History in 20th Century essay Be able to describe how the woman suffrage movement gained momentum during the early twentieth century. Do you think white su
History in 20th Century essay Be able to describe how the woman suffrage movement gained momentum during the early twentieth century. Do you think white suffragists “abandoned” their black female suffragettes? If so, why? Use you own writing skills no citation more than the film and book by name: Give me liberty, Eric Foner, volume 2. Must critically engage the themes in the film and the reading, explains the origins and significant of the events presented in the film and GML readings, give also clear examples. 300-400 words. OC
9
How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s?
reating
work,
Unions, declared Samuel Gompers, the AFL’s founder and longti
president, should not pursue the Knights’ utopian dream of
“cooperative commonwealth.” Rather, the labor movement should deve
itself to negotiating with employers for higher wages and better
language of the era’s business culture. Indeed, the AFL policies he pio
neered were known as “business unionism.
During the 1890s, union membership rebounded from its decline in
the late 1880s. But at the same time, the labor movement became less and
less inclusive. Abandoning the Knights’ ideal of labor solidarity, the AFL
restricted membership to skilled workers-a small minority of the labor
force-effectively excluding the vast majority of unskilled workers and,
therefore, nearly all blacks, women, and new European immigrants. AFL
membership centered on sectors of the economy like printing and building
construction that were dominated by small competitive businesses. AFL
unions had little presence in basic industries like steel and rubber, or in the
large-scale factories that now dominated the economy.
their nature and join assertively in move-
ments to change society.
At the same time, the center of grav-
ity of feminism shifted toward an outlook
more in keeping with prevailing racial and
ethnic norms. The movement continued to
argue for women’s equality in employment,
education, and politics. But with increasing
frequency, the native-born, middle-class
women who dominated the suffrage move-
ment claimed the vote as educated mem-
bers of a superior race.
“A Woman’s Liquor Raid,” an
illustration in the National Police
The Women’s Era
Immigrants and former slaves had
been enfranchised with ill-advised haste,”
declared Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association (created in 1890 to reunite the rival suf-
frage organizations formed after the Civil War). Indeed, Catt suggested, Gazette in 1879, depicts a group of
extending the vote to native-born white women would help to counteract
temperance crusaders destroying
liquor containers in a Frederickstown,
the growing power of the ignorant foreign vote” in the North and the
Ohio, saloon.
dangerous potential for a second Reconstruction in the South. In 1895,
the same year that Booker T. Washington delivered his Atlanta address,
the National American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual
convention in that segregated city. Like other American institutions, the
organized movement for woman suffrage had made its peace with nativ-
ism and racism.
force
BECOMING A WORLD POWER
Changes in the women’s movement reflected the same combination of
expanding activities and narrowing boundaries. The 1890s launched what
would later be called the women’s era–three decades during which
women, although still denied the vote, enjoyed larger opportunities than
in the past for economic independence and played a greater and greater
role in public life. Nearly 5 million women worked for wages in 1900.
Although most were young, unmarried, and concentrated in traditional
jobs such as domestic service and the garment industry, a generation of
college-educated women was beginning to take its place in better-paying
clerical and professional positions.
Through a network of women’s clubs, temperance associations, and
social reform organizations, women exerted a growing influence on pub-
lic affairs. Founded in 1874, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
(WCTU) grew to become the era’s largest female organization, with a
membership by 1890 of 150,000. Under the banner of Home Protection,
it moved from demanding the prohibition of alcoholic beverages (blamed
for leading men to squander their wages on drink and treat their wives
abusively) to a comprehensive program of economic and political reform,
including the right to vote. Women, insisted Frances Willard, the group’s
president, must abandon the idea that weakness and dependence were
The New Imperialism
The global context
In world history, the last quarter of the nineteenth century is known as the
age of imperialism, when rival European empires carved up large parts
of the world among themselves. For most of this period, the United States
remained a second-rate power.
The new imperialism that arose after 1870 was dominated by
European powers and Japan. Belgium, Great Britain, and France consoli-
dated their hold on colonies in Africa, and newly unified Germany acquired
colonies there as well. By the early twentieth century, most of Asia, Africa,
the Middle East, and the Pacific had been divided among these empires.
WORLD POW
ation
a larger Progressive fai
Centers
subal
*sane
Jane Addams and Hull House
kompleo
gappel
Hall house – 1889
per wock
a club, adultedu
government could be
In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and antidemocratic impulses?
cise intelligent control over society through a democracy run by i
tial experts who were in many respects unaccountable to the ci
an array of reforms in Chicago, soon adopted elsewhere, including stron-
Political freedom was less a matter of direct participation in govern
ger building and sanitation codes, shorter working hours and safer labor
than of qualified persons devising the best public policies.
conditions, and the right of labor to organize.
The settlement houses have been called “spearheads for reform.”
Florence Kelley, a veteran of Hull House, went on to mobilize wom-
en’s power as consumers as a force for social change. Under Kelley’s Florence Kelley
leadership, the National Consumers’ League became the nation’s lead-
But alongside this elitist politics, Progressivism also included a
ing advocate of laws governing the working conditions of women and
democratic vision of the activist state. As much as any other
children.
of Progressivism. Still barred from voting and holding office in
Woment reformers and
organized women reformers spoke for the more democratic
Progressism
states, women nonetheless became central to the political history of
The Campaign for Woman Suffraget
After 1900, the campaign for woman suffrage moved beyond the elit-
Progressive era. The immediate catalyst was a growing awareness amo
ism of the 1890s to engage a broad coalition ranging from middle-class
enot serral thousan
women reformers of the plight of poor immigrant communities a
members of women’s clubs to unionists, socialists, and settlement-house
workers. For the first time, it became a mass movement. Membership in
A mass movement
worca the fact emergence of the condition of women and child laborers as a
of public concern.
the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew from 13,000
in 1893 to more than 2 million by 1917. By 1900, more than half the states
how Cooker Search The era’s most prominent female reformer was Jane Addams, w
had been born in 1860, the daughter of an Illinois businessman. In 18
allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues, and
Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah had adopted full woman suffrage.
maler For childielen she founded Hull House in Chicago, a settlement house devoted
improving the lives of the immigrant poor. Unlike previous reformers
Between 1910 and 1914, seven more western states enfranchised women.
In 1913, Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi River to allow
had aided the poor from afar, settlement-house workers moved into po
n in the courtyard at Hull
neighborhoods. They built kindergartens and playgrounds for childr
women to vote in presidential elections.
the settlement house
These campaigns, which brought women aggressively into the pub-
hed in Chicago by Jane
established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed femal
victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection. By 1910, more the
lic sphere, were conducted with a new spirit of militancy. They also
made effective use of the techniques of advertising, publicity, and mass
Mayor Mary W. Howard (c
400 settlement houses had been established in citis
entertainment characteristic of modern consumer society. California’s suc-
the town council of Kanab
throughout the country.
They served from 1912 to
cessful 1911 campaign utilized automobile parades, numerous billboards
first all-female municipal
Addams was typical of the Progressive era’s “me
and electric signs, and countless suffrage buttons and badges. Nonetheless,
in American history.
woman. By 1900, there were more than 80,000 a
state campaigns were difficult, expensive, and usually unsuccessful. The
lege-educated women in the United States. Many foun
movement increasingly focused its attention on secur-
a calling in providing social services, nursing, an
ing a national constitutional amendment giving women
education to poor families in the growing cities. Th
the right to vote.
efforts of middle-class women to uplift the poor, an
of laboring women to uplift themselves, helped to shi
the center of gravity of politics toward activist gover
Maternalist Reform
ment. Women like Addams discovered that even
Ironically, the desire to exalt women’s role within
organized social work was not enough to alleviate the
the home did much to inspire the reinvigoration of
problems of inadequate housing, income, and health
the suffrage movement. Female reformers helped to
Government action was essential. Hull House instigal
launch a mass movement for direct government action
M
wel
What were the competing visions of Reconstruction?
hero, as their candidate for president,
Grant’s Democratic opponent was Horatio
Seymour, the former governor of New
York. Reconstruction became the central
issue of the bitterly fought 1868 campaign.
Democrats denounced Reconstruction as
unconstitutional and condemned black
suffrage as a violation of America’s politi-
cal traditions. They appealed openly to
racism. Seymour’s running mate, Francis
P. Blair Jr., charged Republicans with plac-
ing the South under the rule of “a semi-
barbarous race who longed to “subject the
white women to their unbridled lust.
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Before the Civil War, American citizenship had been closely linked
to race. But the laws and amendments of Reconstruction repudiated the
idea that citizenship was an entitlement of whites alone. And, as one con- Race and citizenship
gressman noted, the amendments expanded the liberty of whites as well
as blacks, including the millions of people of foreign birth who will flock
to our shores.
The new amendments also transformed the relationship between
the federal government and the states. The Bill of Rights had linked civil
liberties to the autonomy of the states. Its language-“Congress shall make
no law-reflected the belief that concentrated national power posed the
greatest threat to freedom. The authors of the Reconstruction amendments
assumed that rights required national power to enforce them. Rather than
a threat to liberty, the federal government, in Charles Sumner’s words, had
become “the custodian of freedom.”
The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from Constitutional significance
a document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights
of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minori-
ties could stake a claim to freedom and seek protection against misconduct
by all levels of government. In the twentieth century, many of the Supreme
Court’s most important decisions expanding the rights of American citi-
zens were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps most notably the
1954 Brown ruling that outlawed school segregation (see Chapter 24).
Electoral Vote Popular Vote
ndidate (Share) (Share) The Fifteenth Amendment
ant 214 (73%) 3,012,833 (53%)
mour 80 (27%)
2,703,249 (47%) Grant won the election of 1868, although
Tuction
by a margin300,000 of 6 million votes
electoral votes for Grant
cast-that many Republicans found uncom-
fortably slim. The result led Congress to
adopt the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited the federal and state
governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of race.
Bitterly opposed by the Democratic Party, it was ratified in 1870.
Although the Fifteenth Amendment opened the door to suffrage
restrictions not explicitly based on race-literacy tests, property qualifi-
cations, and poll taxes-and did not extend the right to vote to women, it
marked the culmination of four decades of abolitionist agitation. Nothing
in all history, exclaimed veteran abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison,
equaled this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of
human beings from … the auction-block to the ballot-box.
The Rights of Women
Women and the limits of
equality
The “Great Constitutional Revolution”
The contest with the South that destroyed slavery,” wrote the Philadelphia
lawyer Sidney George Fisher in his diary, “has caused an immense
increase in the popular passion for liberty and equality. But advocates of
women’s rights encountered the limits of the Reconstruction commitment
to equality. Women activists saw Reconstruction as the moment to claim
their own emancipation. The rewriting of the Constitution, declared suf-
frage leader Olympia Brown, offered the opportunity to sever the blessings
of freedom from sex as well as race and to “bury the black man and the
woman in the citizen.”
Even Radical Republicans insisted that Reconstruction was the
Negro’s hour” (the hour, that is, of the black male). The Fourteenth Amend-
ment for the first time introduced the word “male” into the Constitution,
in its clause penalizing a state for denying any group of men the right
to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment outlawed discrimination in voting
based on race but not gender. These measures produced a bitter split both
The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected the intersection
of two products of the Civil War era-a newly empowered national state,
and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law. What
Republican leader Carl Schurz called the great Constitutional revolution”
of Reconstruction transformed the federal system and with it, the language
of freedom so central to American political culture.
Voting rights
461
THE MAKING OF RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION
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