T3 Social Cultural

Question 1

Effects of Mass Immigration (1890 - 1912)

Answer 1

• Between 1860 and 1900, at least 14 million immigrants arrived in the USA.
• The number of immigrants reached an all-time high in the years 1901 to 1910. By 1900, New York
  had more Italians than Naples, and twice as many Irish as Dublin.
• By 1914, the Jewish population was 1.4 million out of a city population of 4.7 million.
• The immigrants from Europe disembarked in New York and headed for the cities where they
  provided the cheap labour needed for industrial growth or headed west to farm in the new
  territories.
• Chinese and Japanese immigrants usually arrived in San Francisco. By 1890, one-tenth of the
  population was Chinese.
• Immigration was a major reason why the USA was able to progress as quickly as it did with
  industrialisation.
• Immigrants came as workers but, just as importantly, they came as consumers.
• Agencies matched immigrants to jobs so efficiently that many had employment within a few hours
  of arrival.
• By and large the immigrants assimilated well into US society.
• They formed the unskilled workforce in the rapidly growing industries.
• The migrant was grateful for a job, an opportunity, and a roof over his or her head.
• It was estimated that by 1900 over two-thirds of those who had arrived in the USA in the previous
  twenty years existed below subsistence level.
• The reality of life in America was often a shock to new arrivals who were surprised to find that the
  streets were not paved with gold.
• Settling in this new country was hard, especially for those moving from a peasant outdoor life,
  unregulated by clocks, to a disciplined, machine-controlled life.
• Low wages often meant that wives and children had to work.

Question 2

Reactions to Mass Immigration (1890 - 1912)

Answer 2

Reactions to Mass Immigration (1890 - 1912)
* While many immigrants were welcomed by employers as cheap and willing labour, they were an
easy target for Americans who were fearful and resentful about the rapid changes brought about
by industrialisation.
* This was because immigrants were often used as strike-breakers; brought in by employers as
blacklegs to replace striking workers, they contributed to overcrowding in towns and cities and
increased racial and ethnic conflict.
* It was easy for opponents to see their cultural and religious interests as un-American.
* These opponents argued that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe did not assimilate
into US culture as easily as their northern counterparts and brought with them dangerous political
ideas such as socialism and anarchism.
* In 1887, the American Protective Association was set up to try to put pressure on the government
to limit immigration.
* The Association suggested that the Anglo-Saxon, Protestant ‘traditions’ that dominated American
culture were being undermined.
* The anti-immigration forces had limited success before the First World War, although the 1882
Chinese Exclusion Act stopped immigration from China and, in 1908, immigration from Japan also
ceased.

Question 3

African American Economic and Social Conditions (1890 - 1912)

Answer 3

• The majority of African Americans, whether in the North or South, still lived in poverty although
  a minority did make economic progress.
• Segregation in the South In 1887, a railroad company in Florida was the first to introduce
  segregated railway carriages and over the next four years seven more Southern states brought in
  segregation on trains.
• This was gradually extended to cover public places. Segregation was reinforced by the Plessy v.
  Ferguson (1896) case.

Question 4

The Plessy v. Ferguson Case (1896)

Answer 4

• Homer Plessy was light-skinned but was legally classed as an African American because he had
  one-eighth black ancestry.
• He deliberately challenged the Louisiana state law, requiring railroad companies to provide
  separate facilities on their trains for black and white Americans, by refusing to leave a ‘white’
  carriage. He was arrested and put on trial with Plessy insisting that his rights were being violated
  under the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Ferguson, the local judge, ruled against Plessy whose case was then taken to the Supreme Court.
• Seven of the eight Supreme Court judges ruled that segregation was legal because ‘separate but
  equal facilities’ were sufficient to be within the law.
• The ruling was a disaster for black civil rights since states could now interpret ‘equal’ in whatever
  way they wanted.
• In 1899, in Cumming v Board of Education, the separate but equal ruling was extended to schools
  which in practice meant under-funded, poor quality schools for African Americans were allowed
  to continue.

Question 5

African American Voting Rights (1890 - 1912)

Answer 5

• Many Southern states were also determined to ensure that African Americans did not exercise
  their right, according to the Fifteenth Amendment, to vote.
• To achieve this, state governments devised complex rules as well as additional voting
  qualifications.
• Georgia introduced a poll (individual) tax of up to $2 on citizens wanting to vote. Most African
  Americans were too poor to have such money available.
• In 1898, Louisiana introduced the ‘grandfather clause’. The franchise was granted to adult males
  but only if their fathers or grandfathers had voted before 1 January 1867, the date when African
  Americans gained the vote.
• Some states also introduced rules which meant that only those who owned their own homes were
  allowed to vote.
• In 1890, Mississippi introduced a literacy test in order to register to vote which effectively
  excluded many illiterate African Americans.
• This process could be arranged so that the questions for uneducated white Americans were
  simpler than those for their African American counterparts.
• By 1910, very few African Americans were able to vote in the South.
• Therefore, few of them became political leaders at local, state or national level.
• Many African Americans accepted the situation as being too difficult to change, especially as there
  seemed little or no support at national level.
• Furthermore, the period 1880–1910 saw the height of the lynching campaign against African
  Americans with an average of one hundred each year.
• Cases of lynching were rarely brought to court and, if they were, all-white juries would not
  convict.

Question 6

Booker T. Washington (1865–1915)

Answer 6

• Booker T. Washington was born a slave in Virginia with a black mother and a white father whom
  he never knew. After emancipation, he was able to attend college and became a teacher.
• In 1881, he set up the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
• This became a model for education linked to vocational training for black students.
• Washington believed that African Americans, in order to progress, had to acquire skills first
  through education.
• Later, he helped to set up the National Urban League to help black workers adjust to industrial,
  urban life.
• He was convinced that hard work and financial success would weaken discrimination.
• In a speech in Atlanta, Georgia in 1895, Washington argued that if white Americans could regard
  African Americans as potential economic partners rather than as a threat to their political control,
  the race question would be resolved.
• He suggested that African Americans should focus on education and economic progress rather
  than trying to remove segregation and discrimination and achieving voting rights, and that change
  would be a slow process.
• His critics called the speech the Atlanta Compromise and attacked his attempts at accommodation
  with white Americans in the South.
• However, the speech established Washington as the leader of the African Americans in the South.

Question 7

Booker T. Washington’s achievements

Answer 7

• There has been much debate both during his lifetime and in subsequent years about the
  contribution made by Washington to the cause of civil rights for African Americans.
• His critics have insisted that he seemed to accept the idea of white supremacy, made no attempt
  to challenge the second-class social position of African Americans and did little for civil rights.
• He seemed to focus on working within the system, rather than trying to change the system itself.
• He underestimated the importance of the vote for improving the position of African Americans.
• He provided a role model for African Americans because of the way he progressed from slave to
  college principal, along with his strict standards of behaviour and self-discipline.
• He also developed valuable contacts for African Americans within the white-dominated political
  world of the USA.
• One of his greatest achievements was to gain the interest of Theodore Roosevelt.
• Roosevelt frequently consulted Washington on African-American issues and invited him to tea at
  the White House.

Question 8

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1965)

Answer 8

• Du Bois came from a very different background to that of Washington.
• After gaining degrees at Fisk, a college for African Americans, Berlin, and Harvard University, he
  became a lecturer in philosophy.
• At first, he supported Washington’s ideas of slow but gradual change but by 1900 he was arguing
  for more active resistance to discrimination.
• He urged the use of legal and political processes through unceasing agitation.

Question 9

The Niagara Movement (1905)

Answer 9

• Du Bois helped to found the Niagara movement in 1905, which developed from a meeting held in
  Canada, in the city of Niagara Falls.
• The movement rejected Washington’s cautious approach and put the emphasis on protest to
  demand civil rights, especially the restoration of civil rights and the abolition of discrimination.
• Niagara never developed into a mass movement.
• Du Bois and his followers were too academic, and the movement lacked money and organisation.
• Nevertheless, Niagara provided impetus to the growing number of African Americans who wanted
  to challenge the views of Booker T. Washington.
• Du Bois also played an important role in the setting up of the NAACP.

Question 10

The NAACP

Answer 10

• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was set up by Du Bois
  and other leading African American campaigners in 1909.
• Du Bois was keen to attract white people, if possible, to join the movement.
• The aims of the NAACP were to investigate racism, publicise it, suggest possible solutions and to
  take legal action to enforce the law against it.
• The NAACP adopted a constitutional approach to lawsuits, believing that many of the measures
  taken against African Americans were violations of the constitutional amendments brought in
  during Reconstruction.
• Du Bois played a very important role in the NAACP, editing its magazine for twenty years.
• However, his frustration at the slow pace of change eventually resulted in him moving to Ghana
  where he died in 1963.

Question 11

The position of African Americans before WW1

Answer 11

• African Americans were, more than ever, second-class citizens, especially in the South.
• The active political role at lower levels of government that some African Americans had gained in
  the South during Reconstruction had disappeared.
• There were no African Americans in Congress or even in state legislatures.
• The right of African Americans to vote had been systematically removed in the South by a series
  of state laws.
• This lack of political power made it extremely difficult to challenge white political domination,
  especially in the South.
• As blacks disappeared from voting registers they lost any rights to serve on juries and give their
  own race any chance of legal equality.
• Segregation laws had formalised and increased the separation of races in the South.
• African Americans were often faced with inferior facilities, especially in education.