Fun and Diversion

1. Fun and Diversion • Coney Island Amusement Park 1900-1920

2. 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

3. Fun and Diversion • Orville Wright and first flight 1903

4. Fun and Diversion • Introduction of Henry Ford’s Model T - 1908

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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”

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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 Raceused 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.

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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