Chapter 21 – Progressives & Reformers

Lesson 5 – Minorities Seek Equality & Justice

Objectives:1. Identify what problems African-Americans face in the

Progressive Era?2. Identify how African American leaders tried to fight

discrimination?3. Explore what life was like for Asian Americans,

Mexican Americans, and Native Americans during the Progressive Era?

African Americans Fight Discrimination

• 13th Amendment (1865) – abolished slavery• White Progressives had little concern for the

needs of nonwhites.• Southern blacks

– denied political rights by courts, state laws, and racist groups.

– Jim Crow laws led to segregation in schools, trains, & other public places.

• Northern blacks– Faced prejudice– Hired only for lower-paying jobs.

Violence Against African-Americans

• Depression of 1890s – whites’ focused anger on blacks – 1,000s lynched

• Ida B. Wells– African American journalist– Investigated killings– Urged protests

Booker T. Washington• Born a slave.• Taught himself to read.• Founded Tuskegee Institute

– Center for black higher edu.

• Views– Stressed racial harmony with

whites.– Work patiently and move slowly

upwards.– Given money by Carnegie &

Rockefeller to build trade schools.– Several presidents wanted his

advice on racial issues.

W.E.B. Du Bois• Professor, author and

public speaker.

• First African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895.

• Urged blacks to fight discrimination

Struggle for Civil Rights• National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)– Established by Du Bois, Jane

Addams, Lincoln Steffens, and other reformers.

• Blacks & whites work together to gain equal rights for African Americans.

• President Wilson ordered the segregation of government workers.– Businesses followed his example

by enforcing racial segregation.

Mary White Ovington

Racial Pride• Madame C.J. Walker

– First American woman to earn over $1 million.

– Created a line of hair care products for African American women.

• George Washington Carver

– Scientist at Tuskegee Institute– Discovered 100s of new uses

for crops grown in the South and recommended crop rotations.

• George Washington Carver

– Scientist at Tuskegee Institute

– Discovered 100s of new uses for crops grown in the South and recommended crop rotations.

New Generation of Native Americans• Early 1900s

Society of American Indians– Worked for social

justice and tried to educate other Americans about Native American life.

Founded by a group of Indians who possessed both strong tribal loyalty and important connections with the white world, the Society of American Indians was founded in 1911 with the belief that "race leadership" could build a legal division. Almost immediately, however, problems developed within the group as different factions formed over such sensitive issues as Indian assimilation into white culture and the future role of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the end, the society lacked the resources and the broad public support needed to make its promises reality. This photograph is of a society banquet attended by both whites and Indians in Philadelphia in 1914.

Asian American Experience

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 – prevent Chinese from immigranting to the U.S.

• New cheap labor for west coast?– Filipino & Japanese workers.

• Japanese immigrants became farmers and worked in lumber mills, canneries, and mines.

• Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907– Japan agreed to limit the # of workers coming to the U.S. – The U.S. allowed the wives of Japanese men already here to

join them.

Mexican Americans Defend Their Rights

• Mexicans fled Mexico in 1910 to escape revolution & famine.– Worked in fields, built highways and dug irrigation ditches.

• Barrios – neighborhoods of Mexican Americans where they preserved much of their culture (and language).

• Violence– Some Americans responded with violence to the flood of

immigrants.• Attacked Mexican Americans.• Mexican government objected.

– Mutualistas – mutual aid groups in which members pooled money to buy insurance and pay for legal advice.