Dark Side of the Progressive Era

 

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/buck-v-bell/

Introduction

For about 30 years, from around 1900 to the late 1920s, America had an active and popular eugenics movement. Supporters of eugenics argued the public good required removing from the population genes thought to cause low intelligence, or immoral, criminal or anti-social behavior. Beginning with Connecticut in 1896, states passed laws requiring medical exams before issuing marriage licenses to make sure the unfit did not reproduce. (See the New York Times article “Pastors for Eugenics” for an effort to support such laws.) Indiana passed the first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, although other states had tried and failed before.

Adam Cohen’s book “Imbeciles” details how Carrie Buck, shown here with her mother, Emma, in 1924, came to be at the center of a Supreme Court case that legalized forced sterilization for eugenic purposes.Photograph Courtesy Arthur Estabrook Papers, Special Collections & Archives, University at Albany, SUNY

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-american-eugenics-movement

Soon, the United States, along with Germany, was at the forefront of the movement to improve the human species through breeding. Scientific American ran articles on the subject, and the American Museum of Natural History hosted conferences. Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Graham Bell, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and many other prominent citizens were outspoken supporters. Eugenics was taught in schools, celebrated in exhibits at the World’s Fair, and even preached from pulpits. The human race, one prominent advocate declared in 1909, was poised “to dry up the springs that feed the torrent of defective and degenerate protoplasm.”

Overview

• The period of US history from the 1890s to the 1920s is usually referred to as the Progressive Era, an era of intense social and political reform aimed at making progress toward a better society.
• Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the negative social effects of industrialization.
• During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved the right to vote.

https://www.woodrowwilsonhouse.org/wilson-topics/wilson-and-race/

https://www.history.com/news/woodrow-wilson-racial-segregation-jim-crow-ku-klux-klan

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/age-of-empire/a/the-progressive-era
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The dark side of progressivism

Though Progressive reformers achieved many noteworthy goals during this period, they also promoted discriminatory policies and espoused intolerant ideas. The Wilson administration, for instance, despite its embrace of modernity and progress, pursued a racial agenda that culminated in the segregation of the federal government. The years of Wilson’s presidency (1913-1921) witnessed a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and a viciously racist backlash against the economic and political gains of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction period.$^5$start superscript, 5, end superscript

Labor unions, which were very active in Progressive politics, supported restrictions on immigration and spewed xenophobic rhetoric that blamed immigrants for low wages and harsh working conditions in factories across the nation. Federal immigration policies in the Progressive Era, including the Immigration Act of 1917 and the National Quota Law of 1921, severely limited immigration based on nationality, and excluded virtually all Asian immigrants.$^6$start superscript, 6, end superscript

In line with their view of human nature as capable of being engineered and manipulated, many Progressive reformers advocated selective breeding, or eugenics. Eugenics was considered “the science of better breeding” and aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through policies that would encourage the more “desirable” elements of society to have more children while preventing “undesirables” from reproducing. Eugenics was based on a racial and class hierarchy that placed white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants at the top. Lower classes, ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, the mentally ill, and the developmentally disabled all occupied lower rungs on this hierarchy. In 1907, the United States became the first country to pass a compulsory sterilization law.

The genocidal policies of Nazi Germany ultimately discredited the “science” of eugenics, but not before over 60,000 American men and women were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from having children.$^7$start superscript, 7, end superscript

What do you think?

How would you describe the Progressive worldview? Do you agree with the ideological assumptions of progressivism?

What were the most impressive achievements of Progressive reformers?

Overall, were the effects of progressivism more harmful or beneficial to American society?

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenics-programs-in-the-united-states/

How did falling incomes affect consumer behavior?

 

By the late 1920s, American consumers were buying less
Rising prices, stagnant wages and overbuying on credit were to blame
Most people did not have the money to buy the flood of goods factories produced

Tulsa Race Riot

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/tulsa-race-massacre

   Tulsa race riot of 1921, one of the most severe incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. It occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, beginning on May 31, 1921, and lasting for two days. The massacre left somewhere between 30 and 300 people dead, mostly African Americans, and destroyed Tulsa’s prosperous Black neighbourhood of Greenwood, known as the “Black Wall Street.” More than 1,400 homes and businesses were burned, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless. Despite its severity and destructiveness, the Tulsa race massacre was barely mentioned in history books until the late 1990s, when a state commission was formed to document the incident.

The Harlem Renaissance

Why did African Americans move to Northern cities?
Jobs
Escape Jim Crows laws
Which African American leaders helped to fight discrimination and violence?
Founded in 1909, the NAACP urged African Americans to protest racial violence
 James Weldon Johnson served as executive secretary of NAACP
Headed anti-lynching laws, wrote books and wrote the lyrics of the Black National Anthem

MARCUS GARVEY – Universal Negro Improvement Association 

Marcus Garvey believed that African Americans should build a separate society (Africa)

 He left a powerful legacy of black pride, economic independence and Pan-Africanism

HARLEM, NEW YORK

 Harlem, NY became the largest black urban community

 Harlem suffered from overcrowding, unemployment and poverty

 However, in the 1920s it was home to a literary and artistic revival known as the Harlem Renaissance

AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS

 The Harlem Renaissance was primarily a literary movement

 Led by well-educated blacks with a new sense of pride in the African-American experience

LANGSTON HUGHES

 Missouri-born Langston Hughes was the movement’s best known poet

 Many of his poems described the difficult lives of working-class blacks

 Some of his poems were put to music, especially jazz and blues

ZORA NEALE HURSTON

 She often wrote about the lives of poor, unschooled Southern blacks

 Zora Neale Hurston wrote novels, short stories and poems

LOUIS ARMSTRONG 

 Jazz was born in the early 20th century 

 In 1922, a young trumpet player named Louis Armstrong joined the Creole Jazz Band

 Later he joined Fletcher Henderson’s band in NYC

 Armstrong is considered the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz

EDWARD KENNEDY “DUKE” ELLINGTON

 In the late 1920s, Duke Ellington, a jazz pianist and composer, led his ten-piece orchestra at the famous Cotton Club

 Ellington won renown as one of America’s greatest composers

America Chases New Heroes and Old Dreams

Charles Lindberg- Made the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. May 20,1927.

                                         

On January 11, 1935, Earhart became the first aviator to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California.

 

  What new styles did writers, artists and composers experiment with in the decade?

 Even before sound, movies offered a means of escape through romance and comedy

 First sound movies: Jazz Singer (1927) 

 First animated with sound:

 Steamboat Willie (1928)

 By 1930 millions of Americans went to the movies each week

MUSIC AND ART

Famed composer George Gershwin merged traditional elements with American Jazz

 Painters like Edward Hopper depicted the loneliness of American life 

http://www.edwardhopper.net/

    How did literature of the time express a clash of values within society?

 The 1920s was one of the greatest literary eras in American history

 Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, wrote the novel, Babbitt

 

  In Babbitt the main character ridicules American conformity and materialism.

WRITERS OF THE 1920s

Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald coined the phrase “Jazz Age” to describe the 1920s

 Fitzgerald wrote 

 Paradise Lost and The Great Gatsby

 The Great Gatsby reflected the emptiness of New York elite society 

 

 Ernest Hemingway, wounded in World War I, became one of the best-known authors of the era

 In his novels, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, he criticized the glorification of war

 His simple, straightforward style of writing set the literary standard 

What was the Lost Generation?

Some writers such as Hemingway and John Dos Passos were so soured by American culture that they chose to settle in Europe

 In Paris they formed a group that one writer called, “The Lost Generation”

Education and Popular Culture

How did public high schools play a role in preparing students for the future?

During the 1920s, developments in education had a powerful impact on the nation
 Enrollment in high schools quadrupled 
challenge = educating  millions of immigrants
Schools offered vocational training

How did various forms of media help to shape American culture in the 1920’s? 

Literacy increased,   newspaper  circulation rose 

By the end of the 1920s, ten American magazines -- including Reader’s Digest and Time – boasted circulations of over 2 million

RADIO COMES OF AGE

Although print media was popular, radio was the most powerful communications medium to emerge in the 1920s

 News was delivered faster and to a larger audience

 Americans could hear the voice of the president or listen to the World Series live

The Twenties Woman

The Flapper - An emancipated young woman who embraced the new fashions and urban attitudes of the day

 



A double standard is the application of different sets of principles for similar situations
New work opportunities- 1930 10 million women earning wages.
The Changing Family

The Prohibition Experiment

January 1920 , the 18th amendment went into effect.

Speakeasies-They were "so called because of the practice of speaking quietly about such a place in public, or when inside it, so as not to alert the police or neighbors."

Bootleggers-bootlegging, is the illegal business of transporting (smuggling) alcoholic beverages where such transportation is forbidden by law.
"Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947) was an American gangster who attained fame during the Prohibition era. His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was 33 years old.

Changing Ways of Life

What were some of the biggest U.S.cities in the 1920's?

NYC 
5.6 Million
Chicago 
3 Million
Philly
 2 Million

Who was Billy Sunday?

Popular Evangelical Minister

Former Professional Baseball Player

The Harding Presidency

Warren G. Harding 29th President
Republican president who followed Wilson
Died half way through 1st term
Known more for scandal than for accomplishments

Tea Pot Dome Scandal

Government gave land to oil companies in exchange for “kickbacks” ($400,000 in ‘loans, bonds, and cash’)

A Time of Labor Unrest

Boston Police Strike (1919) the Police Force in Boston, MA went on a strike, and in fear of communism, President Coolidge (then governor at the time) fired them and called in the militia to be the police force.

The Steel Mill Strike 1919

The steel companies agreed to an 8 hour work day, but the steelworkers remained without a union

The Coal Miners' Strike

John L Lewis

Leader of the United Mine Workers

Helped Coal Miners get a 27% wage increase

What was the Quota System?

The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set up a quota system. This system established the maximum number of people who could enter the United States from each foreign country.

From 1919 to 1921, the number of immigrants had grown almost 600%-from 141,000 to 805,000 people.

As amended in1924, the law limited immigration from each European nation to 2% of the number of its nationals living in the United States in 1890.

Who was the target of the Palmer Raids? Who was Palmer?

Palmer was US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer

The targets of the Palmer Raids were suspected communists, socialists and anarchists

In all the Palmer Raids, arrests greatly exceeded the number of warrants that had been obtained from the courts, and many of those arrested were guilty of nothing more than having a foreign accent.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Palmer-Raids

The disregard of basic civil liberties during the “Palmer raids,” as they came to be known, drew widespread protest and ultimately discredited Palmer, who nevertheless justified his program as the only practical means of combating what he believed was a Bolshevik conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.

Who were Sacco and Vanzetti?

They were two Italian-born laborers and anarchists who were tried, convicted and executed via electrocution on August 23, 1927 in Massachusetts for the 1920 armed robbery and murder of a pay-clerk and a security guard in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The case incited controversy based on questions regarding culpability, the question of the innocence or guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, and conformance, the question of whether the trials were fair to Sacco and Vanzetti.

Americans Struggle with Postwar Issues ch 12

What was the RED SCARE?

A period in time in American history where Americans feared the spread of communism.

Postwar Trends:
Nativism- prejudice against foreign-born people.
Isolationism-  a policy of pulling away from involvement in world affairs.