5 Progressivism Part II 1895 1915 Key Terms Prohibition Plessy vs Ferguson 1896 Ida B Wells I Emphasis on Morals 1 Moving towards Prohibition Prohibition is the idea that you should limit if not outlaw alcohol for the good of society Prohibitionists want to outlaw this because those who believe in this believe alcohol is the root sin all the bad things that happen in American society comes from alcohol Looking towards a more traditional value Not all progressives are prohibitionists Some progressives could not be bothered by the alcohol Most prohibitionists identified as progressives as part of these movement to fix society Carrie A Nation not her real name wants to carry the nation into life security by ending alcohol Carrie would travel around the country going to the bar and reading out loud about the sinfulness She slams her hatchet into the bottle of alcohol as she is reading the bible She ends up going to jail once she gets out she goes and does it again She gets her message out which leads to prohibition Some people agree and believe in what she does Individual states will begin passing laws either limiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol or outlawing it all together Starts happening on a state by state basis The prohibitionist are starting to be successful but a nationwide ban amendment is what they are going for 2 Youth organizations In this period of time progressives are interested in making groups to teach youth the right way to be an American citizen Create boy scouts and girl scouts They promote outdoors They have a bigger presence in the city but emphasize sticking these kids in the country to show them independence and self sufficiency Also for them to have a childhood it s important to be young and innocent and not corrupted by alcohol drugs and gangs Trying to scrub all the bad things out of these kids YMCA is created young men s Christian association Christian values are important to share The key values are Christianity If you are not Christian they would be happy to include you if you converted They re defining American characteristics as including religious dimensions Tell kids if they want to be a good kind of American they are going to have to start acting a certain way and believing in certain things Diversity is not necessarily a part of progressives plan Dubois is you don t fix the problems right away they will just be bigger problems Its hard but he will lead the way Pushing hard so African Americans stop seeing themselves as less than 3 Education and hygiene II The Issues of Race 1 Plessy vs Ferguson 1896 When reconstruction ends in 1877 southern states are basically able to do whatever they want regarding laws and race They make up any laws they want and what many of these laws do in southern states is they start physically separating blacks from white in both public and private spaces also known as segregation This is a Supreme Court case that was decided in 1896 This incident that is getting decided happened in Louisiana in the early 1890 s and involved and African American man named Homer Plessy In the town where he lives they have a trolley car that gets you around and they were segregated On purpose Homer Plessy sits in the white car He is looking to get arrested so he can go on trial Trying courts to look at laws like these and see they are bad The first time around the judge s name is Ferguson and he does not really care what Plessy is trying to do says he is guilty because he broke the law Plessy vs Ferguson comes from the appeal of the first case The Supreme Court hears this and they come to a decision their conclusion is segregation is perfectly legal and allowed under the constitution Their argument was separate but equal to say it was allowed This is just another loop hole to screw over the African Americans Takes almost 60 years to overturn this 2 Booker T Washington vs WEB Du Bois Washington thought there was time to fix things but Du Bois thinks fix now integrations Talented 10 key phrase that separates them Du Bois says the top 10 percent of African Americans would be the ones to do the teaching Higher education college and university Dubois thinks everyone should go to high school but not everyone to college Washington plans for education train Africans and send them back to the land if you want success for African Americans it will be when the whites are depending on them Saying white men and white women will respect money 3 Lynching and Ida B Wells 1895 1915 In this time period lynchings are murders committed against African Americans not necessarily by secret societies but by average ordinary American citizens These murders are almost no arrest no prosecutions no trials NO JUSTICE of any kind In this specific time lynching is also considered a social event like a party another way to phrase it tailgating There s a whole buildup leading to these murders The majority of lynchings happened in the south but not exclusively Pictures were taken of these lynchings and send as post cards so people could put them in their scrap books This was normal for everyone and perfectly acceptable Body parts were usually passed out along with clothing hair etc Ida B Wells was born into slavery once free she was able to acquire an education quickly and through family and friends she is able to buy a newspaper in Memphis Tennessee The whole point of her newspaper is to start telling the truth about lynching She tries to go through all the stories of these lynches and finds that these men that are being accused of rape were not anywhere near where these women were She prints the truth in the newspaper and in the 1900s her newspaper burns down She goes into northern cities to raise awareness that these things actually occur and what s really going on The point of this is that she has a goal to get a federal law passed that actually targets people who lynch so that if people are doing lynches they will get arrested The federal government should protect their citizens She begs progressives to fix this She fights but with no real success The awareness gets raised and more people start to learn about them She realizes she can use the photos and souvenirs as evidence and to show what it looked like Unfortunately she passes away of natural causes before congress debates these laws Not until the 1960 s do they start thinking about making lynching illegal The senate rejected all 3 bills so to this day there is no anti lynching law Significance of Ida B