1. THE PROGRESSIVE ERA (PART III)
SUFFRAGE AND CIVIL RIGHTS:
SOCIAL REFORM MOVEMENTS AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY
Main Idea: There was a great deal of both intersection and collaboration in the reform movements of the early to mid-19th century. For many activists, this sense of unity would splinter under social changes and political pressure as the 20th century approached
Question of the Day: What factors slowed down the progress of both the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements during the Progressive era?

2. THE AMERICAN WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT 1848-1920
What do you see here?
What year do you think this is?
Can you explain the context of the message in the protester’s sign?

3. Seneca Falls, NY 1848
In early 1800s, women were involved in many public campaigns for social change including the abolitionist and temperance movements (ban on alcohol).
Group of men and women gather in Seneca Falls, NY in Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the attendees declared their belief in women’s equality and publicly read the Declaration of Sentiments (often described as the “Women’s Declaration of Independence”).
Viewed as the beginning of “first-wave feminism” or the modern women’s rights movement.

4. Fifteenth Amendment, 1871
Grants African-American men the right to vote
Disappoints many women who thought African American men and women of all races would be enfranchised together
Both abolitionism, and several branches of women’s suffrage, had a tradition of being integrated movements (multi-racial, men and women)
Suffragists and civil rights activists split over the question of whether African American men should be enfranchised before American women.

5. Frederick Douglass, 1869
“When women, because they are women, are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed upon the pavement then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.” But is this not true for the black woman? “Yes, yes, yes. It is true for the black woman but not because she is a woman but because she is black!”

6. SOJOURNER TRUTH, 1869 -PROMINENT ABOLITIONIST & SUFFRAGIST
“There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women And if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”

7. “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
1869 meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (heated debate with Frederick Douglass)
Susan B. Anthony tried several times to introduce an Amendment bill for women’s suffrage in the late 1800s, but it was always killed in the Senate.
In 1872, she was arrested for voting in the presidential election.
Susan B. Anthony

8. DISCORD WITHIN THE MOVEMENT
In the renewed push to gain the vote, some white suffragists employed what would come to be known later in the 20th century as the “southern strategy” (courting Southern racism to gain support for a particular cause)
Ida B. Wells, Suffragist, anti-lynching campaign activist
Francis Willard,
Suffragist and leader of the WCTU

9. FRANCIS WILLARD VS. IDA B. WELLS, ENGLAND, 1893
“It is not fair that a plantation Negro who can neither read nor write should be entrusted with the ballot…'Better whiskey and more of it’ is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs. The safety of [white] women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities.” (Willard) “Ms. Willard unhesitatingly slandered the entire Negro race in order to gain favor with those who are hanging, shooting and burning Negroes alive. Our country remains silent on those continued outrages. It is to the religious and moral sentiment of Great Britain we turn.” (Wells)

10. Anti-Suffragists: Those who opposed suffrage (many “Anti’s” were women)

11. Arguments of Anti-Suffragists:
Women are high-strung, irrational, emotional, not smart enough or educated enough
Women should stay at home, since their primary roles is as wives and mothers
If women were to vote differently from their husbands, it would result in domestic unrest
Women were too physically frail; they would get tired just walking to the polling station
Women would become masculine if they voted

12. Unable to get a Constitutional amendment passed, suffrage groups began pursuing their campaigns state by state. This was a strategy they would continue to pursue for most of the 19th century.

13. The Next Generation of Suffragists
Elizabeth Cady Stanton died 1902
Susan B. Anthony died 1906
But in the early 1900s many young middle-class women were going to college (expansion of education) and joining the suffrage movement
Many working-class women also joined the cause, hoping the right to vote would help improve working and living conditions
Many women of color found themselves excluded from mainstream suffrage groups, and thus formed their own organizations

14. National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
Founded by several activists including Harriet Tubman, Francis Harper and Ida B. Wells.
Suffrage organization, but with a broad focus which encompassed an end to racial violence and the promotion of black equality in terms of ending segregation and promoting equality in employment, wages and housing.
Women’s Suffrage Parade of 1913
Black women’s suffrage groups were asked by organizers to march at the back of the parade
Many were deeply insulted and refused to march. Ida Wells, on the other hand, waited for the parade to start and then defiantly joined the white Illinois women’s delegation, refusing to accept segregation but also unwilling to be dissuaded from marching for the vote

16. NAWSA
Carrie Chapman Catt led the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She believed in:
Careful state-by-state strategy
Support President Wilson even if he doesn’t outright support suffrage (because Democrats were a safer bet than Republicans)
Act ladylike! Don’t embarrass the movement

17. NATIONAL WOMAN’S PARTY
Alice Paul, who led the National Woman’s Party; believed in more aggressive strategies:
Focused on passing a Constitutional Amendment
Picked up “un-ladylike” strategies from British suffragists (e.g., heckling politicians, picketing)
Refused to support President Wilson if he wouldn’t support woman suffrage
NWP members were arrested for picketing in front of the White House; they were put in jail, went on a hunger strike and were force-fed

18. 19th Amendment, 1920
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” (Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify and it passed by only 1 vote)

19. FREDERICK DOUGLASS If there is no struggle There is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom,
And yet deprecate agitation,
Are men [and women] who want crops 
Without plowing up the ground,
They want rain 
Without thunder and lightning.
They want the ocean
Without the awful roar of its waters.
This struggle may be a moral one;
Or it may be a physical one;
But it must be a struggle. 
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did, and it never will.

20. African Americans
At the start of the 20th Century, most African Americans lived in poverty and faced widespread discrimination
Approximately 85% of African Americans still lived in the South.
Most were tenant farmers.
Jim Crow Laws - Legalized Segregation.
Plessy v. Ferguson - Supreme Court Case. “Separate but equal” Segregation OK so long as facilities and conditions are equal.
Most black men were prevented from exercising their right to vote despite the 15th Amendment

21. Progressive Presidents and Civil Rights
Of the three “Progressive” presidents, Theodore Roosevelt was the only one to openly acknowledge the fact that the rights of people of color were seriously lacking, but the efforts he made on their behalf were very minimal.
Continued to appoint African Americans to bureaucratic positions at the local level, never bending to racist public pressure (shut down Charleston customshouse when they demanded the removal of a black official Roosevelt had appointed)
Made a symbolic gesture by receiving noted civil rights leader Booker T. Washington at the White House.
However, Roosevelt had a number of problematic civil rights issues on his record which lost him a good deal of support among black Americans
Brownsville Incident – The all-black 25th infantry unit was framed by local residents and law enforcement for the murder of a white bartender during a disturbance in town
“Southern Strategy” – Roosevelt frequently talked up his Southern roots when campaigning in the South and tended to shy away from acknowledging the growing racial violence

22. President Taft
Did the very least for civil rights out of all three Progressive presidents.
Invited Booker T. Washington to the White House and advised him to follow the civil rights model he’d already proposed and to advise his fellow civil rights activists to “stay out of politics”.
Inexplicably, Taft continued to avoid the civil rights issue, even after being appointed a Supreme Court justice some years after the end of his presidency, a role in which he might have expressed himself freely if he’d had the inclination.

23. President Wilson
During Wilson’s presidency, government offices and facilities became segregated, a goal which Wilson’s administration pushed for during closed-door meetings. The main argument offered was that integration made white federal employees uncomfortable.
Wilson failed to speak against the racism inherent in the proposed segregation, acknowledging that while many black voters had deserted the Republican party to vote for him because he’d made vague promises to work for equality, he “had made no particular promises to the Negro, only to give them justice”.
In answering critics, Wilson claimed segregation was, “in the interest of the Negro.”

24. Booker T. Washington
Son of a slave, and voice for formerly enslaved African Americans
Founder of the National Negro Business League
Started Tuskegee Institute—a vocational school for African Americans in Alabama – now Tuskegee University
Wrote an influential book entitled, Up From Slavery.

25. WASHINGTON’S PHILOSOPHY
Policy of “ACCOMODATION”: Don’t “accept” segregation and the lack of political rights per se, but don’t challenge it directly
Focus on economic improvement—learning a skill and working hard. Felt that African Americans needed to “prove themselves”, employ self-help, self-improvement and vocational training, and worry about discrimination later.
Eventually, African Americans would earn respect, be treated better and receive political rights.
This was Washington’s public stance, which many of his fellow civil rights leaders supported initially, but which he would later be criticized for (especially by founders of NAACP)
However, in private, Washington worked with groups across the movement, including the NAACP, to promote and provide financial support for court challenges to “Jim Crow” laws in the South
Was one of the most influential black civil rights leaders of the day, and a civil rights advisor to several American presidents

26. Tuskegee institute

27. W.E.B. Du Bois Born free in Massachusetts
First African American to earn a PhD from Harvard.
Accomplished scholar, writer and “radical” historian
Helped to found the NAACP in 1909.

28. DU BOIS’S PHILOSOPHY
Called for immediate social and political equality for African Americans.
Said that segregation deprived black people of their dignity.
Said that African Americans should celebrate their uniqueness and not try to imitate white culture.
As the founder of the “Niagara Movement”, he advocated traditional college education for talented youth (the “talented tenth”) so that they could serve as teachers and leaders in the black community.
________________________________________________________
Became more radical as he got older, and by the 1930s, he was frustrated with the NAACP’s approach to obtaining civil rights, eventually leaving the organization.
In 1960, he moved to Ghana and denounced his American citizenship.
-Historians disagree over the exact reasons why:
a) Embraced the “back to Africa” movement, convinced that African
Americans would never be allowed to achieve full equality in the U.S.
b) Only planned to spend a few months in Ghana, but his and his wife’s
passports were invalidated due to the McCarran Act (revoked passports
for communists and communist sympathizers)

29. Discussion Points:
Throughout American history, people who have advocated or fought for change have often had different, even conflicting ideas about how to most effectively bring about change. The history of civil rights is no exception.
Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner
Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In their own time, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois also shared a common goal, but differed significantly in the strategies which they believed would help achieve it.
Your Task:
1) Participate in an analytical discussion of the perspectives of these two men, including:
-how and why they might have formed their beliefs
-what sections of the population might have supported each one, and why
-what strengths both men brought to the civil rights movement in the Progressive Era as a whole
2) Share your conclusions with the whole class.

30. Homework:
Read the article about civil rights activist, Henry Monroe Trotter, and his confrontation with Woodrow Wilson over his broken campaign promises.
Why do you think that Trotter is less remembered in common histories than either Washington or Dubois?