{"id":239,"date":"2015-01-19T17:42:17","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T17:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/?page_id=239"},"modified":"2017-09-14T03:30:15","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T03:30:15","slug":"1890s-progress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/timeline\/1890s-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"1890s– Progress?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a>

Image of “Jim Crow”<\/p><\/div>\n

The nineteenth century had always been an age of certainties, but by the 1890s, some of the post-Civil War consensus about American civilization and progress was beginning to fragment as\u00a0it had never quite done before. \u00a0Populists<\/a> challenged the distribution of wealth and the plight of the farmers. \u00a0Progressives<\/a> highlighted the terrible conditions of immigrants and the urban poor. \u00a0Civil rights reformers questioned the rise of “Jim Crow,”<\/a> or the consolidation of discriminatory laws across the South. \u00a0Nativists fought against the rising tide of immigration, most notably with Chinese Exclusion Acts and by attempting to overturn the birthright citizenship provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment –an effort that the Supreme Court ultimately rejected in the case of Wong Kim Ark<\/a> (1898). \u00a0Anti-imperialists<\/a> battled back against the conquest of territorial lands outside the continental United States. \u00a0Almost everywhere across American culture, there was a sense that the triumph of the expanding nation had created unintended controversies and challenges, not fully anticipated either by the Founders or even the Saviors of the Union. \u00a0It was into this climate that Booker T. Washington<\/a> first became a celebrated –and then somewhat controversial– figure. \u00a0During the 1880s and 1890s, he gained renown as the leader of the Tuskegee Institute<\/a>, a vocational school for African Americans in central Alabama. \u00a0Washington was determined to promote self-made black people, who could thrive in American society by dint of their own hard work and positive thinking. \u00a0He was adamant about that formula, sometimes to the point of alienating fellow civil rights reformers. \u00a0He claimed almost unbelievably in his memoir, for example, that “in all my contact with the white people of the South I have never received a single personal insult.”<\/a> \u00a0But then, most famously, he delivered a popular speech at the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International\u00a0\u00a0Exposition<\/a> that urged blacks to\u00a0\u201cCast down your bucket where you are,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0or in other words, to resist migration and political agitation and instead to focus on improving their lives in the South through economic self-sufficiency. \u00a0It was a message about how to achieve civil rights progress that made Washington beloved by\u00a0many, and resented by others, but without doubt it became the central legacy of his notable career.<\/p>\n

Online Textbook Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political Crisis of 1890s from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Progressive Era from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

America Becomes World Power from Digital History<\/a> (Mintz and McNeil)<\/p>\n

Selected Timelines<\/strong><\/p>\n

American Literature & Events: 1890s<\/a> (Donna Campbell \/ Washington State)<\/p>\n

Jim Crow, 1881-1900<\/a> (PBS)<\/p>\n

Featured Videos<\/strong><\/p>\n

PBS produced a fascinating documentary based upon Douglas Blackmon’s prize-winning study, Slavery by Another Name<\/em> (2008). \u00a0Here is a brief video excerpt from that film and then a short interview with Blackmon. \u00a0Then\u00a0Tim Betts takes on a hallmark of the Progressive era with his music parody of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a muckraking expose of the meat-packing industry in Chicago.<\/p>\n