The Progressive Era

1890-1920

What were the issues facing

American society?

• Disparity of wealth

• Workers’ rights

• Working conditions

– Wages, hours, child labor, danger, etc.

• Poverty in cities – Tenements, poor sanitation

• Racial discrimination – Immigrants & African

Americans

• Corruption in Social Justice

– Immigrants, Women, African Americans, Children

Progressivism

A movement based on the idea

that new ideas and honest,

efficient government could bring

about social justice

Progressive Beliefs

Increase government regulation of

industry

Improve workers rights, conditions

for poor and immigrants

Clean up the cities

End segregation and Jim Crow

Ensure people’s voice in the

government (suffrage for women)

Who are the Progressives?

Muckrakers (Can you name a couple?)

Churches and religious organizations like the

YMCA concentrated efforts on helping

newcomers adjust to life in the big cities. They

investigated slum conditions, provided food

and clothing, and established settlement

houses.

Political groups like the Progressive Party

(Teddy Roosevelt) and the NAACP

NAACP

• The NAACP's principal objective is to

ensure the political, educational,

social, and economic equality of

minority groups, and eliminate racial

prejudice.

• This group continues to work for the

civil rights of African Americans.

Women’s Suffrage

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-

grandmothers; they lived only 90+ years ago.

Background Information

• With World War I raging overseas

& the United States entering the war

in 1917, American suffragists

believed that if America could fight

a war to defend democracy,

women deserved it at home!

• In the beginning of 1917, a small but

determined group of women led by

Alice Paul began to picket the White

House, urging President Wilson to

support a Constitutional

amendment to give women the

right to vote.

Remember, it was not until 1920

that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women including Alice Paul were often jailed

for picketing the White House & carrying signs asking

for the vote.

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above

her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping

for air.

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her

head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate,

Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917,

when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his

guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because

they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right

to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their

food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they

tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid

into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks

until word was smuggled out to the press.

19th

Amendment

1920: Law that officially

gave women the right to

VOTE!

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Worked not only for

women’s voting

rights, but also for:

– Parental/custody rights

– Divorce rights

– Property rights

– Employment and equal pay

• She also supported

abolition during the

Civil War

• Outspoken supporter

of the temperance

movement.

Lucretia Mott

• Suffragist and

abolitionist

during the Civil

War

• Believed in

promoting

women’s rights,

including the

right to vote

Susan B. Anthony

• American civil rights

leader who helped

introduce women’s

suffrage to the United

States.

• She traveled the

United States and

Europe and gave 75

to 100 speeches per

year on women's

rights for 45 years.