Ida B. Wells: The Progressive Era

Thomas Jefferson announced “Our citizens may be deceived for a while, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light”. As one of his famous quotes. Jefferson’s quote is stating that anti republicans didn’t have to risk themselves for any change of government. He is trying to say to reduce department to economy. Ida B. Wells an african-american muckraker journalist who wrote about lynching trying to make a point to stop it.

Wells was heavily influenced to continue her fight for people in her community upon hearing of the 3 black men who owned a grocery store and were tried initially because a white owner did not like the competition and had them tried as a public nuisance. They were later lynched by a white mob. Wells wrote on the injustice and later wrote on the unfair conditions of black women and wanted to be treated as an equal leader amongst men. She wrote on how disappointing the circumstances were for black women in the South as there was, “wholesale contemptuous defamation of their women.” (Adams, 1994)

In our society today, it can be difficult to forget the fact that just a century ago, minority groups such as women and African Americans faced adversity as they battle the fight for equality. All across America, people worked diligently to push for a change that would have a lasting effect. The year of 1920 encompassed several major turning points in American history such as the Election of 1920, the Sacco-Vanzetti case, and the impacting roles of minorities. While there were many turning points in the year of 1920, the election of 1920 was one of the most politically critical moments.

During the 90s of the nineteenth century hundreds of African Americans were persecuted and lynched regardless if they committed a crime or not. These atrocities got the attention with major African American leaders and writers including Ida B. Wells. She wrote a pamphlet called Southern Horrors, an autobiography detailing the many accounts of lynching used during her time. Wells even went to England, Scotland, and Wales to appeal to the people against lynching by making speeches and meeting with leaders to help ease the burden of colored people and stop lynching. To convince her audience, she recalled several primary sources from accounts of lynchings and court records, even going to the United Kingdom to make speeches to help her cause.

Wells was an active leader in the lynching protests and she began an anti-lynching campaign in 1892. (Ida B. Wells Biography) The campaign consisted of articles written by Wells criticizing the extreme deaths of African Americans. She traveled throughout the South to obtain as much information as possible on lynching cases. While doing this, Wells’ life was in danger, she was criticized and threatened by many to where she was no longer able to return home.

On March 03, 1913, thousands of women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. as a form of protest in order to gain suffrage rights for women. Before the march, however, one of the parade organizers, Alice Paul, urged black suffragettes including Ida B. Wells to not march with Caucasian women. She feared white suffragists may have not wanted to participate in the parade if they had to march with African American women. People within and outside of the suffrage movement including the government often discriminated against black suffragettes on the account of race, which could have made obtaining voting rights for them more difficult. As a way of combatting exclusion from the suffrage movement, Ida B. Wells established and participated in numerous organizations that supported people of color such as the Alpha Suffrage club, which was the first black female suffrage association in Chicago.

Huthmacher conveys that liberalism of Americans made the type of political system they were wanting. He asserted that the government got involved because of how the lower class portrayed their rights and voted for legislation. The low class was looking for improvement for working conditions. He provided job security, better wages and working conditions, and gave some benefits of production to consumers. “As a result, we find urban lower-class representatives introducing a large variety of business regulatory measures on the local and state levels during the Progressive Era”(Huthmacher 13).

Between 1880 and 1920, as immigrants flooded the United States, the U.S. transitioned from a highly rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial nation. Although during the Progressive era, progressives sought to push the nation into economic advancement, it was actually President Roosevelt’s New Deal, that restored public confidence and created government programs that led to relief for millions of Americans after Progressivism drove the country into turmoil. The new society established during the progressive era lacked stability, cultivated a sense of despair, high unemployment rates, shrunk and ultimately crashed the economic system. With urbanization, cities grew in number and size providing jobs to those who moved there, however

African Americans quote on quote received equal rights as White Americans, they got to go to privately own public businesses without having to deal with the harassment and discrimination from the owners also the racism from the authorities did not fully stopped but it was significant difference between how it was and how it came to be. African Americans finally got the recognition and the rights they had always

Showing people that African Americans are intelligent people was a progressive idea, which showed how advanced the Progressive Era

The lecture on African Americans in the 1920s by Professor David Canton is very disturbing. His lecture was on the different unjust treatment that African Americans endured. The professor, to me, was trying to make the listener feel the anguish that African Americans did in the 1920s. In some sense he appeared passionate and at times angry about the treatment of African Americans. The government supported this hostile treatment because they believed African Americans were being subversive if they stood up and defended themselves.

Even though reformers wanted to improve the conditions of the average working men, they were more prone to aid the corporate monopolies. Joseph Huthmacher contradicts Mowry when he states, “[..]indicates the basis for urban lower-class interest in the many types of social welfare and labor measures” (Huthmacher 13). He says that because the lower-class was mostly immigrants they did not care about the politics of the United States of America. The ideal society for reformers in Huthmacher’s eyes was a society where the blue collar workers were treated as equals to the white collar ones. They wanted there to be no visible line between rich and poor.

Black American History had a major role in the development of the present day United States. Slavery was the foundation of the Confederate states economic growth. This essay will focus on Booker T. Washington a man born in Virginia as a slave and with dedication earned a decent education and processed to do good deeds with it. As a slave he would package salt and work in mines and was allowed to walk to school during his free time. Booker T. Washington's accomplishments were founding Tuskegee University and being the first African American to dine in the White House and publish more than forty books.

Jane Addams The Progressive Era, 1890-1920, accomplished great change in the Unites States of America. Many reformers and activits demanded for change in education, food and drug policies, and most importantly the govermenet. The goal for the movement was the purify the nation. One of the main activits during this time was Jane Addams. Jane Addams is often refered to as a social and political pioneer.

Throughout American history, few groups if any have experienced the social and economic inequality African Americans have experienced. Since the 1890’s, they’ve accomplished a lot like gaining the right to vote, getting segregation abolished, etc. Many of these changes were spurred on by activists of the Civil Rights Movement. These activists were people like Oliver Brown who is the reason Brown v. Board of Education occurred, college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who started the Greensboro sit-in, and everyone who participated in the peaceful protest in Selma, Alabama. In each case, activists made a positive impact; Oliver Brown’s case made people see that segregated schools are unjust, the students