Transcript VUS. 8 c & d Segregation, Progressive Movement & Labor Unions Mrs. Saunders

VUS. 8 c & d
Segregation, Progressive
Movement & Labor Unions
Mrs. Saunders
Discrimination
Discrimination and segregation against AfricanAmericans intensified and took new forms in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Racial
segregation means separation of the races. After
Reconstruction, Southern state governments passed
“Jim Crow” laws, forcing separation of the races in
public places. Different states passed these laws in
different years, but by the early twentieth century all
Southern states required racial segregation in public
facilities and had denied most African-Americans the
right to vote. These laws limited the freedoms of
African-Americans who lived in the South.
Discrimination
In addition, Southern whites
directed intimidation and
crimes against AfricanAmericans. Lynching,
hanging someone without a
trial, became a major form of
intimidation used by Southern
whites against AfricanAmericans.
Booker T. Washington's rhetoric and
patronage could not stem the rising tide of
violence against African Americans. AfricanAmerican men who resisted white authority
were all too frequently victims of mob
violence and lynchings. In 1892, there were
235 lynchings in the South; more than 100
followed every year until 1908.
Discrimination
By the late 19th century, AfricanAmericans began the “Great
Migration” to Northern cities in
search of jobs and to escape poverty
and discrimination in the South. This
black migration north continued in the
early 20th century, particularly during
World War I, when the enlistment of
thousands of white males in the U.S.
Army opened up jobs for AfricanAmericans.
African Americans had been moving from the rural South into the industrial North
since the beginning of the 20th century, but the "Great Migration" from field to factory
was accelerated by industrial job opportunities during WWI. Beginning in 1916, labor
agents traveled throughout the South, actively recruiting African-American men and
women. By 1920, half a million of them had moved into segregated neighborhoods in
northern cities. Cleveland's African-American population multiplied three-fold;
Detroit's increased six-fold. Though they still faced discrimination, their children
attended better schools, and the men were able to vote.
Discrimination
By this ruling the Supreme
Court upheld the segregation
laws of the Southern states.
In practice the separate
facilities, provided AfricanAmericans by Southern
states, were always separate,
but seldom, if ever, equal.
Black Americans looked to the
courts to safeguard their rights.
They hoped the judicial branch
would interpret the laws in a way
that would honor the intent of both
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments. However, in the
case of Plessy v. Ferguson the
Supreme Court ruled that “separate
but equal” facilities did not violate
the Fourteenth Amendment. In
other words, the Supreme Court
said that Southern states could
legally segregate whites and
blacks, as long as the separate
facilities were equal.
Discrimination
Education for the freedmen begun by
reformers of radical reconstruction did
not stop at basic and practical
learning; higher education and
professional training would be
available to talented African
Americans at universities such as
Howard in Washington, D C., founded
in 1867 and named for Oliver O.
Howard, director of the Freedmen's
Bureau.
African-American leaders disagreed about how to respond to both
the South’s Jim Crow laws and racial discrimination in the North.
Booker T. Washington believed the way to equality was through
vocational education and economic success. He accepted social
separation of the races. In contrast, W.E.B. DuBois believed that
education was meaningless without equality. He supported political
equality for African-Americans by helping to form the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.
Discrimination
Booker T. Washington (18561915), born in slavery, founded
the Tuskegee Institute in
Alabama in 1881 to educate
freedmen in the dignity of the
manual work to which they
were relegated in much of the
South.
Practical work, and an industrial education, he insisted, could bring them the
economic security by which their precarious status in the South could be
stabilized. At the Cotton States Exposition, Washington reassured whites by
calling, not for equality, but for economic opportunity. The speech earned him
national fame, and the patronage of presidents and business leaders.
Labeled a conservative, Booker T. Washington secretly funded legal
challenges to the growing segregation of the "Jim Crow" laws.
Discrimination
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
(1868-1963) openly broke with the
public accommodationist stance of
Booker T. Washington in 1903 with
the publication of The Souls of
Black Folk. A Harvard-educated
sociologist and historian, and faculty
member at Atlanta University, Du
Bois demanded rigorous intellectual
training for the "Talented Tenth" of
African-American youth.
In 1905, DuBois met with William Monroe Trotter and other militant AfricanAmerican journalists and educators to form the "Niagara Movement" to oppose
Washington's leadership. In the aftermath of the Springfield riots, a few white
progressives joined with Du Bois to help establish the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People in 1909. By 1914, the NAACP had grown to 50
branches with 6,000 members. Du Bois broke with the organization in 1934, and
left the U.S. for Ghana in 1961.
Discrimination
Ida B. Wells, who generally agreed
with DuBois’ ideas, led an antilynching crusade and called on the
federal government to take action.
Ida B. Wells was an
• anti-lynching crusader,
• women's rights activist,
• passionate crusader against racism,
• journalist and teacher who spoke out
on racial issues,
• civil rights pioneer, and one of the
founders of the NAACP
Progressive Movement
The economic progress made
by the United States between
1877 and 1920 came at a
price. Industrial development
raised the standard of living
for millions of Americans.
However, it also brought
about the rise of national
labor unions and clashes
between industry and labor.
An urban reform demanded
most frequently by city dwellers
was the reform and
professionalization of city police
forces. Here, one of New York
City's Finest poses for the
camera in 1907.
Progressive Movement
Social problems in rural (country) and urban (city) settings
gave rise to third-party movements and the beginning of
the Progressive period.
The "bathroom" in a New York City
cold-water tenement flat. As many
as 150 people and two shops on
the bottom level filled each
building. Toilets like this, four per
floor, were communal, and were
located near and vented into the air
shaft that served the inner
apartments as their only source of
light and air. 1905 photo.
Progressive Movement
The Progressive Era from 1890 to 1913 was
a time when large numbers of people were
working to improve society. Many people
turned away from the idea of “Social
Darwinism” – the idea that society was
based on “the survival of the fittest”. This
was fine for Animals in the wild but
American Government should work for all
the citizens, not just the fittest.
Progressive Movement
Angered at the limited gains won by the A. F.
of L. and the United Mine Workers, miners
helped organize the International Workers
of the World in Chicago in 1905. Rather than
organizing workers within a craft, the IWW,
like the Knights of Labor before them, wanted
workers organized within an industry. Their
target was unskilled and foreign-born workers
and the large industries that exploited them;
their aim was not short-term economic gains
but revolution; and their tactics were to foster
class conflict and open confrontation with
mine and industry owners. Although the IWW
probably never had over 150,000 members,
its impact in the mine fields of the far West,
and the immigrant workers of the Northeast,
helped spark fears that labor unions were
sources of anarchy and socialism.
Unemployed men receiving bread
on a New York City street in March
1893. The overexpansion of
railroads, and heavy borrowing by
farmers and businesses in the
1880s, led to a sudden collapse of
the stock market in 1893. The
Panic of 1893 deepened into a full
depression in 1894, when more
than three million were
unemployed.
Progressive Movement
The Progressive Movement, which began in the early
twentieth century, wanted to use government to reform
problems created by industrialization. Progressives had
three main goals.
– First, they favored government controlled by the
people, instead of by big business and other wealthy
special interests.
– Second, they hoped to guarantee Americans
economic opportunity through government regulation
of business. This idea challenged the traditional
American belief in laissez faire economics.
– Third, Progressives aimed to eliminate social
injustices that existed in late nineteenth century
America.
Progressive Movement
The Progressive movement occurred on all three
levels of government (federal, state, and local) and
included both Republicans, like Theodore
Roosevelt, and Democrats, like Woodrow Wilson.
Theodore Roosevelt - Progressive program
the “Square Deal”
Woodrow Wilson - Progressive program
the “New Freedom.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) was 42 years old when
McKinley's assassination
made him the 26th and
youngest president of the U.S.
He was an acknowledged
Progressive, and his
presidency saw a shift from the
cautious regulatory moves of
his first administration to a
series of far-reaching actions
that reduced the power of
business by dismantling some
trusts and regulating others.
Theodore Roosevelt
The “Square Deal” was a term used to describe various
Progressive acts that sought to give common people fair
treatment.
• Hepburn Act of 1906 – limited distribution to free railway
passes
• Meat Inspections Act – standards for meat packing
industry
• Pure Food and Drug Act – halted sale of contaminated
food and medicine and required truth in labeling.
• Conservation - doubled the number of national parks,
wildlife reserves, water-power sites, land set aside for
mineral and water resources
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft (1857-1930).
Roosevelt’s handpicked successor
was the Progressive administrator of
the Philippines, William Howard Taft
(1857-1930), who had become
Roosevelt's Secretary of War in
1904. As the 27th president, Taft
continued to follow some of
Roosevelt's domestic policies,
particularly the breaking up of trusts
and monopolies. But in other areas,
such as conservation and tariff
reform, Taft angered the Progressive
leadership in Congress.
He was not reelected to a second term, but served from 1921 until his
death as an effective chief justice of the Supreme Court.
The Progressive
or “Bull-Moose” Party
Roosevelt's remark to the press that he
felt "as fit as a bull moose" gave the
party its enduring nickname. The
Progressives' platform lacked a strong
anti-trust, or anti-monopoly, plank. But it
backed the creation of an income tax,
supported women's suffrage and
supported the citizens' right to be
involved in the legislative process
through initiatives, referendums and the
recall, and to elect senators and party
candidates directly.
Election of 1912
The disillusionment of Progressives with Taft split the Republican party,
with the conservatives nominating Taft for a second term and the
Progressives bolting to form the Progressive, or "Bull Moose" party,
which nominated Theodore Roosevelt. This gave the Democrats a
hope of winning the White House, and they chose as their candidate
the Virginia-born governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson (18561924). A Princeton
graduate, he had gone on
to earn a law degree in
Virginia, and then had
become first a professor at,
and then president of
Princeton. As governor he
had reformed corrupt state
politics and strengthened
the regulation of the state's
railroads. However, he was
almost totally
inexperienced in national
politics.
Woodrow Wilson
Wilson’s New Freedom plan was an attack on the
“triple wall of privilege: the trusts, the tariffs and high
finance” saying “Freedom today is something more than
being left alone.”
• Underwood Tariff of 1913 – eliminated or lowered
protective tariffs for big business and created the first
income tax law after the passage of the sixteenth
amendment allowing for the income tax.
• Federal Reserve Act of 1913 - created 12 Federal
Reserve Districts each with a Bank for banks (not
individuals) and a Federal Reserve Board to run the
banks.
• Clayton Anti-trust Act of 1914
• Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 – set up the
Federal Trade Commission as a watch-dog agency to
investigate violations of regulatory laws.
Progressive Movement
The Muckrakers were an important group of Progressives
who drew national attention to these problems. Muckrakers
were writers during the Progressive Era, who exposed
social and political evils. For example, muckraking literature
describing the abuses of child labor led state governments
to pass child labor laws.
Young cigarmakers in the Englehardt &
Company factory at Tampa, Florida,
January 1909. Lewis Hine wrote,
"Three boys looked under 14. Labor
leaders told me in busy times many
small boys and girls were employed.
Youngsters all smoke."
Progressive Movement
Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), an ardent
Socialist, used fiction to work for industrial
reform. Sinclair (right) is shown here in
May, 1914, picketing the Rockefeller
building in New York City. The revelations
of unsanitary conditions in the meat
packing industry in Upton Sinclair's novel
The Jungle (1906) shocked Americans
into demanding regulation of the food
industry.
Workers in a Chicago meat packing
plant in 1905. Roosevelt played a key
role in the fashioning of a Pure Food
and Drug Act, and a Meat Inspection
Act, both in 1906. Reformers had been
demanding federal regulation of patent
medicines and processed meats for
some time.
Progressive Movement
At the state level, Progressives attempted to make
government more democratic through referendum, initiative,
and recall. Some states adopted these democratic reforms,
while others did not.
– Referendum is a process by which citizens may vote
on laws that have been passed by a legislative body.
– Initiative is a process that permits citizens to propose
laws to their state or local governments. The
referendum and initiative enable citizens to use the vote
as a resource to propose, amend, and defeat laws
made by governments.
– A recall election is a process by which citizens may
vote to remove government officials from office before
their terms are finished. Approximately thirteen states
adopted procedures for recall elections during the
Progressive period.
Progressive Movement
Progressives also tried to make the election
process more democratic
– on the state level by both requiring use of the secret
ballot and providing for primary elections. A primary
election is an election in which voters nominate
candidates for office, rather than allowing political
party leaders to choose that party’s candidates at
state or local conventions.
– on the national level, when they achieved ratification
of the Seventeenth Amendment. The Seventeenth
Amendment provided for direct election of United
States senators by the people, rather than by the
state legislatures.
Progressive Movement
During Woodrow Wilson’s presidency,
Congress passed the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.
This law outlawed price-fixing by competing
corporations and exempted unions from the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act. At first, the federal
courts used the Sherman Act more to limit
unions than business monopolies.
Sherman, a Republican senator, addressed
two of the agricultural West and Midwest's
economic concerns with legislation that bears
his name. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of
1890 outlawed the monopolistic trusts that
kept oil and railroad rates high, and the
Sherman Silver Purchase Act sought to
inflate the currency by requiring the federal
government to purchase fixed amounts of
silver for coinage.
Progressive Movement
Finally, at the local
level Progressives
tried to make city
governments less
corrupt, more efficient,
and more responsive
to the people’s needs
by adopting either the
commission or
council/manager
methods of
organization.
Tammany Hall was the name given to the
Democratic political machine that dominated
New York City politics from the mayoral victory
of Fernando Wood in 1854 through the
election of Fiorello LaGuardia in 1934.
Progressive Movement
William Magear Tweed (1823-1878), was a New York
City politician who led a group of corrupt politicians
who gained power in the Democratic party in 1863,
when Tweed was elected “Grand Sachem” of
Tammany Hall. Tweed primarily exercised power
through his control of patronage, the ability to appoint
supporters to jobs in New York City government. For
instance, after he was appointed commissioner of
public works, Tweed enlarged the street maintenance
crew to include twelve jobs as “manure inspectors.”
Thomas Nast (1840-1902) is most often remembered for his
cartoon campaign in the 1870s against Boss Tweed and New
York's corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. After Nast
portrayed Tweed and the Tammany Ring pointing at each other
in answer to the question, "Who stole the people's money?"
Tweed is reported to have demanded, "Stop them damned
pictures. I don't care what the papers write about me. My
constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures."
Progressive Movement
• In a commission form voters elect a certain number of
commissioners who serve as a board that sets the city’s
policy. In addition, each commissioner is in charge of a
city department. Because a small board is unable to deal
with complex urban problems, the commission form of city
government is seldom used today.
• In contrast, approximately half of America’s cities now
use a council/manager form of government. Under this
system, voters elect a small city council. The council hires
a professional manager to serve as the city’s
administrator. The city manager appoints city department
heads and carries out the council’s policies. Since the city
manager is not elected, he or she can devote full time to
conducting city business.
Progressive Movement
The Progressive Movement recognized that America’s promise
of equality had largely ignored American women. As a result,
many Progressives supported the women’s suffrage movement.
Since
suffrage
means the
right to vote,
the women’s
suffrage
movement
worked to
gain the right
to vote for
American
women,
Progressive Movement
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted
for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election.
Authorities arrested Anthony and put her on trial
for the crime of casting an illegal ballot, since as a
woman she could not legally vote. They fined her
one hundred dollars, which she refused to pay.
Three years later she was jailed because, once
again, she tried to vote. The nineteenth
Amendment, which allows women the right to vote,
was finally ratified in 1920.
Nineteenth Amendment
This constitutional amendment, which became part of the
Constitution in 1920, gave American women the right to vote.
The women’s suffrage movement was a forerunner of many
modern protest movements, especially the feminist movement.
Many American feminists today belong to the National
Organization for Women (NOW), which continues to work for
equal rights for women in American society.
This March 3, 1913
parade of suffragists,
held in Washington
the day before the
inauguration of
Woodrow Wilson,
created a national
shock when hostile
onlookers, unopposed
by local police,
attacked the
marchers.
Progressive Movement
A YWCA group in Washington,
D.C. For women office
workers, the Young Women's
Christian Association often
became a source for
organization and support.
Founded in the U.S. in 1858,
the leadership of the YWCA
was dominated by elite and
upper-middle-class women.
In the Progressive era, many of these women used the
organization to provide aid and education to young, unmarried
women away from their own homes. In urban areas, the YWCA
represented a safe lodging place, an opportunity for recreation,
and a place for instruction in good hygiene, high culture, and
better work habits.
Social Problems
Industrialization created many social problems in
American cities. These included:
– dangerous working conditions for miners, railroad,
and factory workers
– use and abuse of both child labor and women
workers
– long hours, low wages, no job security, and no
benefits
– Employers forced workers to live in company towns
(Workers had to rent housing provided by the
employer and were required to pay rent, even when
the employer laid them off).
Labor Unions
In the late 1800s workers joined together to form labor
unions, an organization of workers, which tries to gain
higher wages, improved working conditions, and better
employee benefits. The first important union in American
history was the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor
grew very quickly, but was destroyed by the negative
publicity that followed the Haymarket Riot. The Haymarket
Riot was a violent confrontation in Chicago in 1886 between
workers and police.
Founders of the Knights of Labor.
Issues of low pay, long hours, unsafe
working conditions, and lack of
control over the pace or quality of
work that unskilled workers did, led
to the founding of a new kind of labor
organization.
Labor Unions
The American Federation
of Labor grew more slowly
than the Knights of Labor
and also suffered many
defeats at the hands of big
business. For example, the
Homestead Strike was an
unsuccessful and bloody
strike at the Carnegie Steel
Company in 1892. It
continues to exist today as
the AFL-CIO and is now
the most powerful union in
the United States.
"The Homestead Riot." Frick hired an army
of private detectives or "Pinkerton men" to
drive the strikers off; in a pitched battle, three
detectives and ten workers died. A week
later, the Pennsylvania governor called in the
state militia to impose order at the
Homestead plant. An anarchist attempted to
assassinate Henry Frick, who survived two
shots and a stab wound, and in late July, the
Homestead Steel mill reopened. By the end
of 1892, the strike was broken and the wage
cuts remained.
Labor
Unions
Eugene V. Debs led the
American Railway Union. Like
the Knights of Labor, it enjoyed
short-term success. However, it
was destroyed by the negative
publicity that followed the
Pullman Strike. The Pullman
Strike was an 1894 strike by
railroad employees against the
Pullman Company, which made
railroad sleeping cars.
Coal strike representatives meeting with Roosevelt. Mine owner George F. Baer
refused to negotiate with United Mine Workers president John Mitchell, even though
there was some public support for the union demands of an increase in wages, an
eight-hour day, fair weighing of the coal, and better mine safety conditions. When
national coal reserves ran low, Roosevelt attempted to mediate the dispute. Baer
demanded that the president prosecute Mitchell for violation of the Sherman AntiTrust Act, as President Grover Cleveland had done in the Pullman strike in 1894.
Instead, Roosevelt threatened to send troops to take over and operate the mines if
Baer did not submit to arbitration.
Labor Unions
The International Ladies’
Garment Workers Union
was an early attempt to
organize women who
worked in textile factories.
In March 1911 a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in
New York City. More than 500 immigrant workers, predominantly women
and mostly Italians and Jews from Eastern Europe, were employed by
the company, which had locked the exit doors to keep union organizers
out. In the panic of the fire, many died of suffocation; others trapped in
the top levels of the ten-story building jumped to their deaths. 146
people, mostly women, died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Labor
organizer Rose Schneiderman, then 29 years old, told the city's leaders
that "This is not the first time that girls have been burned alive in the city.
. . . Every year thousands of us are maimed."