist, and died in Africa just as the Civil Rights Movement had begun in
earnest.
The aftermath of slavery, Civil War, and Reconstruction may be the most
pervasive struggle America’s pluralistic society has had to endure. Having brought the
struggle on ourselves, however, American civilization depends on finding the solution to
lasting social harmony among differing ethnicities and competing world views. As the
New Immigration began arriving on our shores, the complexity of the American equation
became considerably more complex.