 In 1870, only 2% of all 17 year olds graduated from high school  By 1900 – 32 states had laws that required children between the ages of 8 and 14 to attend school  By 1910, 60% of American children attended school with more than a million students in high school

 In an effort to limit child labor, parents pushed for local governments to provide funding for schools  Literacy – the ability to read and write  Goal of immigrants  Schools worked to assimilate immigrants into daily life  Assimilation – process by which people of one culture become part of another culture

 Segregation (separation) of the races meant different educational experiences  African Americans, Mexicans, and Native Americans  Only a small percentage of Native Americans were receiving formal schooling in 1900

 – 250 new colleges and universities opened  Wealthy people supported them  1885 – Leland Stanford – Stanford University  John D. Rockefeller gave a total of $40 million to the University of Chicago

 Philanthropists – gave money to establish women’s colleges  For example, Vassar College in New York in 1865  However, some schools would not allow men and women together  Women’s schools were opened along side the men’s schools  Brown College (Pembroke), Harvard (Radcliffe)

 Some schools did allow men and women to study together  Oberlin  Knox  Antioch  Cornell  Boston University  Most scholarships went to men

 Fear that college would make women unmanageable and unmarriageable

 1890 – only 160 African Americans were attending white colleges  All African American colleges  1856 – Wilberforce University in Ohio – nation’s oldest private African American School

Booker T. Washington Founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama Taught students to focus on vocational skills Said whites would accept once blacks succeeded economically 1901 Up From Slavery 1901 – invited to the White House by Theodore Roosevelt

W.E.B. Dubois Graduated from Fisk University in Nashville and went on to become the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard Niagara Movement – called for full civil liberties, an end to racial discrimination, and recognition of human brotherhood Disagreed with Booker T. Washington Eventually worked for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

Booker T. Washington Vocational W.E.B. Dubois Advanced liberal arts education

 Saloons – most popular  Dance halls  Cabarets – musical shows  Trolley parks – amusement parks built at the end of trolley lines  Moving pictures – 1903 – The Great Train RobberyThe Great Train Robbery  by 1908 – 8,000 nickelodeons (1 st movie theatres) - 5 cents

 Inexpensive variety show that first appeared in the 1870s  Comedy, dance, ventriloquists, jugglers, trapeze artists  Click for a Video Click for a Video

 Boxing – Jack Johnson vs James Jeffries in the “Fight of the Century”  Horse Racing  Baseball – most popular – New York Knickerbockers one of first clubs  1869 – first professional team – Cincinnati Red Stockings  Football – adapted from European game  Basketball – invented by Dr. Naismith to keep athletes fit during the winter months

 Ice skating  Bicycling  Women began wearing shirtwaists (ready- made blouses that tucked into shorter or split skirts  Dress code made women’s sports difficult

 Comics, sports sections, Sunday editions, women’s pages, etc.  Yellow Journalism – sensational news, sometimes invented facts  Joseph Pulitzer  William Randolph Hearst

 McClure’s, Cosmopolitan  Mark Twain The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

 Negro Spirituals  Minstrel Shows – white actors performed in “black face”  Ragtime and Jazz – Scott Joplin – St. LouisScott Joplin

 Voting restrictions  By 1890s, had to own property and pay a fee to vote (poll tax)  Literacy tests  Grandfather clauses – passage of a piece of legislation that exempts a group of people from obeying a law provided they met certain conditions before that law was passed (people could vote if their ancestors had voted – allowed poor whites to vote)

 Jim Crow Laws – named after a minstrel song and dance routine  Began to appear a few years after the end of Reconstruction  Dominated every aspect of daily life  Separation of blacks and white in schools, parks, public buildings, hospitals, transportation systems, water fountains, public toilets  Different sections at theaters

 1896  Separate, but Equal ruling  Homer Plessy felt his rights were violated when he was not able to ride on train in Louisiana with whites  The Supreme Court ruled that segregation can exist, but facilities must be equal

 Illegal seizure and execution of a person, usually by hanging  – 1,200 black people were lynched  GO TO and see the postcards of lynchings.  Click here for a video about the postcards Click here

 Segregation existed in the north  Competition for jobs led to problems  1900 – race riot in New York City  1908 – race riot in Springfield, Illinois

 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 1910  By 1914 – 6,000 members  1914 – Supreme Court ruled grandfather clauses unconstitutional

 Department stores – wide variety of goods in larger quantities (for example, Macy’s 1858)  Farm families wanted access too  RFD – Rural Free Delivery from the Post Office (started in 1896)  Mail order catalogs (Montgomery Ward, Sears and Roebuck

 After the Civil War – took part in voluntary roles  Women’s clubs  Dating started to occur outside the home  “New women”  Pushed for more information about birth control  Margaret Sanger – New York Nurse who supported birth control