Progressive Era Then & Now: African-American Civil Rights

Progressive Era Then & Now: African-American Civil Rights

Jordan Bermudez & Michael Spears

Progressive Response

Was The Problem Solved?

NAACP & W.E.B. Du Bois

• African-Americans tired of racial inequality began to organize and publish books addressing their concerns, as a response.
• A Red Record and The Souls of Black Folk were documents illustrating the harsh treatment of African-Americans and their strong push for social equality.
• Gatherings of the Niagara Movement and formation of groups such as the NAACP, also heightened activism to achieve full integration of blacks into American life.

• The Progressive movement against racism did not stop the issue but, started the stronger civil rights push that would take place in the future.
• The problems would be more strongly addressed in the 20th century using the NAACP to get numerous concerns heard.
• This period of focus however, did not solve the problem.

• W.E.B. Du Bois was Booker T. Washington's largest challenger. While Washington advocated for accommodation of racism through vocational education, Du Bois pushed for full racial equality and asked blacks to resist all forms of racism. Du Bois earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1895. In 1903 he wrote The Souls of Black Folk, a pivotal book revealing the struggle for racial equality. He later formed the Niagara Movement after a convention in Niagara Falls in 1905. In 1909, along with Oswald Garrison Villard and other Progressives, Du Bois formed the NAACP. The NAACP called for full on and sustained activism for the racial equality and full integration African-Americans in American society.

(There was no actual legislation during this time)

Famous Muckrakers

What was the problem?

Evidence of the Problem

• African-Americans faced the issue of racism, especially in the South.
• Lynching, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow Laws, and increasing segregation were all factors limiting the political participation and quality of life for African-Americans.
• Even in the North African-Americans faced de facto segregation and discrimination.
• Other Progressive movements, such as economic and political reform, also put out vicious attacks on African-Americans.

• Ida B. Wells-Barnett: wrote Red Record on lynching and racial abuses
• Ray Stannard Baker: wrote the book Following the Color Line on racism in America
• W.E.B. Du Bois: along with Oswald Garrison Villard created the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP)
• Mary White Ovington: wrote the book Half a Man about the psychological scars of racism and also helped found the NAACP

“The equality in political, industrial and social life which modern men must have in order to live, is not to be confounded with sameness. On the contrary, in our case, it is rather insistence upon the right of diversity; - upon the right of a human being to be a man even if he does not wear the same cut of vest, the same curl of hair or the same color of skin. Human equality does not even entail, as it is sometimes said, absolute equality of opportunity; for certainly the natural inequalities of inherent genius and varying gift make this a dubious phrase. But there is more and more clearly recognized minimum of opportunity and maximum of freedom to be, to move and to think, which the modern world denies to no being which it recognizes as a real man.”

― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

America Today

Works Cited

Pictures

MLA Citation

• Although issues of lynching and large scale segregation no longer exist in America today, the struggle for racial equality Progressives and those before them brought to life is still present today.
• The struggle for racial equality, has been seen in several news events in the past year.
• The Trayvon Martin case brought to life the issue of racial profiling, the possible injustice of the justice system, and the view/role of black males in American society.
• Voter ID laws also brought up the issue of disenfranchisement in today's age. The issue also brought to light the social and economic gaps seen between whites and blacks and other minorities face.

Goodreads.com. GoodReads INC, n.d. Web. 23 Jan 2014.

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Boyer, Clark, Kett, Salisbury, Sitkoff, Woloch. "African-American Leaders Organize Against Racism." Trans. Array The Enduring Vision- A History Of The American People. . sixth ed. Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. 644. Print.