American History Unit 12 America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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American HistoryUnit 12America at the Turn of
the Twentieth Century
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America at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

• Topics discussed in this unit
• Education
• Entertainment
• Life for African Americans under Jim Crow laws
• The changing role of women.

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The Expansion of Education

• In the nineteenth century, education was out of
  reach for many Americans, but by the turn of the
  century more and more Americans were able to take
  advantage of educational opportunities.
• Educational opportunities were not available to
  all Americans on an equal basis.
• Women, African Americans, and Native Americans
  still faced significant discrimination.

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• By the end of the nineteenth century, the vast
  majority of Americans attended at least a few
  years of public schooling in order to learn to
  read, write, and do basic arithmetic.
• Public schools not only provided education for
  immigrant children, but they also played a major
  role in assimilating immigrants, helping them
  become part of American culture.

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The Expansion of Education

• As more students completed high school, more
  opportunities developed for them to attend
  institutions of higher learning.

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The Expansion of Education

• Between the years 1880 and 1900, around 150 new
  colleges and universities opened their doors.
• By 1915, even some middle-class families were
  able to send their children to college.

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• Women, too, began to have opportunities to
  receive a higher education as many colleges
  formed associated womens schools.
• This wide availability of higher education would
  come to distinguish the United States from other
  industrialized nations.

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Early American Classes
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The Expansion of Education

• Unfortunately this education was not equally
  available to everybody.
• African-American children generally attended
  separate schools that were very inferior to those
  of their white counterparts.

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• Native American children could only attend
  schools if they left the reservation and their
  families to attend special boarding schools that
  forced them to give up their language, dress,
  customs, and culture.

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Carlisle Indian Industrial School
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The Expansion of Education

• As far as higher education went, there were few
  colleges and universities who would admit African
  Americans, yet there were many African Americans
  who wanted higher educational opportunities.
• Only a few institutionsOberlin, Bates, and
  Bowdoinaccepted African-American students, and
  there were also several segregated
  African-American schools founded during
  Reconstruction, including Fisk University and
  Howard University.

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Early African-American Schools
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The Expansion of Education

• Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois
  represented two differing views on
  African-American education.
• Washington believed in vocational education that
  would provide African Americans with a way of
  making a living because they needed economic
  equality to gain social equality.
• W. E. B. Dubois did not agree. He argued that
  African Americans needed to gain social and
  political equality and civil rights through
  educated leaders who took pride in their heritage.

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Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Dubois
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New Forms of Entertainment

• From 1880 to 1915, Americans who had more money
  and leisure time began to flock to new forms of
  entertainment.

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New Forms of Entertainment

• With new forms of transportation and more leisure
  time and more money, many Americans began to look
  for new forms of entertainment to take them away
  from the dirty, crowded streets where they lived
  and work.
• These forms of entertainment included vaudeville
  shows and, sometime later, movies.
• They also included visits to the circus and tips
  to amusement parks.

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New Forms of Entertainment

• This was the grand era of amusement parks such as
  Coney Islands Luna Park.

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New Forms of Entertainment

• Sports provided people with another form of
  inexpensive entertainment, and fans flocked to
  baseball, football, and basketball games in
  particular.

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1889 Cincinnati Red Stockings
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Ben Turpin and Charlie Chaplin, 1915
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Amusement Parks
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New Forms of Entertainment

• Other more personal forms of entertainment
  included the reading of newspapers, magazines,
  and dime-store novels.
• Musical diversions included concerts, dances, or
  simply gathering around the piano at home.
• The invention of the player piano and the
  phonograph helped spread the development of new
  musical styles such as jazz and ragtime.

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Jazz and Ragtime
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The World of Jim Crow

• African Americans lost many of the rights they
  had gained during Reconstruction.
• In the South, Jim Crow laws were designed to keep
  African Americans subservient.
• In the North, there was less legal
  discrimination, but still not full equality in
  practice.
• African Americans began to band together to work
  for civil rights.

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The World of Jim Crow
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The World of Jim Crow

• After the end of Reconstruction, Southern whites
  began to introduce laws to keep freed slaves and
  other African Americans subservient in society.
• First, they restricted the voting rights of
  African Americans by requiring literacy tests or
  poll taxes that they knew African Americans could
  not pass or afford.

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Jim Crow

• Most Southern states also introduced Jim Crow
  laws to enforce segregation.
• These laws required the separation of African
  Americans and whites in schools, parks, public
  buildings, hospitals, and on transportation
  systems.

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The World of Jim Crow
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The World of Jim Crow

• Even public facilities such as bathrooms and
  water fountains were segregated.
• The Supreme Court held up this idea of
  segregation in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson,
  which stated that separate but equal facilities
  are Constitutional.

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The World of Jim Crow

• Facilities, though, were hardly equal, which was
  difficult to prove in court.
• In the North, discrimination was less blatant but
  was still ever present, sometimes erupting in
  race riots.
• Violence was not unusual as African Americans
  were frequently attacked ormuch worselynched.

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Lynching
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The World of Jim Crow

• As discrimination and violence became
  increasingly common, black leaders began to seek
  solutions for the race problems.
• In 1905, many black leaders met to discuss the
  problem at the Niagara Conference in Ontario,
  Canada.

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• Out of this conference came the formation of the
  National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

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The World of Jim Crow

• The NAACP became a vital force in the fight for
  civil rights throughout the twentieth century.
• African Americans also began to form mutual-aid
  societies to help the advancement of their
  people.
• African-American intellectuals published
  scholarly articles and literature,
  African-American businesses sprang up everywhere,
  and Booker T. Washington established the national
  Negro Business League in 1900.

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Negro Business League in 1900
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The Changing Roles of Women

• With new inventions to make housework easier,
  women found their roles in society changing.
• These changes fueled a debate over the proper
  role of women in the workplace, in education, and
  in the public arena.

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The Changing Roles of Women

• At the turn of the century, there was wide debate
  throughout society on the women question.
• For many women, the question boiled down to a few
  demands Women should be able to vote, control
  their own property and income, and obtain an
  education and professional job.

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Early Suffragettes, 1913
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The Changing Roles of Women

• Womens role in the home had changed. Although
  there was still necessary work, it no longer took
  as many hours to take care of a home and family.
• Few women needed to bake homemade bread or make
  their familys clothes because ready-made items
  were less expensive and easily available.
• Even rural families could receive many ready-made
  articles with rural free delivery from the post
  office and mail order catalogues from Sears and
  Montgomery Wards.

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Early Sears and Roebuck Catalogue
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The Changing Roles of Women

• Many women worked in factories, as domestic
  servants, or as teachers or nurses either because
  their families needed the funds or because they
  wanted to work.
• Most but not all women stopped working after
  marriage.
• The invention of the typewriter and telephones
  provided more work opportunities for women as
  secretaries or operators.

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• Wealthier women put their energies into volunteer
  work to improve society.
• They joined clubs of common interest and worked
  for causes such as temperance and girls
  education.

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The Changing Roles of Women

• Womens groups established libraries and helped
  each other in speaking, writing, and finance.
• The National Womens Suffrage Organization began
  to strive toward gaining the vote for women in
  1890 and would succeed thirty years later.
• Although many women disagreed with some of the
  ideas of the New Women and her dress,
  hairstyles, occupations, and pastimes, suffrage
  was the issue on which nearly all of them could
  unite.

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National Womens Suffrage Organization
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National Womens Suffrage Organization