Exploring American History Unit VII – Beginning of Modern America Chapter 21 - The Progressive Spirit of Reform Section 3- The Rights of Women and Minorities

The Rights of Women and Minorities The Big Idea The Progressive movement made advances for the rights of women and some minorities. Main Ideas Women fought for temperance and the right to vote. African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality. Progressive reforms failed to benefit all minorities.

Main Idea 1: Women fought for temperance and the right to vote. New educational opportunities drew more women into the Progressive movement. Denied access to such professions as law and medicine, women entered fields such as social work and education. Women’s clubs campaigned for many causes, including temperance, women’s suffrage, child welfare, and political reform.

Temperance Women reformers took up the cause of temperance: avoidance of alcohol consumption. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union campaigned to restrict the sale of alcoholic beverages. Radical temperance fighter Carry Nation stormed saloons and smashed bottles with an axe in the 1890s. Temperance efforts led to the Eighteenth Amendment (1919), banning the production, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.

Women’s Christian Temperance Union WCTU founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874. Temperance may be defined as: moderation in all things healthful; total abstinence from all things harmful The main objective of the WCTU was to persuade all states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. It supported temperance education in schools, as well as, prison reform, women’s suffrage and the abolition of prostitution. The WCTU's programs also promote good citizenship, child welfare, world peace, child abuse and equal justice for women and minority groups. Francis Willard

Carrie Nation Standing at nearly 6 feet tall and weighing 180 pounds, Carry Amelia Moore Nation, Carrie Nation, as she came to be known, cut an imposing figure. Wielding a hatchet, she was downright frightful. In 1900, the target of Nation's wrath was alcoholic drink. Nation, who described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like," felt divinely ordained to forcefully promote temperance. A brief marriage to an alcoholic in the late 1800's fueled Nation's disdain for alcohol. Kiowa, Kansas was the setting of Nation's first outburst of destruction in the name of temperance in 1900. Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested some 30 times after leading her followers in the destruction of one water hole after another with cries of "Smash, ladies, smash!"

Suffrage – 2:49 min.

Women’s Suffrage Women reformers fought for suffrage, or the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1890). Alice Paul founded the more radical National Woman’s Party (1913). Used parades and public demonstrations, picketing, and hunger strikes to spread their message Suffragists won the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment (1919).

Women Gain the Vote NAWSA (National American Women Suffrage Association. Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, renamed National Women’s Party (NWP)- strikes and chaining themselves to railings. 19th Amendment- 1920. Gave women full voting rights.

Women’s Suffrage Movement – 3:17 min.

Women – 2:12 min.

Women fight for Temperance and Voting Rights Recall – Who was Carrie Nation? Identify – What did political bosses fear about women getting the right to vote? Evaluate – What evidence supports the idea that temperance was a popular cause in the 1870’s?

Women fight for Temperance and Voting Rights Identify – Name the four states that allowed women to vote in the 1890’s. Sequence – In what years were the two suffragist organizations founded?

Main Idea 2: African American reformers challenged discrimination and called for equality. Booker T. Washington encouraged African Americans to improve their educational and economic well-being. Ida B. Wells spoke out against discrimination and drew attention to the lynching of African Americans. W. E. B. Du Bois attacked discrimination and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They called for economic and educational equality for African Americans. The National Urban League, founded in 1911, helped African Americans moving from the South to find jobs and housing.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 1909 On February 12th The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered "The Call." They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee. Organized to end discrimination and to prevent violence against blacks, especially lynching. FOUNDERS: Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling and led the "Call" to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.

N.A.A.C.P. The NAACP started its own magazine, Crisis in November, 1910 NAACP campaigned, especially in the Supreme Court against lynching, segregation and racial discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting and transportation. NAACP also fought for Women’s Suffrage.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862. Died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the age of sixty-nine. She had been a slave and after the death of her parents to Yellow Fever she was left to raise her brothers and sisters. She turned to teaching. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. When a respected black store owner and friend of Barnett was lynched in 1892, Wells used her paper to attack the evils of lynching and encouraged the black townsmen of Memphis to go west.

Before Rosa Parks In a famous incident , Ida defied the “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) supreme court case. It was in Memphis where she first began to fight (literally) for racial and gender justice. In 1884 she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man and ordered her into the smoking or "Jim Crow" car, which was already crowded with other passengers. “I refused, saying that the forward car [closest to the locomotive] was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies' car, I proposed to stay. . . [The conductor] tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand. I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten he didn't try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out. “ Wells was forcefully removed from the train and the other passengers--all whites--applauded. When Wells returned to Memphis, she immediately hired an attorney to sue the railroad. She won her case in the local circuit courts, but the railroad company appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee, and it reversed the lower court's ruling.

African Americans Challenge Discrimination Recall – Name two issues which were often overlooked by white reformers. Explain – What was the strategy of Booker T. Washington to end racial discrimination? Identify – Which organization fought discrimination in the courts?

African Americans Challenge Discrimination Compare – Which organizations helped African Americans the way settlements houses helped new immigrants? Interpret – How did “grandfather clauses” discriminate against African Americans? Evaluate – What approach do you think was more effective in fighting discrimination, self-improvement or using the courts?

Main Idea 3: Progressive reforms failed to benefit all minorities. The Society of American Indians wanted Native Americans to adopt the ways of white society, but many of them resisted. Chinese Americans formed their own groups to help support their members, including neighborhood and district associations, cultural groups, churches, and temples. Built San Francisco’s Chinese hospital in 1925 Immigration by Mexicans increased during this period, and many worked in farming. Progressive reforms did little to improve working conditions for farm workers.

Failures of Reform Explain – Why did many Native Americans resist adopting white culture? Identify Cause and Effect – What caused Chinese immigrants to form their own communities? Predict – What are some of the possible ways American life would have been affected if progressive reforms had helped migrant farm workers?