Chapter 16
Life at the Turn of the
20th Century
Segregation and
Discrimination
 After Reconstruction many African
Americans exercised their new political
and social rights, despite hostile and
violent opposition.
 By the turn of the 20th Century, however,
many Southern states had adopted legal
policies of racial discrimination and
devised methods to weaken AfricanAmerican political power.
Voting Restrictions
 Restrictions included:
 Literacy test-test reading skills
 Poll tax-annual tax paid before qualifying to vote
 Grandfather clause-put into place to help poor,
uneducated, white voters
 stated that if a man, his father, or grandfather had voted
before 1867 then he could vote even if he could not pass
the test or pay the tax.
 This clause eliminated African Americans who would not
have had voting rights before 1867.
Jim Crow Laws
 Southern states also passed racial segregation
laws to separate white and black people in
public and private facilities.
 These laws came to be known as Jim Crow
Laws after a popular old song.
 Segregation was put into effect in schools,
hospitals, parks, transportation, etc.
Jim Crow songbook
This songbook, published in Ithaca, New York, in
1839, shows an early depiction of a minstrelshow character named Jim Crow. By the 1890s
the expression “Jim Crow” was being used to
describe laws and customs aimed at
segregating African Americans and others.
These laws were intended to restrict social
contact between whites and other groups and to
limit the freedom and opportunity of people of
color.
Plessy v. Ferguson
 Eventually a legal case reached the Supreme Court
that would test the constitutionality of segregation.
 In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the SC ruled that the
separation of races in public places was legal and did
not violate the 14th Amendment.
 The Court’s decision established the doctrine of
“separate but equal,” which allowed states to maintain
segregated facilities as long as they provided equal
service.
 The decision permitted legalized racial segregation for
almost 60 years.
Higher Education for
African Americans
 Booker T. Washington, a prominent AfrAmer
educator, believed that racism would end once
blacks acquired useful labor skills and proved
their economic value to society.
 In 1881 Washington was in charge of the
Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, or
now, Tuskegee University in AL.
 The school wanted to equip students with
teaching diplomas and useful agricultural,
domestic, or mechanical skills.
 W.E.B. Du Bois, the first AfrAmer to receive a
doctorate from Harvard (1895), strongly
disagreed with Washington’s views.
 In 1905 Du Bois founded the Niagara
Movement to insist that AfrAmer should seek a
liberal arts education so that the AfrAmer
community would have educated leaders.
 Du Bois proposed that a group of educated
blacks, the “talented tenth,” should try to
achieve immediate inclusion into society.
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP)
 In 1909 a group of AfrAmer and white
reformers met in New York to found the
NAACP to combat racial inequalities.
 By 1914 the NAACP would have 6000
members aimed at achieving full racial
equality.
Chapter 17
The Progressive Era
Progressivism and Its
Champions
 Industrialization helped many but also created
dangerous working environments and
unhealthy living conditions for the urban poor.
 Progressivism, a wide-ranging reform
movement targeting these problems, began in
the late 19th century.
 Four goals of Progressivism included:
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Protecting social welfare
Promoting moral improvement
Creating economic reform
Fostering efficiency
Journalists called muckrakers and
urban photographers exposed
people to the plight of the
unfortunate in hopes of sparking
reform.
Jacob Riis
 Danish immigrant who
faced New York
poverty
 Exposed the slums
through magazines,
photographs, and a
best-selling book called
How the Other Half
Lives
 His fame helped spark
city reforms.
Ida Tarbell
 Exposed the corrupt
Standard Oil Company
and its owner, John D.
Rockefeller
 Appealed to middle
class scared by large
business power
Lincoln Steffens
•Shame of the Cities (1904) exposed
corrupt city governments
Frank Norris
•Exposed railroad monopolies in a
1901 novel
Election Reforms
 Progressives wanted fairer elections and to
make politicians more accountable to voters.
 Proposed a direct primary, or an election in
which voters choose candidates to run in a
general election, which most states adopted.
 Backed the Seventeenth Amendment,
which gave voters, not state legislatures, the
power to elect their U.S. senators.
Election Reforms
 Some measures Progressives fought for
include:
 Direct primary: voters select a party’s candidate for public
office
 17th Amendment: voters elect their senators directly
 Secret ballot: people vote privately without fear of coercion
 Initiative: allows citizens to propose new laws
 Referendum: allows citizens to vote on a proposed or existing
law
 Recall: allows voters to remove an elected official from office
Roosevelt’s Upbringing
 Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly, shy youth whom doctors
forbade to play sports or do strenuous activities.
 In his teenage years, Roosevelt reinvented himself, taking up
sports and becoming vigorous, outgoing, and optimistic.
 Roosevelt came from a prominent New York family and attended
Harvard University, but he grew to love the outdoors.
 He spent time in northern Maine and in the rugged Badlands of
North Dakota, riding horses and hunting buffalo.
 In 1884, when Roosevelt was 26, both his mother and his young
wife died unexpectedly.
 Trying to forget his grief, he returned to his ranch in Dakota
Territory, where he lived and worked with cowboys.
 He returned to New York after two years and entered politics.
Roosevelt’s View of the
Presidency

Roosevelt’s rise to governor of New York upset the Republican
political machine.

To get rid of the progressive Roosevelt, party bosses got him
elected as vice president, a position with little power at that time.

President William McKinley was shot and killed in 1901, leaving the
office to Roosevelt.

At 42 years old he was the youngest president and an avid reformer.

Roosevelt saw the presidency as a bully pulpit, or a platform to
publicize important issues and seek support for his policies on
reform.
The Square Deal
 The Square Deal became Roosevelt’s 1904 campaign slogan
and the framework for his entire presidency.
 He promised to “see that each is given a square deal,
because he is entitled to no more and should receive no
less.”
 Roosevelt’s promise revealed his belief that the needs of
workers, business, and consumers should be balanced.
 Roosevelt’s square deal called for limiting the power of
trusts, promoting public health and safety, and improving
working conditions.
Dismay Over Food and Drug
Practices
Food

Food producers used clever tricks to pass off tainted foods:
 Dairies churned fresh milk into spoiled butter.
 Poultry sellers added formaldehyde, which is used to embalm
dead bodies, to old eggs to hide their smell.
•
Unwary customers bought the tainted food thinking it was healthy.
Drugs

Drug companies were also unconcerned for customer health:
 Some sold medicines that didn’t work.
 Some marketed nonprescription medicines containing narcotics.
 Dr. James’ Soothing Syrup, intended to soothe babies’
teething pain, contained heroin.
 Gowan’s Pneumonia Cure contained the addictive painkiller
morphine.
Upton Sinclair and
Meatpacking
 Of all industries, meatpacking was the worst.
 The novelist Upton Sinclair exposed the wretched and unsanitary
conditions at meatpacking plants in his novel The Jungle, igniting
a firestorm of criticism aimed at meatpackers.
 Roosevelt ordered Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson to
investigate packing house conditions, and his report of gruesome
practices shocked Congress into action.
 In 1906 it enacted two groundbreaking consumer protection laws:
– The Meat Inspection Act required federal government inspection of
meat shipped across state lines.
– The Pure Food and Drug Act outlawed food and drugs containing
harmful ingredients, and required that containers carry ingredient
labels.
Environmental
Conservation
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Roosevelt’s Thoughts
Recognized that natural resources were limited and that government
should regulate resources
Disagreed with naturalist John Muir, who helped protect Yosemite
Park and thought the entire wilderness should be preserved
Believed that conservation involved the active management of
public land for varied uses: some preservation, some economical
Roosevelt’s Solution
The Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 reflected Roosevelt’s beliefs.
The law allowed federal government to create irrigation projects to
make dry lands productive.
The projects would be funded from money raised by selling off
public lands.
During Roosevelt’s presidency, 24 reclamation projects were
launched.
John Muir (1838-1914) was a
Scottish-born journalist and
naturalist best known for his
explorations of the Yosemite
area (1868-1873) and for his
efforts to create Yosemite,
Sequoia and General Grant
National Parks (1890). He
was also a founder of the
Sierra Club (1892).