A S TRUGGLE A GAINST D ISCRIMINATION 17.3

O BJECTIVES Analyze Progressives’ attitudes toward minority rights. Explain why African Americans organized. Examine the strategies used by members of other minority groups to defend their rights.

K EY P ARTS Progressivism Presents Contradictions African Americans Demand Reform Reducing Prejudice and Protecting Rights

I NTRODUCTION Read section 17.3 Answer questions critical thinking questions 5&6.

P ROGRESSIVISM P RESENTS C ONTRADICTIONS The progressive Era was not so progressive for nonwhite and immigrant Americans. Discrimination was primarily towards Latinos, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and new immigrant groups. These groups worked together to help themselves and paved the way for civil rights to occur decades later.

C ONT. Most progressives, were white Anglo-Saxon Protestant reformers. The goal of these progressives was to Americanize the minorities by advising them how to dress like white middle-class Americans and how to practice American and Protestant customs and values, even the food they eat.

C ONT.. Progressives believed if they did these Americanization processes it would make the minorities more loyal. The Supreme Court issued it Plessy v. Ferguson decision, states across the North and South had passed segregation laws. By 1910 segregation was the norm across the nation.

A FRICAN A MERICANS D EMAND R EFORM Booker T. Washington told blacks to move slowly toward racial progress and urged patience. By working hard and waiting patiently he believed African Americans would gradually win white Americans respect, and be able to exercise their full citizenship rights.

C ONT. W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter were the most outspoken men against Booker T. Washington’s views. Both men had been raised in New England and educated at Harvard University. They urged African Americans to demand immediately all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

C ONT.. In 1905 Du Bois and Trotter met with other leading African American thinkers at Niagara Falls. This was called the Niagara Movement, denouncing the idea of gradual progress for African Americans. They also condemned the idea that blacks could only perform trade skills.

C ONT … After the Springfield riot a group of white reformers combined with the leaders of the Niagara Movement and formed the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People. (NAACP) Goal was to be freed from low paid labor, social prejudice, and politically free. The Urban league was similar to the NAACP except they focused on the poorer class of blacks.

R EDUCING P REJUDICE AND P ROTECTING R IGHTS Different minority groups began to form self help agencies. Catholics had the Catholic Parishes. The Polish Catholics had the American Warsaw. The Jews had the Anti-Defamation League Mexican Americans in Arizona had the Partido Liberal Mexicano. The other Mexican Americans had the Mutualistas.

C ONT. The Native Americans had the Society of American Indians the was established by Carlos Montezuma in Progressives did very little to help Native Americans during this time. Progressives did even less for the Japanese and Chinese. They had slim hope of any success in the United States during the early 1900s.