The Abolitionists and the Suffragists



A New Jazz Culture?Throughout the 1920s, jazz music evolved into an integral part of American popular culture. The "primitive" jazz sound that had originated in New Orleans diversified, and thus appealed to people from every echelon of society. The effect of jazz music upon society can be depicted through a close examination of different aspects of popular culture. Jazz music had a profound effect on the literary world, which can be illustrated through the genesis of the genre of jazz poetry. Fashion in the 3966845-20097751920s was another way in which jazz music influenced popular culture. The Women's Liberation Movement was furthered by jazz music, as it provided means of rebellion against set standards of society. The status of African Americans was elevated, due to the popularity of this distinctly African American music. For the first time in American history, what was previously considered "bottom culture" rose to the top and became a highly desired commodity in society.Jazz Poetry:Poetry and music are among the most compelling and beautiful forms of art. During the 1920s, these two forms merged, and the genre of jazz poetry was created. The Harlem Renaissance and the influence of African American writers and intellectuals substantiated the intellectual and spiritual appeal of jazz music.?Flappers & Fashion:?During the course of the 1920s, hem lines rose and bodices dropped. Men's pants bagged and women's hair was cut short. Jazz influenced these fashion trends, along with many more..Jazz and Women's Liberation: During 3456305-1809115the 1920s, jazz music provided the motivation and opportunity for many women to reach beyond the traditional sex role designated to them by society.Bottom Culture Rises:African American jazz music swept throughout the country during the 1920s. Jazz music was able to gain respect as an African American art form. For the first time in history, the culture of a minority became the desire of the majority. DEVIL’S MUSIC: 1920s JazzWhen the new sound of jazz first spread across America in the early twentieth-century, it left delight and controversy in its wake. The more popular it became, the more the liberating and sensuous music was criticized by everyone and everything from carmaker Henry Ford to publications like the Ladies Home Journal and The New York Times. Yet jazz survived.What was it about the music that offended so many people-and how did jazz finally gain widespread acceptance? Does this struggle for respect resonate with modern musical artists like the creators of rap? Jazz was different because it broke the rules -- musical and social. It featured improvisation over traditional structure, performer over composer, and black American experience over conventional white sensibilities. Undercurrents of racism bore strongly upon the opposition to jazz, which was seen as barbaric and immoral. Before jazz emerged, many music educators -- worried that jazz would destroy young people's interest in classical music -- tried to convince the public that European classical music was the only "good music." "One day I was in a practice room supposedly practicing classical music, but I was playing some jazz and, I guess my professor heard me because he opened the door and looked in and said, 'stop playing that trash,'" remembers jazz musician Marian McPartland in The Devil's Music.But the music played on. New Orleans became the first center of jazz, with honky-tonk clubs popping up all over Storyville, the city's red-light district. Because black musicians were not allowed to play in "proper" establishments like their white counterparts, jazz became associated with brothels and other less reputable venues. The Devil's Music takes viewers back to 1917, when the US Navy, fearing for the health and safety of sailors who frequented the jazz clubs, shut them down. The same year, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band -- an all white group from New Orleans -- cut the first jazz record, bringing the music to a national audience and opening the door for sound-alike white bands to cash in on the jazz scene.As jazz's popularity grew, so did campaigns to censor "the devil's music." Early detractors like Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph, ridiculed jazz, saying it sounded better played backwards. A Cincinnati home for expectant mothers won an injunction to prevent construction of a neighboring theater where jazz would be played, convincing a court that the music was dangerous to fetuses. By the end of the 1920s, at least sixty communities across the nation had enacted laws prohibiting jazz in public dance halls.While the critics and the courts failed to silence jazz, the growing demand for labor following World War I managed to expand its influence. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans fled the South to find work in industrial cities to the north during the teens and early twenties. Artists need an audience, so musicians from New Orleans and other Southern cities flocked north as well, bringing jazz with them. Chicago became the new center of jazz with more than 100 clubs dotting the city's South Side. "Midnight was like day," wrote poet Langston Hughes, referring to the city's music-filled nightlife.The advent of Prohibition in 1920 brought jazz into gangster-run nightclubs -- the only venues that served alcohol and hired black musicians. Whites and blacks began mixing socially for the first time in the Black and Tan clubs of Chicago. White youth from all social classes were drawn to jazz and the seductive new dances that went along with it. With the help of the monkey glide, the turkey trot, and the Charleston, they were moved by the music, figuratively and literally. This newfound physical freedom, combined with the illicit mix of races and the widespread belief that jazz stimulated sexual activity, caused critics of jazz to step up their efforts. "Jazz was originally the accompaniment of the voodoo dance, stimulating half-crazed barbarians to the vilest of deeds," proclaimed Ann Shaw Faulkner, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, a powerful alliance of women's social and reform groups that launched a crusade against jazz in 1921.But the reformers couldn't fight progress. Jazz recordings allowed the music to reach beyond the nightclubs. New York radio and recording companies began to dominate the music industry, replacing Chicago as the center of jazz. In the 1920s, the black arts movement known as the Harlem Renaissance began, solidifying the city's position at the epicenter of African American culture. Although jazz was an important part of this movement, not all blacks were fans of the music, including W. E. B. DuBois, a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, who was said to prefer Beethoven and "Negro" spirituals to jazz. "There is no question that black people themselves were the ones saying we have to uphold the standards of European culture," explains scholar and cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson in the film. "Upper-class Negroes were, you know, inveighing against the vicious nature of that gutter, ghetto Negro music."The 1920s also marked the self-coronation of the "King of Jazz," a white bandleader named Paul Whiteman. Although many blacks and whites criticized Whiteman for co-opting and sanitizing jazz, his recordings, which linked his syncopated sound to European symphonic music, sold millions. While Whiteman was getting rich, Louis Armstrong -- the true jazz genius -- arrived in New York City, where he played to a smaller, but loyal audience of fans and fellow musicians who understood that they were witnessing a new revolution in jazz. Armstrong soon emerged as a star attraction, achieving popular success on the New York stage. Although his fan base was well established by the end of the decade, Armstrong's record company suggested he change suggestive lyrics to avoid offending his white audiences.The Devil's Music features another jazz great of the century, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington, who created a sensation when he toured England in 1933. By the time Ellington hit the scene, classical musicians and music critics alike were analyzing jazz and declaring it a serious art form.But even today, the controversy over gangster rap and explicit song lyrics suggests that concern still exists over the effect that some African American popular music may have on its listeners. "Unless we speak against this [rap music], it will creep continually into our society and destroy the morals of our young people," declares Reverend Calvin Butts. William Bennett of Empower America says, "I think that nothing less is at stake than preservation of civilization. This stuff by itself won't bring down civilization but it doesn't help." "It's controversial because it provides something different," sums up rap artist Chuck D. "It's a different point of view."The Devil's Music: 1920s Jazz is written, produced, and directed by María Agui Carter and Calvin A. Lindsay, Jr. Dion Graham narrates.For more information, read the Early Jazz Flashpoint on the Culture Shock Web site. pour liquor into sewer following a raid,?Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs DivisionA line-up of Jewish gangsters in New York. ,?John Binder CollectionFlapper carrying a whiskey flask in her garter,?John Binder CollectionPROHIBITION?The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun…But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it: skirts shortened. Music heated up. America's Sweetheart morphed into The Vamp.Prohibition turned law-abiding citizens into criminals, made a mockery of the justice system, caused illicit drinking to seem glamorous and fun, encouraged neighborhood gangs to become national crime syndicates, permitted government officials to bend and sometimes even break the law, and fostered cynicism and hypocrisy that corroded the social contract all across the country. With Prohibition in place, but ineffectively enforced, one observer noted, America had hardly freed itself from the scourge of alcohol abuse – instead, the "drys" had their law, while the "wets" had their liquor.The story of Prohibition's rise and fall is a compelling saga that goes far beyond the oft-told tales of gangsters, rum runners, flappers, and speakeasies, to reveal a complicated and divided nation in the throes of momentous transformation. The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago – about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, the proper role of government and finally, who is — and who is not — a real American.: A Nation of DrunkardsAmericans have argued over alcohol for centuries. Since the early years of the American Republic, drinking has been at least as American as apple pie. As?Episode 1: A Nation of Drunkards?begins, clergymen, craftsmen and canal-diggers drink. So do the crowds of men who turn out for barn-raisings and baptisms, funerals, elections and public hangings. Tankards of cider are kept by farmhouses' front doors, and in many places alcohol is considered safer to drink than water. Alcohol, along with its attendant rituals and traditions, is embedded in the fabric of American culture.But by 1830, the average American over fifteen years old consumes nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year, three times as much as we drink today. Alcohol abuse, mostly perpetrated by men, wreaks havoc on the lives of many families, and women, with few legal rights or protection, are utterly dependent on their husbands for sustenance and support. As a wave of spiritual fervor for reform sweeps the country, many women and men begin to see alcohol as a scourge, an impediment to a Protestant vision of clean and righteous living. Abolitionists, moralists, and some churches band together for temperance. But by 1860, the movement, like women's suffrage and other reforms of the day, finds itself overshadowed – first by the mounting struggle over slavery and then by the Civil War fought to settle it.In the 1870s, the country's population swells with immigrants, who bring their drinking customs with them from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and other European countries. In towns and cities, brewery-owned saloons compete for customers, spawning vice districts in some places and terrifying the old, rural, Protestant America.To many, the saloon is the poor immigrant's living room where he can find work or companionship, but to others the saloon is a place where men squander their paychecks, contract diseases from prostitutes, and stagger out into the street to threaten society.In 1873, in the small town of Hillsboro, Ohio a group of women band together in an act of radical civil disobedience that spreads across the nation. They block the entrances of saloons and taverns, praying and singing until the bartenders agree to close up. The temperance campaign ignites again, spearheaded by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Carrie Nation and her Home Defenders Army bring publicity by attacking Kansas bars with stones and hatchets, while around the country hardworking activists succeed in convincing many counties to go dry with "local-option" laws.The Anti-Saloon League (ASL) forms to push for an amendment to the Constitution outlawing alcohol nationally. Led by a ruthless Wayne Wheeler, the ASL becomes the most successful single-issue lobbying organization in American history, willing to form alliances with Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, the Klu Klux Klan, the NAACP, industrialists and populists. The ASL quickly proves it has the power to oust politicians who dare to speak out against Prohibition.With the ratification of the income tax amendment in 1913, the federal government is no longer dependent on liquor taxes to fund its operations, and the ASL moves into high gear. As anti-German fervor rises to a near frenzy with the American entry into the First World War, ASL propaganda effectively connects beer and brewers with Germans and treason in the public mind. Most politicians dare not defy the ASL and in 1917 the 18th Amendment sails through both Houses of Congress; it is ratified by the states in just 13 months.At 12:01 A.M. on January 17, 1920, the amendment goes into effect and Prohibitionists rejoice that at long last, America has become officially, and (they hope) irrevocably, dry. But just a few minutes later, six masked bandits with pistols empty two freight cars full of whiskey from a rail yard in Chicago, another gang steals four casks of grain alcohol from a government bonded warehouse, and still another hijacks a truck carrying whiskey.Americans are about to discover that making Prohibition the law of the land has been one thing; enforcing it will be anotherProhibition: A Nation of ScofflawsOn January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution goes into effect, making it illegal to manufacture, transport or sell intoxicating liquor.Episode Two, A Nation of Scofflaws, examines the problems of enforcement, as millions of law-abiding Americans become lawbreakers overnight.While a significant portion of the country is willing to adapt to the new law, others are shocked at how inconsistent the Volstead Act actually is. Many had believed that light beer would still be available, but the Act defines "intoxicating beverages" as anything containing a half of one percent of alcohol. Under these draconian terms, even sauerkraut is illegal.Exceptions and loopholes in the law make a mockery of it: a family can legally make wine at home but not beer, a friendly doctor's prescription is all that's needed for whiskey, and anyone claiming to be a rabbi can buy, and sell, "sacramental" wine.Prohibition is a federal law, but there is little federal support for funding its enforcement. Most local governments don't rush to pick up the bill either. The governor of New Jersey declares his state will remain as wet as the Atlantic Ocean, while the governor of Washington says he won't spend so much as a postage stamp on enforcement. In New York City the predominantly Irish police force is reluctant to use its manpower to seize hip flasks. Even in the nation's capital, the assistant attorney general in charge of Prohibition cases, 32-year old Mabel Walker Willebrandt, declares the law "puny, puerile, and toothless." Across the country the federal courts are quickly overwhelmed and judges are forced to hold "bargain days" for liquor offenders.As weaknesses in the law and its enforcement become clear, millions find ways to exploit it. In Kentucky, whiskey distillers sell "medicine" instead. In Cincinnati, a shrewd lawyer named George Remus buys many local distilleries and rakes in up to half a million dollars a week by bootlegging the bonded whiskey in his warehouses. In Seattle, Roy Olmstead, a former police officer with a reputation for selling top-quality Canadian liquor, becomes one of the city's biggest employers. In Chicago, Al Capone, Johnny Torrio and rival gangs engage in territorial beer wars in broad daylight in the city streets. Bootleggers and gangsters alike rely on bribery to stay in business; from the local police force to the members of President Harding's cabinet, everything begins to feel corrupted.Drys had hoped Prohibition would make the country a safer place, but the law has many victims. Honest policemen are killed on the job, unlucky drinkers poisoned by adulterated liquor, and overzealous federal agents violate civil rights just to make a bust. Alcoholism still exists, and may even be increasing, as women begin to drink in the speakeasies that replace the male-only saloon.Despite the growing discontent with Prohibition and its consequences, few politicians dare to speak out against the law, fearful of its powerful protector, the Anti-Saloon League. When Al Smith, the Catholic governor of New York, openly criticizes Prohibition in his bid for the 1924 Democratic presidential nomination, the dry forces become energized again. There are fistfights on the convention floor, and the Democratic Party is polarized between delegates from dry, rural, Protestant America and those from the diverse, wet cities. Republican Calvin Coolidge crushes the crippled Democrats in November, and the Drys remain confident that Prohibition can be made to work. As no constitutional amendment has ever been repealed, one senator promises, "There is as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars – with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."A murder victim is carried out of a barber shop in New York ,John Binder CollectionProhibition: A Nation of HypocritesIn the mid 1920s, an unprecedented winning streak continues on Wall Street, and it feels to many like the good times will go on forever. Americans during the Jazz Age, writes F. Scott Fitzgerald, are "a whole race gone hedonistic, deciding on pleasure." Prohibition, with its moralistic underpinnings, begins to feel anachronistic at best. In?Episode 3, A Nation of Hypocrites,?support for the law diminishes as the playfulness of sneaking around for a drink gives way to disenchantment with its glaring unintended consequences.By criminalizing one of the nation's largest industries, the law has given savvy gangsters a way to make huge profits, and as they grew in power, rival outfits wreak havoc in cities across the country. The burgeoning tabloid newspaper industry fans the frenzy with sensational headlines and front-page photographs of murder scenes, while Al Capone holds press conferences and signs autographs. The cold-blooded St. Valentine's Day Massacre horrifies the nation. The situation becomes so dire in Chicago that a senator requests help from the U.S. Marines to control the city's murderous streets.In media and popular culture the law is mocked and ignored. Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley glamorize drinking and promiscuity, and starlets like Joan Crawford, seen onscreen dancing drunk on a bar, become sex symbols. Illegal alcohol—with its hint of illicit sex—becomes a sign of sophistication, something to be sought after, not shunned. Mothers who had labored for woman's suffrage are appalled at the wanton behavior of their daughters, who bob their hair, smoke cigarettes, and call themselves flappers.In 1928, Democrat?Al Smith?runs for president, openly criticizing Prohibition. He is vilified for his Catholicism and his wet sympathies, and made into a symbol of all that is wrong with the cities and their large populations of immigrants. Republican Herbert Hoover, credited with the booming economy, is re-elected by a landslide, and meekly calls for an inquiry into the wider problems of law enforcement. Though a longtime prominent Republican supporter, the wealthy Pauline Sabin resigns from the party in protest, publicly decrying that the law has divided the nation into "wets, drys, and hypocrites." Nearly a century before, women had hoped Prohibition would make the country a safer place for their children. But, by the late 1920s many American women now believe that the "Noble Experiment" has failed. Sabin unifies women of all classes, refuting the notion that all women support Prohibition, and denouncing the law itself as the greatest threat to their families.When the Great Depression sets in, Americans begin to reexamine their priorities. More begin asking how they can justify spending money on the enforcement of an unpopular law while millions are without work, food, or shelter. Sabin and others argue that Repeal will bring in tax revenue and provide desperately needed jobs. After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Congress easily passes the 21st Amendment, which repeals the 18th, and the states quickly ratify it. In December of 1933, Americans can legally buy a drink for the first time in thirteen years. Abolitionists and the SuffragistsThe campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the?Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the?United States--temperance clubs, religious movements and moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations--and in many of these, women played a prominent role. Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood": that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States.In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists--mostly women, but some men--gathered in Seneca Falls,?New York?to discuss the problem of women's rights. (They were invited there by the reformers?Elizabeth Cady Stantonand?Lucretia Mott.) Most of the delegates agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, "that all menand women?are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote."This Hour Belongs to the Negro"During the 1850s, the women's rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the?Civil War?began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th and?15th Amendments?to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship. (The?14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution's protection to all citizens--and defines "citizens" as "male"; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees black men the right to vote.)Some woman-suffrage advocates, among them Stanton and?Susan B. Anthony, believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women's votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans. In 1869, this faction formed a group called the National Woman Suffrage Association and began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the federal Constitution.Others argued that it was unfair to endanger black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.The Progressive Campaign for SuffrageThis animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton?was the organization's first president.) By then, the suffragists' approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were "created equal," the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were?different?from men. They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral "maternal commonwealth."This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the enfranchisement of white women would "ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained."Winning the Vote at LastStarting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. (Idaho?and?Utah?had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.) Still, the more established Southern and Eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president?Carrie Chapman Catt?unveiled what she called a "Winning Plan" to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with special focus on those recalcitrant regions. (Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Women's Party focused on more radical, militant tactics--hunger strikes and White House pickets, for instance--aimed at winning dramatic publicity for their cause.) ?World War I?slowed the suffragists' campaign but helped them advance their argument nonetheless: Women's work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men, and on August 26, 1920, the?19th Amendment?to the Constitution was finally ratified. of Women's Suffrage in the U.S.During America's early history as a nation, women were denied some of the key rights enjoyed by male citizens. For example, married women couldn't own property and had no legal claim to any money they might earn, and no female had the right to vote. Women were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, not politics.The?campaign for woman suffrage?did not begin in earnest in the decades before the?Civil War. During the 1820s and 1830s, various reform groups proliferated across the U.S.—temperance clubs, religious movements and moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations—and in a number of these, women played a prominent role. Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the "Cult of True Womanhood"; that is, the idea that the only "true" woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Put together, these factors contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States.Suffrage Movement Gets OrganizedIt was not until 1848 that the movement for women's rights began to organize at the national level. In July of that year, reformers?Elizabeth Cady Stanton?and?Lucretia Mott?organized the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York (where Stanton lived). More than 300 people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist?Frederick Douglass?(1818-95). In addition to their belief that women should be afforded better opportunities for education and employment, most of the Seneca Falls delegates agreed that American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities. A group of delegates led by Stanton produced a "Declaration of Sentiments" document, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, which stated: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What this meant, among other things, was that the delegates believed women should have the right to vote.Following the convention, the idea of voting rights for women was mocked in the press and some delegates withdrew their support for the Declaration of Sentiments. However, Stanton and Mott persisted--they went on to spearhead additional women's rights conferences and they were eventually joined in their advocacy work by?Susan B. Anthony?and other activists.National Suffrage Groups EstablishedWith the onset of the American Civil War (1861-65), the suffrage movement lost some momentum, as many women turned their attention to assisting in efforts related to the conflict between the states. After the war, woman suffrage endured another setback, when the women's rights movement found itself divided over the issue of voting rights for black men. Stanton and some other suffrage leaders objected to the proposed?15th Amendment?to the U.S. Constitution, which would give black men the right to vote, but failed to extend the same privilege to American women of any skin color.In 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) with their eyes on a federal constitutional amendment that would grant women the right to vote. That same year, abolitionists?Lucy Stone?(1818-93) and Henry Blackwell (1825-1909) founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA); the group's leaders supported the 15th Amendment and feared it would not pass if it included voting rights for women. (The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870.) The AWSA believed women's enfranchisement could best be gained through amendments to individual state constitutions. Despite the divisions between the two organizations, there was a victory for voting rights in 1869 when the Wyoming Territory granted all female residents age 21 and older the right to vote. (When Wyoming was admitted to the Union in 1890, woman suffrage remained part of the state constitution.)By 1878, the NWSA and the collective suffrage movement had gathered enough influence to lobby the U.S. Congress for a constitutional amendment. Congress responded by forming committees in the House and Senate to study and debate the issue. However, when the proposal finally reached the Senate floor in 1886, it was defeated.?In 1890, the NWSA and the AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The new organization's strategy was to lobby for women's voting rights on a state-by-state basis. Within six years, Colorado, Utah and Idaho adopted amendments to their state constitutions granting women the right to vote. In 1900, with Stanton and Anthony advancing in age,?Carrie Chapman Catt?(1859-1947) stepped up to lead the NASWA.Progress and Civil DisobedienceThe turn of the 20th century brought momentum to the woman suffrage cause. Although the deaths of Stanton in 1902 and Anthony in 1906 appeared to be setbacks, the NASWA under the leadership of Catt achieved rolling successes for women's enfranchisement at state levels. Between 1910 and 1918, the Alaska Territory, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington all extended voting rights to women.Also during this time, through the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (later, the Women's Political Union), Stanton's daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch (1856-1940) introduced parades, pickets and marches as means of calling attention to the cause. These tactics succeeded in raising awareness and led to unrest in Washington, D.C.On the eve of the inauguration of President?Woodrow Wilson?(1856-1924) in 1913, protesters thronged a massive suffrage parade in the nation's capital, and hundreds of women were injured. That same year,?Alice Paul?(1885-1977) founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which later became the National Woman's Party. The organization staged numerous demonstrations and regularly picketed the White House, among other militant tactics. As a result of these actions, some group members were arrested and served jail time.?In 1918, President Wilson switched his stand on women's voting rights from objection to support through the influence of Catt, who had a less-combative style than Paul. Wilson also tied the proposed suffrage amendment to America's involvement in World War I (1914-18) and the increased role women had played in the war efforts. When the amendment came up for vote, Wilson addressed the Senate in favor of suffrage. As reported in The New York Times on October 1, 1918, Wilson said, "I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged." However, despite Wilson's newfound support, the amendment proposal failed in the Senate by two votes. Another year passed before Congress took up the measure again.Getting the VoteOn May 21, 1919, U.S. Representative James R. Mann (1856-1922), a Republican from Illinois and chairman of the Suffrage Committee, proposed the House resolution to approve the Susan Anthony Amendment granting women the right to vote. The measure passed the House 304-89—a full 42 votes above the required two-thirds majority.Two weeks later, on June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the 19th Amendment by two votes over its two-thirds required majority, 56-25. The amendment was then sent to the states for ratification. Within six days of the ratification cycle, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin each ratified the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. By March of the following year, a total of 35 states had approved the amendment, one state shy of the two-thirds required for ratification. Southern states were adamantly opposed to the amendment, however, and seven of them—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia—had already rejected it before Tennessee's vote on August 18, 1920. It was up to Tennessee to tip the scale for woman suffrage.The outlook appeared bleak, given the outcomes in other Southern states and given the position of Tennessee's state legislators in their 48-48 tie. The state's decision came down to 23-year-old Representative Harry T. Burn (1895-1977), a Republican from McMinn County, to cast the deciding vote. Although Burn opposed the amendment, his mother convinced him to approve it. (Mrs. Burn reportedly wrote to her son: "Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification.") With Burn's vote, the 19th Amendment was ratified. Certification by U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby (1869-1950) followed on August 26, 1920.On November 2 of that same year, more than 8 million women across the U.S. voted in elections for the first time. It took over 60 years for the remaining 12 states to ratify the 19th Amendment. Mississippi was the last to do so, on March 22, 1984. Era IntroductionThe hundred year span of the 20th century represents just one percent of the ten thousand year history of agriculture. Yet it brought more far-reaching developments than any previous century.The 20th century reflected all the extremes of human nature. It was scarred by some of history's most horrific examples of brutality and violence. But it also demonstrated humanity's idealism, inventiveness, and humanitarianism. It was the most technologically advanced century; it was also the most ideological and most destructive.The 20th century witnessed unparalleled growth in knowledge, wealth, nutrition, and health. But it was also a century of unimaginable savagery. More than 150 million people perished in war, in concentration and re-education camps, in government-induced famines, or in genocides.It was a century of mass production, mass consumption, mass media, and mass entertainment--but also of mass murder. It was a century marked by searing images of: trenches, the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the death camps.Twentieth Century RevolutionsThe 20th century was a century of revolutions. We usually think of revolutions in terms of banners and barricades, and the 20th century certainly witnessed social and political upheavals, including the Russian and Chinese Revolutions. But many of the century's most lasting revolutions took place without violence. There was the sexual revolution, the women's liberation movement, and the rise of the giant corporation, big labor, and big government. Revolutions in technology, science, and medicine utterly transformed the way people lived.The scientific revolution is perhaps the most obvious development. During the 1890s, physics and medicine radically changed our view of the world. The discovery of X-rays, radioactivity, sub-atomic particles, relativity, and quantum theory produced a revolution in how scientists viewed matter and energy. Meanwhile, physicians identified the first virus. Laboratory-based science reshaped the practice of medicine. Research in scientific medicine first led to a cure for yellow fever. Then, it eliminated polio and smallpox.Humankind developed air transport, discovered antibiotics, and invented computing. They also split the atom and broke the genetic code. Communication technology was revolutionized with the telephone, the radio, and the Internet. Medicine, too, underwent a radical transformation. Contraceptives separated sex from procreation. The rapid spread of the automobile also modernized transportation technology.The 20th century also witnessed a revolution in economic productivity. Between 1900 and 2000, the world's population roughly quadrupled--from almost 1.6 billion to 6 billion people. But global production of goods and services rose 14 or 15-fold. In 1900, the Standard & Poor's 500 index stood at 6.2. In 1998, the index was 1085.Technological improvements shrunk the average work week by a day and a half. Technology also opened the workplace to increasing numbers of women, especially married and older women.Equally important was the rise of mass communication and mass entertainment. In 1900, each person made an average of 38 telephone calls. By 1997, the figure had grown to 2,325 phone calls. In 1890, there were no billboards, no trademarks, no advertising slogans. There were no movies, no radio, no television, and few spectator sports. No magazine had a million readers. The 1890s saw the advent of the mass circulation newspaper, the national magazine, the best-selling novel, many modern spectator and team sports, and the first million dollar nationwide advertising campaign. In 1900, some 6,000 new books were published. By the end of the century, the number had increased more than 10-fold.The 20th century also brought about a revolution in health and living standards. The latter part of the 19th century was an era of tuberculosis, typhoid, sanitariums, child labor, 12-hour work days, tenements, and outhouses. In 1900, more Americans died from tuberculosis than from cancer. Each day millions of horses deposited some 25 pounds of manure and urine on city streets. Life expectancy increased by 30 years. Child mortality fell 10-fold. In 1900, families spent an average of 43 percent of their income on food; now they spend 15 percent.The expansion of government was one of the 20th century’s most striking developments. In 1900, the U.S. government took in just $567 million in taxes. In 1999, the total was $1.7 trillion. Government spending as a share of Gross Domestic Product (the measure of wealth created) in 1913 ranged from 1.8 percent in the U.S. to 17 percent in France. At the end of the century, it ranged from 34 percent in the United States to 65 percent in Sweden.Less pleasantly, the 20th century also saw a visible increase in the human capacity for violence. In 1900, British commander Horatio Kitchener came up with a new strategy in the Boer War in South Africa. He rounded up 75,000 people, mostly women and children, and confined them to prison camps where most quickly died. They were the first victims of one of the 20th century's most destructive inventions: the concentration camp.The turn of the century also introduced genocide--the deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire people. In 1904, in the German colony of South-West Africa, now Namibia, the Kaiser's troops systematically exterminated as many as 80,000 Herero. This slaughter produced forced labor camps, sex slaves, and the first academic studies of supposed Aryan superiority. After poisoning the water holes, the Herero were driven into the desert and were bayoneted, shot, or starved. Those not killed--20,000 Herero--were condemned to slavery on German farms and ranches.The human capacity for mass killing increased exponentially as a result of improved weaponry and the increased power of the state. The 20th century was scarred by gulags, concentration camps, secret police, terrorism, genocide, and war.Technology helped make the 20th century the bloodiest in history. World War I, which introduced the machine gun, the tank, and poison gas, killed 10 million (almost all were soldiers). World War II, with its firebombs and nuclear weapons, produced 35 million war deaths. The Cold War added another 17 million deaths to the total.Technology made mass killing efficient; ideologies and ethnicity justified it. Underdeveloped countries driven to modernize quickly were often scenes of repression and sickening mass killing, whether they were communist or non-communist.A Century of the YoungAmong the new words that entered the English language during the 20th century were "adolescence," "dating," and "teenager." For the first time there was a gap between puberty and incorporation into adult life.In 1900, children and teenagers under the age of 16 accounted for 44 percent of the population. Today, the young make up 29 percent. In 1900, less than 2 percent of young people graduated from high school.A Century of WomenIn 1900, American women could vote in only four Western states. Just 700,000 married women (6 percent) were in the paid labor force. Today, the figure is 34 million (64 percent).In 1900, women accounted for 1 percent of lawyers and 6 percent of doctors. At the end of the century, those percentages had risen to 29 percent and 26 percent, respectively. The number of women with bachelor's degrees increased by half, with women now earning almost 60 percent of such degrees. Today, women with comparable work and work histories as men earn 98 cents for every dollar that men do.A Century of ProsperityDespite an economic depression of unprecedented depth, the 20th century was a century of an extraordinary improvements in health and increases in prosperity. The average lifespan increased by 30 years, from 47 years to 77 years. Infant mortality decreased by 93 percent, and heart disease deaths were cut by half.The per person Gross Domestic Product was almost seven times higher in 1999 than in 1900. Manufacturing wages, in today's dollars, climbed from $3.43 per hour in 1900 to $12.47 in 1999. This did not include the growth in fringe benefits such as vacation, medical insurance, and retirement benefits. Household assets--everything from the value of our homes to our personal possessions--were seven times greater. Meanwhile, home ownership increased by 43 percent. In 1900, only 1 percent of Americans invested in public companies or mutual funds. By the end of the century, the proportion of shareholders exceeded 50 percent.At the beginning of the century, 40 to 50 percent of all Americans had income levels that classified them as poor. At the end of the century, that was cut to between 10 and 15 percent. Until the 20th century, large numbers of working class men and women faced “the poor house” at the conclusion of their working lives. Today, thanks to social security and retirement plans, most Americans can expect to enjoy a period of more than a decade when they no longer have to work.During the 20th century, household incomes of African Americans increased 10-fold. Although African Americans still earn less than whites, the gap has decreased. In 1900, blacks earned about 40 percent of what whites earn. Today, they earn about 80 percent of what whites earn.The average length of the work week decreased by 30 percent, falling from 66 hours to 35 hours. With the introduction of more holidays and a shorter work week, the average number of hours worked in a year is half of what it was in the latter part of the 19th century. Meanwhile, the percent of workers on the farm fell by 93 percent.The percentage of households with electricity went from 10 percent to near universal. At the same time, the average American in 1900 had to work six times as many hours to pay his electric bill than did an American a century later.The number of telephone calls per capita increased 5,600 percent. The number of households with cars increased 90-fold. The percentage of people completing college was four times higher. Today, more people (28 percent) have bachelor's degrees than the number of Americans who held high school degrees in 1900 (22 percent).The Expansion of FreedomPerhaps the greatest of all 20th century revolutions was an expansion in human freedom and its extension to new groups of people. Vast strides were made in civil rights, women's rights, and civil liberties.European imperialism and colonial empires came to an end. In 1900, the British Empire contained roughly 400 million people, about a quarter of the world's population. Lesser empires, including the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman, and the French, ruled large parts of the globe. In the span of less than 20 years, Europe had partitioned nine-tenths of Africa. France ruled Southeast Asia. The Netherlands established rule in Indonesia and part of New Guinea. Japan established a colonial empire in Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, and many Pacific Islands. Not to be left out, the United States acquired the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico as a result of war with Spain, and also annexed Hawaii.At the start of the 21st century, 88 of the world's 191 countries were free. These countries are home to 2.4 billion people--about 40 percent of the total world population. These nations enjoy free elections and the rights of speech, religion and assembly.The very meaning of freedom expanded in the 20th century. In the 19th century, freedom's meaning was surprisingly limited. It referred simply to equality before the law, freedom of worship, free elections, and economic opportunity. Subsequently, early 20th century reformers argued that individual freedom could only be realized through the efforts of an activist, socially-conscious state. Freedom increasingly was seen to depend on government regulation, consumer protection, minimum wage, and old-age pensions.Free speech became a major issue during World War I, largely because of socialists toiling to speak out against the war, labor radicals struggling for the right to strike, and feminists seeking to end broad regulation of contraception.World War II brought the most basic contradiction in American life to a head. It underscored the jarring discrepancy between American ideals of equality and the realities of discrimination, racial exclusion, and inequality. In a series of decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the white-only primary, restrictive covenants that barred blacks and Jews from segregated neighborhoods, and most significant of all, separate schools for African American students.The conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, the Belgian Congo, and the clashes during the Cold War cost millions of lives. But these struggles had an ironic consequence: they doomed Europe's empires, and they ultimately reinvigorated the idea of freedom.During the 1960s, notions of rights extended still further. The discourse of rights expanded to include gay rights, abortion rights, the right to privacy, and the rights of criminal defendants.At the end of the century, a process of democratization took place on a global scale. "People power" led to the overthrow of the corrupt Marco’s regime in the Philippines and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The 1990s witnessed the end of apartheid in South Africa; the weakening of clerical tyranny in Iran; the overthrow of dictatorship in Indonesia; and the liberation of East Timor.Immense attitudinal changes took place during the 20th century. Ecological consciousness grew, thus, leading people around the world to recognize that the world's resources are not limitless. New standards of human rights spread, transcending race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender.ProgressivismFew periods in American history witnessed more ferment than the years between the founding of Hull House and American entry into World War I. This movement touched every aspect of American life. It transformed government into an active, interventionist entity at the national level, most notably under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but also at the state and local levels. For the first time Americans were prepared to use government, including the federal government, as an instrument of reform.Progressive reformers secured a federal income tax based on the ability to pay; formulated inheritance taxes; devised a modern national banking system; and developed government regulatory commissions to oversee banking, insurance, railroads, gas, electricity, telephones, transportation, and manufacturing.Education also became a self-conscious instrument of social change. The ideas of the educator and philosopher John Dewey influenced the reformers. Progressive educational reformers broadened school curricula to include teaching about health and community life; called for active learning that would engage students' minds and draw out their talents; applied new scientific discoveries about learning; and tailored teaching techniques to students' needs. Progressive educators promoted compulsory education laws, kindergartens, and high schools. They raised the literacy rate of African Americans from 43 percent to 77 percent.During the Progressive era, public health officers launched successful campaigns against hookworm, malaria, and pellagra, and reduced the incidence of tuberculosis, typhoid, and diphtheria. Pure milk campaigns also slashed rates of infant and child mortality.Urban Progressives created public parks, libraries, hospitals, and museums. They also constructed new water and sewer systems and eliminated "red-light" districts, such as New Orleans' Storyville, in most major cities.To bridge the gap between capital and labor, Progressives called for arbitration and mediation of labor disputes. Meanwhile, many Progressive businessmen called for a new-style "welfare capitalism" that provided workers with higher wages and pensions.The Progressive era was one of the most creative in the realm of culture and the arts. In the hands of Alfred Stieglitz, photography became an art form for the first time. Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright helped create modern architecture. The first exhibition of modern art, the Armory Show in New York in 1913, was held in the United States.A new vocabulary characterized this era. Americans would speak about a "public interest" that was opposed by "special interests." They would also speak about "efficiency" and "expertise" in government and “morality” in foreign affairs. For the first time, Americans spoke of "social workers," "muckrakers," "trustbusters," "feminists," "social scientists," and "conservation."To increase popular control over government, Progressive reformers lobbied successfully for direct primaries; the elimination of boss rule; the direct election of Senators; woman's suffrage; and in many state legislatures, adoption of the referendum, the initiative, and the recall. Reformers also saw adoption of the first restrictions on political lobbyists and the first regulations on campaign finances.To modernize government finances, Progressives successfully instituted the income tax and established the Federal Reserve System to oversee the nation's economy. To regulate corporate behavior, Progressives enforced new anti-trust laws and established the country's first effective regulatory commissions. They also established licenses for such professionals as pharmacists, veterinarians, and undertakers. To improve social welfare, they lobbied for workmen's compensation laws, minimum wage laws for women workers, and old-age and widow's pensions. To improve public health, Progressive reformers successfully lobbied for water standards, state and local departments of health, sanitary codes for schools, and laws prohibiting the sale of adulterated foods and drugs.The Progressive era also had a much more negative side. It saw the spread of disfranchisement and segregation of African Americans in the South and even in the federal government. This era also saw the enactment of reforms, such as at-large voting, that lessened the political influence of immigrant groups at a time when city budgets were increasing. Critics frequently condemned Progressives as moralistic, undemocratic, and elitist.Progressives did not agree on a single agenda. They disagreed vehemently in their attitudes toward such subjects as immigration restriction and prohibition of alcohol. They were a diverse lot that included Republicans and Democrats, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and urban and rural reformers. Women's organizations stood at the forefront of the social reforms and policy innovations during the Progressive era. Women activists were especially active in efforts to end child labor and to protest companies that had unsafe working conditions or produced unsafe products. For the most part, Progressives were urban and college-educated, including journalists, academics, teachers, doctors, and nurses, as well as many business people.Uniting these various reform movements stemmed from a preoccupation with the elimination of corruption and waste and an emphasis on efficiency, science, and professional expertise as the best ways to solve social problems. A book published in 1913, Benjamin Parker De Witt's?The Progressive Movement, argued that three tendencies underlay progressive reforms: the desire to eliminate political corruption, the impulse to make government more efficient and effective, and a belief that government should "relieve social and economic distress." Progressives wanted to apply the techniques of systematization, rationalization, and bureaucratic administrative control developed by business to problems posed by the city and industry.For all its flaws and limitations, the Progressive era was instrumental in formulating the rationale for much of the welfare state, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and aid to single parent families.A New EraThe turn of the 20th century witnessed a sudden clamor for social, political, and economic reform. Progressives boldly challenged the received wisdom in every aspect of life.Birth ControlOf all the changes that took place in women's lives during the 20th century, one of the most significant was women's increasing ability to control fertility. In 1916, Margaret Sanger, a former nurse, opened the country's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. Police shut it down ten days later. "No woman can call herself free," she insisted, "until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother." Margaret Sanger coined the phrase "birth control" and eventually convinced the courts that the Comstock Act did not prohibit doctors from distributing birth control information and devices. As founder of Planned Parenthood, she aided in the development of the birth control pill, which appeared in 1960.Civil RightsThe publication of W.E.B. DuBois's?The Souls of Black Folk?heralded a new, more confrontational approach to civil rights. "The problem of the 20th century," DuBois's book begins, "is the problem of the color line." In his book, DuBois, the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, condemns Booker T. Washington's philosophy of accommodation and his idea that African Americans should confine their ambitions to manual labor. The?Nashville Banner?editorialized: "This book is dangerous for the Negro to read, for it will only excite discontent and fill his imagination with things that do not exist, or things that should not bear upon his mind." In 1908, after anti-black rioting took place in Springfield, Ill., DuBois and a group of African Americans and whites convened at a convention in Harpers Ferry, Va. The meeting became the basis for the first country's first national civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). By 1914, the NAACP had 6,000 members and offices in 50 cities.ConservationIn 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt stated,We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it today means that our descendants will feel the exhaustion a generation or two before they otherwise would.During Roosevelt's presidency, 148 million acres were set aside as national forest lands and more than 80 million acres of mineral lands were withdrawn from public ernment ReformA Republican governor in Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, put into effect the "Wisconsin idea," which provided a model for reformers across the nation. It provided for direct primaries to select party nominees for public office and for a railroad commission to regulate railroad rates. The model also presented tax reform, opposition to political bosses, and the initiative and recall, devices to give the people more direct control over government.Labor RelationsIn 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt became the first president to intervene on the side of workers in a labor dispute. He threatened to use the army to run the coal mines unless mine owners agreed to arbitrate the strike. The president handpicked a commission to mediate the settlement.Medical EducationAbraham Flexner's 1910 study of American medical colleges transformed the training of doctors. His report led to the closing of second-rate medical schools and to sweeping changes in medical curricula and teaching methods.PhilanthropyJohn D. Rockefeller revolutionized philanthropy by setting up a foundation staffed by experts to evaluate proposals and support programs to solve critical public problems. His foundation and others funded social surveys--systematic, non-partisan examination of subjects by experts.Radical Trade Unionism"One Big Union for All" was the goal of the radical labor leaders and Socialists who met in Chicago in 1905. This group also formed the International Workers of the World (IWW). Rejecting the approach of the American Federation of Labor, which only admitted skilled craft workers to its ranks, the IWW opened its membership to any wage earner regardless of occupation, race, creed, or sex.SocialismA new political party, the American Socialist Party, was founded in 1901. At its peak in 1912, the party had 118,000 members. The largest socialist newspaper,?The Appeal of Reason,?published in Girard, Kansas, had a weekly circulation of 761,000. In the 1912 election, Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs received 800,000 votes; Socialists captured 1,200 political offices, including the mayors of 79 cities.Trust-BustingIn 1902, President Roosevelt instructed his attorney general to file suit against Northern Securities, a railroad holding company, and the Beef Trust in Chicago, for illegal constraint of trade. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled on the government's behalf.The State of African Americans in the South?In 1900, the plight of African Americans in the South was bleak. The average life expectancy of an African American was 33 years--a dozen years less than that of a white American and about the same as a peasant in early 19th century India.Thirty-five years after the abolition of slavery, the overwhelming majority of African Americans toiled in agriculture on land that they didn't own. Nine out of ten African Americans lived in the South (almost the same proportion as in 1860), and three out of four were tenant farmers or sharecroppers.At the beginning of the 20th century, some 44.5 percent of all African American adults were illiterate. In 1915, South Carolina spent one-twelfth as much on the education of a black child as on a white child. In 1916, only 19 black youths were enrolled in public high schools in North Carolina and 310 were enrolled in Georgia.Increasingly, African Americans in the South were subject to a degrading system of social segregation and deprived of the right to vote and other prerogatives of citizenship. This system of racial discrimination based on law and custom was called "Jim Crow," after a mid-19th century black-faced minstrel act. Beginning with Mississippi in 1890, every Southern state, except Kentucky and Tennessee, had disenfranchised the vast majority of its African American population by 1907 through the use of literacy tests and poll taxes. ................
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