Transcript Fun and Diversion - Coweta County Schools

Fun and Diversion
 Coney Island Amusement Park 1900-1920
Fun and Diversion
 Amusement Parks provided escape
– For female garment workers
 Chance to meet young men
 Spend time with friends
 Show off new outfits
 Electricity made riding streetcars and
evening walks a leisure activity
Fun and Diversion
 Orville Wright and first
flight 1903
Fun and Diversion
 Introduction of Henry
Ford’s Model T - 1908
Fun and Diversion
 The movies!!!
 Nickelodeons – in
immigrant
neighborhoods
– Featured brief comic
sequences like The
Sneeze or The Kiss.
– The Great Train
Robbery – began to tell
stories
– Charlie Chaplin
Fun and Diversion
 Diversions struck some middle class reformers as
moral traps
– Fearing immorality and social disorder
– Reformers campaigned to regulate amusement parks,
dance halls and the movies
 Supreme Court upheld city censorship boards in
1915.
 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
began fighting prostitution in the cities.
Fun and Diversion
 Temperance Movement
– Reformers tactics and objectives changed in
Progressive Era
 Anti-Saloon League (ASL), 1895 –
– Had fought to slow or stop consumption
– Now wants to ban sell of alcohol
 National Prohibition gains strength
 True problem v. racial fears
Fun and Diversion
 Drug Abuse
 Physicians, patent-medicine peddlers, and
legitimate drug companies freely prescribed
or sold opium and its derivatives morphine
and heroin.
 Cocaine was widely used as well
 Coca-Cola contained cocaine until 1912
Fun and Diversion
 Drug Abuse
 Narcotics Act of 1914, (Harrison Act),
banned the distribution of heroin, morphine,
cocaine, and other addictive drugs except
by licensed physicians or pharmacists.
 Campaigns against drugs had racial
undertones
– Chinese “opium dens” or “drug crazed Negroes”
Immigration Restriction and
Eugenics
 Immigration Restriction League 1894
(Boston)
 American Federation of Labor – feared job
competition
 Both fought for immigration restrictions
 Progressives used scientific expertise to
prove new immigrants were “low browed,
big-faced persons of obviously low
mentality.
Immigration Restriction and
Eugenics
 Senator Henry Cobot Lodge, led Congress
to pass literacy-test bills in 1896, 1913 and
1915, all were vetoed.
 1917 one bill did get past President Wilson’s
Veto.
– Physical exams became mixed up with
stereotypes of entire ethnic groups as mental or
physical defects
Immigration Restriction and
Eugenics
 Immigrant fears fueled Eugenics
– Controlled reproduction
– Zoologist Charles B. Davenport (leading eugenicist)
 Urged immigration limitation to keep America from pollution by
“inferior” genetic stock.
– The Passing of the Great Race used bogus data to
denounce immigrants from southern and eastern Europe,
especially Jews. He also viewed African Americans as
inferior.
– Promoted legalized sterilization of criminals, sex offenders,
and persons adjudged mentally deficient.
– 1927 Bull v. Bell upheld such laws.
Racism and Progressivism
 1910 - 20% of Black population lived in cities
 By 1910 54% of all Black women held jobs
 Across South legally enforced racism peaked in
early 1900’s
 Jim Crow laws segregated streetcars, schools,
parks, and even cemeteries.
 Facilities were inferior
 Tensions heightened with immigrants competing fo
the same jobs
Racism and Progressivism
 Lynching occurred about 75 times a year
between 1900 and 1920
 African Methodist Episcopal church
supported the African American community
 Fisk, Howard, and Morehouse educated
leaders and fought rasim
 Spelman College opened for African
American Women
Racism and Progressivism
 Mary White Ovington helped to found the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP).
 Racism against immigrants and African
Americans caused the Progressive
movement to be unbalanced.
 Reform v. Racism