Need Writing Help (DFWk3)

HIS-122 Weekly Required Reading

Required Reading: https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/18-introduction

· Chapter 20-pages 579-608

· Chapter 21-pages 609-640

Required Resources:

Progressive Era: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/progressive-era

Woman Suffrage Movement

The woman suffrage movement, or the drive to grant all adult women the right to vote, culminated in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Those who supported women's right to vote were known either as "suffragettes" or "suffragists." The latter term was more widely used in the United States.

The Suffrage Movement Emerges

In colonial America, most positions of power outside the family were available only to property-owning men. While the American Revolution led to a broader idea of citizen participation, female taxpayers still voted in only some areas. Early women reformers did not focus on expanding the right to vote to all women citizens. Indeed, at the first women's rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton shocked her colleagues when she asked the assembly to vote on a resolution demanding suffrage for women.

After the Civil War, during which many efforts by women had been underappreciated, Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other feminists began to view woman suffrage as their main goal. Many were disappointed by the proposed Fifteenth Amendment, which would grant African American men the vote. In particular, Anthony and Stanton felt that the amendment merely expanded male suffrage. They urged their male allies to withdraw their support unless the amendment was modified to include women. Stanton also prepared a petition requesting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting states "from disenfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex." However, male abolitionists seemed surprised, even indignant, that women objected to the Fifteenth Amendment. Most of them refused to sign the petition.

Suffrage Organizations Work for the Vote

Splitting over the issue of the Fifteenth Amendment, suffragists formed two organizations in 1869. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was led by Stanton and Anthony and was opposed to the Fifteenth Amendment. The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), supportive of the Fifteenth Amendment, was headed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Henry Ward Beecher, and others. Critics viewed the female-run NWSA as more radical than the AWSA. Anthony affirmed that view when she tried to vote in 1872. She was arrested, found guilty, and fined. Other suffragists also brought the issue of woman suffrage into the courts. However, the U.S. Supreme Court closed the matter when it ruled in 1875 that U.S. citizenship did not automatically confer the right to vote.

In 1877, the NWSA resolved to collect signatures for another petition supporting a woman suffrage amendment. Anthony collected 10,000 signatures from 26 states. She presented them to the U.S. Senate, which responded with laughter. Three years later, the movement gained a bit more respectability when the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) endorsed woman suffrage. At the same time, suffragists attracted new enemies in the liquor industry, which viewed the WCTU as a threat.

The NWSA and the AWSA hoped that their combined forces would more quickly advance the idea of a constitutional amendment. They united in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Led by Anthony, Stanton, and Stone, the organization worked on building support within the states. It also disassociated itself from radical causes. In recreating their image, some white suffragists even used racist rhetoric to curry favor in the South. Nevertheless, African American women like Ida Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell, inspired by former slave and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth, maintained their support for woman suffrage.

For the next two decades, the NAWSA sought to increase its membership and further shed its radical image. Presidents like Carrie Chapman Catt reached out to educated, socially prominent women. Younger suffragists held many outdoor meetings and parades. Such tactics, however, did not convince any new states to approve woman suffrage.

Prior to World War I, activist Alice Paul brought her experiences with militant suffragists in England home to the United States. Her leadership inspired many suffragists to focus exclusively on the federal government's failure to approve a woman suffrage amendment. During the war, many even protested the presidency of Woodrow Wilson in front of the White House. Meanwhile, Catt and the NAWSA continued to pressure the states to enfranchise their women. In contrast to Paul, the NAWSA supported Wilson and his war effort. This ultimately helped to convince the president to support the national amendment.

The Nineteenth Amendment

Finally, in 1919, Congress approved an amendment that would guarantee women the right to vote and submitted it to the states. The language of the amendment had been written by Anthony 40 years earlier. By the summer of 1920, 35 of the 36 states needed for ratification had ratified the amendment. Hoping to influence Tennessee's legislature, suffragists and antisuffragists gathered in that state, which finally approved ratification by one vote.

The Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution on August 26, 1920. The last challenge to women's right to vote was defeated when the Supreme Court upheld the amendment in  Leser v. Garnett (1922).

APA Citation

Campbell, H. M. (2024). Woman Suffrage Movement.  American History. Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://americanhistory2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/256043

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) emerged from a three-day conference held July 11–13, 1904, in Fort Erie, Canada. The 29 attendees, all Black intellectuals, were gathered there by activist W. E. B. Du Bois to organize what would be known as the Niagara Movement. The conference's purpose was to achieve the complete abolition of all forms of racial discrimination and the segregation of schools. Also on the agenda were the increasing the number of African Americans elected to political office and the enforcement of Black voting rights in the United States. John Hope, J. Max Barber, and William Monroe Trotter were among the other notable African Americans present at the conference. The Niagara Movement did not gain popular acceptance, perhaps because of its insistence on educational segregation. As a result, its membership and their goals dissolved and revived in the new movement for Black rights organized as the NAACP.

Beginnings

The NAACP was founded in New York City on February 12, 1909, heralded by the publication of "The Call." This announcement urged all leaders to abolish racially biased legislation and to take up the Black cause in the United States by enforcing the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Published in Black newspapers across the U.S., "The Call" recruited members into the new social and political body whose national office was located in New York City. The initial board of directors for the NAACP was entirely composed of white people, including the organization's first president, Moorfield Storey, an attorney.

Du Bois, the only African American initially named to an important position in the organization, was made publicity director and, by extension, editor of the NAACP's official journal,  The Crisis. After the initial "call" for other progressives to join the racial struggle, the NAACP held its first official conference in New York on May 31, 1909, with more than 300 Black and white people in attendance. Once the NAACP became relatively established, its board of directors became increasingly composed of African Americans; by 1934, most board members were Black, and this trend has continued to the present time.

Early Success and Growth

Among the most notable successes of the new body was its protest against Woodrow Wilson's segregation of the federal government during 1913 and against D. W. Griffith's film  The Birth of a Nation (1915), in which African Americans were portrayed as lazy, violent, and ignorant. Through the NAACP's rigorous advertising campaign, the racist film was banned or at least not viewed in many cities around the country. The success of this first use of organized protest against the film inspired the organization to move quickly and loudly against all misrepresentations of Black people and culture. These two protests forced NAACP organizers to recognize the body's growing power, and in 1917, they chose to use this power as a lever to force the federal government to allow African Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. This success led to the commission of 600 Black officers and the registration of 700,000 African Americans for the draft.

Perhaps because of its early emphasis on local organizing practices and rigorous recruitment, the NAACP's membership grew quickly, as did its number of branch offices across the United States. By 1919, the NAACP had more than 300 branch offices and 90,000 members. The year 1919 was also noteworthy in the NAACP for its publication of its investigative report,  Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States. Although the organization had spoken out against lynching as early as 1917, with this report the NAACP took up the antilynching cause first emphasized by Ida B. Wells-Barnett in earnest. Although the organization never successfully forced antilynching legislation to be passed on a federal or state level, its persistent protest against lynching is credited with its decrease and eventual cessation. The NAACP once again demonstrated the power of collective dissent as Wilson spoke out publicly against lynching.

Legal and Legislative Victories

Even as the NAACP was still fighting against lynch mobs and hostility against African Americans on a more general level, it also began to turn its attention to the unequal access to education, housing, health care, and public transportation that African Americans had historically received. In a series of court cases and legislation involving the unconstitutionality of discrimination in these areas so crucial to civil rights, the NAACP won a string of victories in state and federal courts, as well as in Congress. Notable among them were  Buchanan v. Worley (1917), in which the Court ruled that housing districts cannot be forced upon African Americans; the admission of Black students to the University of Maryland in 1935;  Morgan v. Virginia (1946), in which the Supreme Court recognized that states cannot segregate interstate public transport by bus or train; the 1948 banning of discrimination in federal government offices;  Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which struck down "separate but equal" in favor of desegregation; and the Civil Rights Act (1964).

As the civil rights movement gathered momentum in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the NAACP discussed the role it would play in these important times. The organization was uncompromising in its use of state and federal courtrooms to battle racism and discrimination, so it largely stayed out of the often fractious and dangerous social battles being waged on the streets of the South. This did not prevent individual members from engaging in nonviolent protests, however, and in 1960, the NAACP's Youth Council began a series of lunch counter "sit-ins" around the South, resulting in the desegregation of more than 60 department store eateries. In addition to these nonviolent protests, NAACP members organized widespread civil rights rallies. As a result of the rallies' success, the NAACP named its first field director to oversee the legal and safety concerns of these peaceful protests.

As the civil rights war evolved, the NAACP did as well, eventually turning its attention to Black participation in self-government through voting. The NAACP lobbied for voting sites in high schools and persuaded 24 states to set up such sites by 1979. Concentration on the Black vote would continue through the 1980s.

The NAACP Today

In recent decades, the NAACP has focused on the appointment of racially sensitive Supreme Court justices; preventing economic hardship in the Black community; promoting higher education among African Americans and other people of color; and providing alternatives to gang affiliation and violent behavior for Black youths. Still thriving, the NAACP has continued to be a viable social, economic, legal, and political force in and for the Black community in the U.S. It has advocated for the expansion of health care, drawn awareness to HIV/AIDS growth rates, and fought for the protection of voting rights, among other issues of concern to communities of color. In 2012, the NAACP's board of directors endorsed same-sex marriage as a civil right.

In addition to civil rights, the NAACP is also closely linked to Black arts and literature through its nearly 40-year distribution of Image awards to Black cultural luminaries.

APA Citation

Ray, D. (2024). National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  The American Mosaic: The African American Experience. Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1399779

Diverse Political Strategies, 1895-1915

The Progressive Era was a period of intense and wide-ranging reform in U.S. society. Milestones included the purging of corrupt businesses and government bodies, the development of factory standards, the attainment of better work environments and child labor laws, and the campaign against poverty and prostitution. Also critical was the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, which outlawed the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages, and the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women the right to vote. At the same time, African Americans launched campaigns to demand equal rights and freedoms and to end the white-on-Black violence that persisted throughout this era.

Jim Crow and Lynching

The late 19th century witnessed the birth of Jim Crow laws and customs, which put legally binding restrictions on nearly every aspect of Black life. Particularly in the South, though to a small degree in the North, Black people were confined to Black-only neighborhoods, restaurants, and schools. What the laws did not address, the rules and customs of racial etiquette covered. Racial etiquette prescribed how Black people were required to interact with white people. Black people who violated the most minor of these rules were often beaten or lynched.

Lynching was a prominent means of punishing African Americans during the Progressive Era. Between 1889 and 1918, approximately 2,460 African Americans were lynched in the Southern states alone. Black men were lynched over accusations of murder, rape, attack against a white woman, and white racial prejudice, as well as for merely achieving some economic or social success.

Race Riots

A surge of riots also engulfed Black communities during this period. Racist press coverage detailing accusations of Black attacks against white women instigated a 1906 riot in Atlanta, Georgia, that resulted in the indiscriminate torture and beating of Black people, 25 Black deaths, and 1 white death. After a Black man was accused of raping a white woman, a riot erupted in 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, in which 2 Black people and 4 white people were killed, more than 100 Black people were injured, and many Black people had their homes and businesses destroyed and were driven out of town. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was established in the aftermath of this tragedy.

A 1917 riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, was triggered when Black workers replaced white workers on strike at the Aluminum Ore Company. Thirty-five African Americans and eight white people died. In a 1919 riot in Chicago, a young Black man drifted into the white-only section of a beach and was stoned and drowned to death, triggering violent confrontations between white and Black gangs. The 1919 riot in Elaine, Arkansas, began when white deputies tried to break up a Black union meeting. Although white people murdered dozens of Black people without repercussions, 12 African Americans were sentenced to death and 67 were sent to prison. In the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Black citizens rallied to defend a Black man accused of assaulting a white woman. This led to a deadly confrontation that spread to Greenwood, Tulsa's Black neighborhood.

Black Leaders and Movements

Despite the inequality and violence all Black people faced during this period, the Progressive Era saw the emergence of a rising Black middle and upper class. At the same time, a Black movement arose to secure equal rights and opportunities for African Americans as well as an end to the violence they encountered from whites. A significant number of Black leaders emerged, including Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. These two leaders took different approaches to bettering the circumstances of African Americans. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, believed that African Americans should use education and work opportunities to gain equal treatment in U.S. society. This approach, known as political accommodation, discouraged the direct confrontation of racial segregation and violence. Du Bois, on the other hand, insisted on the end of racial discrimination and inequality and on giving African Americans the same access to education that whites had. His book  The Souls of Black Folk (1903) sharply criticized the prejudice against Black people in U.S. society.

At the forefront of the anti-lynching movement were Ida B. Wells-Barnett, such Black publications as  The Crisis, and such organizations as the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and the NAACP. Southern white liberal organizations and newspapers soon followed in their footsteps. These individuals and organizations also fought against Jim Crow and race rioting. At the close of the Progressive Era, Marcus Garvey heralded the call for Black empowerment, thus initiating the turn toward a positive racial consciousness for the working classes.

The most progressive changes for African Americans during this era were the emergence of the Black middle and upper classes, the rise of Black leaders, the migration of Black people out of the tumultuous South, a growing racial pride, and the marked decrease in the annual number of lynchings in the nation. On the other hand, the Progressive Era did not bring about the elimination of discriminatory laws or the permanent end of race riots.

Gladys L. Knight

Booker T. Washington

Lauded by his supporters as a pragmatic, farsighted leader who struck the best possible bargain for African Americans in a time of pronounced racial backsliding, reviled by his adversaries as a weak-kneed accommodationist who sold out the best interests of the Black community to white supremacists, Booker T. Washington is among the most enigmatic of all African American leaders. To maintain his power base in the South, he seldom spoke harshly against racial injustice, and the criticism he did advance was often squeezed between other passages in such a way that it was easy for listeners to overlook. A loyal son of the South, he did the best he could to reconcile the needs of the African American community to the region's commercial, social, and political mores.

Advocate of African Americans

Behind his public mask of affability and acquiescence, Washington was well aware of the injustices facing African Americans, and he went as far as he thought he could in condemning those wrongdoings. A persistent spokesperson for racial power, esteem, and solidarity, he often stated that he was proud to be Black and that other Black people should feel the same way. He lent his support to a wide range of Black educational and economic enterprises, and he expended considerable time and money behind the scenes working against such evils as voter fraud, lynching, the convict leasing system, segregated railway facilities, and the exclusion of African Americans from jury panels.

Tuskegee Institute

In 1872, Washington enrolled at Hampton Institute, a normal and agricultural secondary school founded three years earlier by Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong. A dedicated exponent of industrial education for African Americans, Armstrong stressed the virtues of hard work, frugality, discipline, and self-improvement. With the ideals he had internalized at Hampton, by 1877, on Armstrong's recommendation, he was appointed head of Tuskegee Institute, a new school in Macon County, Alabama. Through his efforts, Tuskegee Institute developed into one of the foremost institutions of higher education for African Americans in the South. Washington emphasized industrial education as a way to achieve economic success arguing in a Franklinesque paradigm that hard work yielded success. From Washington's perspective, political franchisement remained secondary to economic goals. Despite criticism that this type of education perpetuated the inferior social position of African Americans, Washington believed that it allowed for the eventual social advancement of the Black community in the South.

Accommodationism and the Atlanta Compromise

In September 1895, Washington vaulted to national prominence as a result of his speech, popularly known as the Atlanta Compromise, at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. In this speech, Washington stressed the need for African Americans to be integrated into larger society as much as possible. He likened assimilation to the fingers of a hand, noting: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."

In effect, Washington advocated a policy of accommodation, where the African American community would tolerate Jim Crow and racial segregation in exchange for the moderate degree of economic advancement made as a result of their newfound industrial education. Such an accommodation would ensure the economic development of the South to the benefit of both Black and white people argued Washington. Lauded by white elites throughout the country for advancing what they regarded as an ideal solution to the conundrum of Southern race relations, he quickly became the most prominent and powerful African American in the United States. However, many African Americans, most notably prominent intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois, were critical of this stance, arguing that it perpetuated the social and economic condition of African Americans amid white supremacist society.

National Leadership

Preaching the gospel of hard work, self-reliance, and individual initiative, Washington acquired funds for Tuskegee Institute from a host of wealthy benefactors, including John D. Rockefeller, George Eastman, Henry H. Rogers, Julius Rosenwald, and Andrew Carnegie. In 1900, Washington founded the National Negro Business League and served as its president until his death. From 1901 to 1913, he served as an adviser to presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, in which capacity he worked to maintain a solid Republican majority among Black voters, to weaken the hold of white forces on the party's Southern wing, and to secure federal posts for African Americans who stood behind his position on racial matters. Facing increasingly strident challenges to his leadership within the Black community after publication of Du Bois's  The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, Washington warded off his opponents with a combination of public indifference and ruthless behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

Stephen E. Lucas

W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois established himself as one of the most prolific African American intellectuals of the 20th century. Du Bois advocated changes in civil rights and race relations in the United States through political agitation and challenge to the status quo. He famously predicted that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." His work paved the way for the Pan-African, civil rights, and Black Power movements in the United States.

Talented Tenth

Du Bois's notions of how to achieve racial equality in the United States can be contrasted with those of another prominent African American leader of the same period, Booker T. Washington. Washington did not openly challenge the status quo. In fact, Washington was labeled "the Great Accommodator" for his views that African Americans should not openly contest Jim Crow laws but should silently work on improving themselves, and that through such improvement, "friction between the races will pass away." Washington believed in the vocational training of African Americans; Du Bois believed in higher education as a means to achieve equality. Du Bois's work,  The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, a compilation of 14 essays, stressed the need to advance civil rights for African Americans and protect voting rights. In  The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois criticized Booker T. Washington for opposing higher education for African Americans. Washington had previously called for a more practical vocational education for African Americans, as opposed to a college education in the classical liberal tradition. In the work, Du Bois put forward his "Talented Tenth" theory, which stressed the role a core constituent of the most highly educated African Americans—the top 10% of the race hence the "talented tenth" concept—would lead to advancements for black society. It was up to these members to educate and uplift the other members of the African American community and to serve as future social and political leaders.

The Niagara Movement

In 1905, Du Bois and several other African American leaders met in Niagara Falls, Canada, since they were refused hotel accommodations in Niagara Falls on the New York side. The Niagara Group discussed segregation and strategy for the advancement of black political rights. From this meeting emerged a list of demands that included equality of economic and educational opportunity for African Americans and an end to segregation and discrimination in courts, public facilities, and trade unions. From this first meeting emerged the Niagara Movement, the predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Several years later, in 1909, the NAACP formed. Du Bois also created  The Crisis, which became the official publication of the NAACP, and served as its editor for the next 24 years. Under his editorship,  The Crisis became one of the most important national voices for the advancement of black issues and civil rights.

International Objectives

During the period from 1905 to 1952, Du Bois became more and more involved in what was described as the Pan-African movement, which called for an end to European colonialism and influence in Africa. He is known as the father of Pan-Africanism for his pursuit of the unification of Africa. His book on African unification, titled  The World and Africa, was published during this period. Du Bois also began to become more politically radical, associating with socialist and Communist elements. In part because of his radicalism, Du Bois and the NAACP leadership were divided, causing Du Bois to leave the organization in 1934. He returned to the NAACP 10 years later as a research director.

In 1945, Du Bois served as an associate consultant to the delegation of the United States at the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. He was not altogether pleased with the proceedings, charging that the proposed United Nations would be run by imperialist nations, with little regard for colonized countries. Du Bois became increasingly alienated from his own country and its racial practices. He organized Pan-African conferences abroad and continued to write and lecture on the inequities of society.

APA Citation

Knight, G. L. (2024). Diverse Political Strategies, 1895-1915.  The American Mosaic: The African American Experience. Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/18

Lucas, S. E. (2024). Booker T. Washington.  The American Mosaic: The African American Experience. Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/18#1391164

Nyangoni, B. W. (2024). W. E. B. Du Bois.  The American Mosaic: The African American Experience. Retrieved June 17, 2024, from https://africanamerican2.abc-clio.com/Topics/Display/18#1400864