A Progressive Era for Whom? African Americans in an Age of Reform, 1890-1920

Embracing an argument-based model for teaching history, the Debating American History series encourages students to participate in a contested, evidence-based discourse about the human past. Each book poses a question that historians debate--How democratic is the U.S. Constitution? or Why did Civil War erupt in the United States in 1961?--and provides abundant primary sources so that students can make their own efforts at interpreting the evidence. They can then use that analysis to construct answers to the big question that frames the debate and argue in support of their position.

A Progressive Era for Whom? poses this big question: Was the early 20th Century a Progressive Era for African Americans?

Michelle Kuhl is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

List of Figures, Tables, and Maps
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Series Introduction

The Big Question

Timeline

Historian's Conversations
Position #1: The Nadir
Position #2: Laying a Foundation

Debating the Question
Did African American leaders Think They Were Making Progress in the Progressive Era?
1.1 Mary Church Terrell, "The Progress of Colored Women"
1.2 Booker T. Washington, "On the Race Problem in America"
1.3 W.E.B. DuBois, "An Appeal to England and Europe"
1.4 Charles Chesnutt Turns Down Du Bois's Appeal

Data on Black Life
2.1 Black Farm Owners by Divisions, 1900-1910
2.2 Black Homes (Non-Farm) Owned in Southern States, 1900-1910
2.3 Black Religious Bodies, 1890-1906
2.4 Literacy Rates
2.5 School Attendance Rates in the South
2.6 Life Expectancy at Birth, for Selected Three-Year Averages
2.7 Black Persons Employed in Selected Professional Occupations for Selected Years
2.8 Number of Black Businesses for Selected Years
2.9 Number of African American Members in Congress

Education
3.1 Thomas Dixon, Jr. on Education
3.2 Kelly Miller Criticizes Thomas Dixon, Jr.
3.3 "A Negro Student at Hampton"
3.4 School Children in the South
3.5 Mary McLeod Bethune Starts a School
3.6 Bethune with a Line of Girls
3.7 W.E.B DuBois on a University Education

Work
4.1 The AFL Accuses Black Workers of Being "Cheap Men" in the American Federationist, 1901
4.2 "The Negro and Labor Unions" by Booker T. Washington from the Atlantic Monthly, 1913
4.3 George H. Peters, Union Fireman, Writes to the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine, 1902
4.4 Unnamed Union Fireman from Louisiana writes to the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine, 1902
4.5 Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
4.6 Samuel Gompers on Black Strikebreakers
4.7 Women's Local in the Stockyards
4.8 Mining Jobs in Seattle, Washington

Lynching
5.1 A Judge Measures White and Black Life
5.2 Thomas Nelson Page on Lynching
5.3 Mary Church Terrell Rebuts Thomas Nelson Page
5.4 Teddy Roosevelt on Lynching and Rape
5.5 Jane Addams on Lynching
5.6 Ida B. Wells Responds to Jane Addams
5.7 Tuskegee Press Release on Lynchings for 1914

Politics
6.1 Speech of Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, 1900
6.2 1904 Republican Party Platform, 1904
6.3 1904 Democratic Party Platform, 1904
6.4 Attorney General Letter to President Roosevelt, July 5th, 1904
6.5 Reverend McPherson on Roosevelt
6.6 Oswald Garrison Villard on Federal Segregation

Two Girls in 1900
7.1 Gathering Cotton on a Southern Plantation in Dallas, Texas
7.2 Daughter of Thomas E. Askew

Index