Films dealing with the Progressive Era
(Compiled for Cohort B, Historical Literacy Project)
General
The Emergence of Modern America: Progressive Era 2003 (30 minutes). Goldhil
Educational Publications. Focuses on labor reform and political reform.
United States History to 1900: Volume 14: Progressive Era 2003 (30 minutes).
Schlessinger Media. An overview focusing on corporate regulation and improvements in workers’ lives.
The Progressive Era 2004 (30 minutes). Media Rich Learning. An overview of various reform movements during the Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson administrations.
America, 1900 1998 PBS - WGBH Boston (180 minutes). Part of the American
Experience series, looking at the U.S. in that one year.
Age of Hope, 1900-1914 1998 WGBH Boston (56 minutes). Profiles individuals whose average age was 100 in 1998; they remember events such as McKinley’s assassination and the sinking of the Titanic, as well as events in world history.
Coney Island , 1998 PBS (58 minutes). Very evocative portrait of emerging popular entertainments at the turn of the 20 th
century. Lots of good clips of people at amusement parks.
10 Days that Unexpectedly Changed America 2006 (132 minutes). History Channel.
The second part of this series focuses on the Homestead Strike of 1892 and its relationship to worker protests.
Working for Freedom/Yearning to Breathe Free 2003 PBS (47 minutes). A general overview through biographical portraits of individuals such as Susan B. Anthony, Ida
Tarbell, John Muir, and Jane Addams.
America’s Time: Seeds of Change
1999 (46 minutes). Daily life in the early 1900s. Part of the ABC series The Century.
Liberty for All?
2003 PBS (52 minutes). Episode 4 of the series on Freedom in
American History deals with the industrial revolution and its aftermath (prelude to the
Progressive Era).
Frances Perkins: You May Call Her Madam Secretary 1987 (58 minutes). West
Tisbury, MA: Vineyard Video Productions. A good biographical documentary (with some re-enactments), charting Perkins’s career from Progressive Era reformer to FDR’s cabinet. The first section on her roots in the Progressive Era is very good and includes

good footage on her work in NY after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, and in efforts to end child labor.
Presidents and Politics
Theodore Roosevelt 2000 (164 minutes) Produced by C-SPAN
TR and His Times 1988 (57 minutes) PBS American Experience
William Howard Taft 1999 (152 minutes) Produced by C-SPAN
Woodrow Wilson 1999 (180 minutes) Produced by C-SPAN
Woodrow Wilson 2001 (57 minutes) PBS American Experience
The Library of Congress’s “American Memory” web site includes a section, “
Theodore
Roosevelt: His Life on Film
,” with early newsreel films of TR and voice recordings of
TR. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/troosevelt_film/
Education, Social Issues, Culture
The Progressives 1989 (25 minutes). Northern Illinois University. Profiles of 4
Progressive-Era educators, including John Dewey.
The Idea Makers: The Women of Hull House 2006 (18 minutes). Princeton: Films for the Humanities and Sciences. Good short introduction to the history of Hull House, focusing on the founders’ use of social surveys to shape public policy.
The House that Jane Built 2003 (58 minutes). Produced by WTTW-Chicago. A docudrama on the founding of Hull House (uses re-enactments).
The Immigrant Experience, 1900-1940 1999 (70 minutes). Part of the ABC series on
The Century.
Baseball 1994. The Ken Burns series; Parts 1-5 deal with the first 20 years of the 20 th century.
Jazz 2000. The Ken Burns series. The early parts (there are 10) cover the history of jazz in the Progressive Era.
Moving North to Chicago 2005 (21 minutes). Princeton: Films for the Humanities and
Sciences. Short film covering the Great Migration, 1900-1950.

Up South: African American Migration in the Era of the Great War 1996 (28 minutes).
Ho-ho-kus, NJ: American Social History Film Library. Looks at the migration of African
Americans to Chicago from 1916 to 1921.
Freedom Bags 1990 (32 minutes). New York: Filmmakers Library. On African
American women migrants, 1900-1930, who came from the South to Washington, D.C., during the Great Migration.
Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice 1982 (58 minutes) PBS American Experience series.
Somewhat dated film but very powerful coverage of the anti-lynching crusade that was so important for African American Progressives. Be forewarned: there are some gruesome images of lynchings.
Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl 1993 (28 minutes). Ho-ho-kus, NJ: American
Social History Film Library. Looks at the 1909 textile workers’ strike in New York, using interviews, memoirs, and newsreels.
Foreign Policy
A World on Display 1996 (53 minutes). New York: Cinema Guild. Documentary on the
St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904; it contrasts the reminiscences of elderly Americans, who mostly remember being awed, with the commentaries of historians who point to the
Fair’s role in justifying the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico in
1898.
Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs, and Empire, 1893-1904 1995 (30 minutes). Ho-ho-kus, NJ:
American Social History Film Library. Ties big expositions, such as the Columbian
Exposition and St. Louis World’s Fair, to foreign policy developments.
Nation Within: The Story of America’s Annexation of Hawai’i , 1998 (87 minutes),
Hawai’i Public Television
Hawaii’s Last Queen 1997 (60 minutes) PBS American Experience series. Looks at the annexation of Hawaii through the life of Queen Liliuokalani.
Interesting Feature Films
A Corner in Wheat 1909 (20 minutes). New York: Kino on Video (bundled with several other short films by Griffith). A silent film by D.W. Griffith attacking monopoly and making a case for regulation. This was the film we looked at last summer when discussing how the Progressives got their ideas out to a general public.

Hester Street 1974 (89 minutes). New York: First Run Features. Very well-done film version of a short story by Abraham Cahan. Set in 1896, it chronicles the lives of a
Russian Jewish immigrant couple, Jacob and Gitl, as they adjust to new lives in the U.S.
Traffic in Souls 1913 (88 minutes). New York: Kino on Video. A silent film that provides a sensational exposé of the so-called “white-slave trade” (prostitution by white girls). Such exposés were part of the effort to get passed Progressive Era regulatory laws such as the Mann Act.
Iron-Jawed Angels 2004 (125 minutes). New York: HBO Video. I’m not a fan of this film focusing on Alice Paul (played by Hilary Swank) but my students often tell me they love it, and it does introduce them to the role of the suffrage militants of the
Congressional Union (later the National Woman’s Party) in the suffrage movement (the group on whom Ann Bausum focused in her book, With Courage and Cloth) .
Woman Suffrage
One Woman One Vote 1995 (106 minutes). PBS. Covers the entire story of women’s suffrage, including tactics, alliances, and schisms, from 1848 to 1920. The best documentary on the subject.
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
1999 (210 minutes). The Ken Burns film on the development of the suffrage movement, starting in 1848. The last section of the film deals with the reunification of the movement in 1890 and developments up until Anthony’s death in 1906.
Alice Paul: We Were Arrested, of Course 1995 (28 minutes). New York: EPH
Productions. Focuses on the work of the Congressional Union in picketing the White
House in 1917. Uses re-enactments.
The Library of Congress “American Memory” site has some nice clips of early newsreels showing suffrage parades. Included in the site are catalog records for some “social problem” films from the George Kleine collection; these films covered Progressive Era
“problems” such as prostitution and child labor. See the link below: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awmi10/silent_women.html
Anne Boylan
July 30, 2007 aboylan@udel.edu