@Readings for March 6

This is the page where you will post one section of your Wednesday Reports for March 6. Find your username below and insert the corresponding response below your name.

In-Class Work

Alpha Group Post Questions Here!

Given that both women and Puerto Ricans were found in substandard work conditions in the 1910s, was the minority status of these groups or the economic times more causal to the work situation? Why do we not see white or male workers in these same types of situations?

Given that contraception was legal in the U.S. during the early 19th century, and given there was considerable desire/demand for the re-legalization of contraceptives in the early 20th century, what factors contributed to the ban on contraceptives implemented in the late 1800s?

Given that ‘fifty armed deputies and twenty policemen’ attempted to prevent the lynching of Allen Brooks, as seen in source two, yet a passive authority did not prevent a lynching in the Ossian Sweet case in the 1920s and Rodney King was beaten by police over seventy years later and affect did the authorities view of race relations change within this period, and how did it differ between the states, especially in response to mob mentality?

Beta Group Post Questions Here!

In what ways did the American experience with the lynching of minorities develop modern views on the death penalty? (Looking Forward)

Did the Triangle Factory Fire have any influence on Esther Peterson’s opposition to the ERA on the grounds that women needed specific rights and protections in the workplace? (Looking Forward)

How did the immigration boom coming through Ellis Island during the 1890s and early 1900s lead to changing perspectives on sexual health such as those held by Margaret Sanger given that she worked extensively with immigrants on the Lower East Side of New York in the 1910s? (Looking Backward)

Did infrastructure developments, like the development of tenements and overcrowded factories, associated with the immigration patterns and the war effort led to the unprecedented destructiveness of influenza in the 1910s? (About 1910s)

Gamma Group Post Questions Here!

How did the cultural and political environment of the US reach the point where citizens were capable of the lynchings of African Americans in 1918 in the South?

Sanger was able to travel and study English Methods of Birth Control, Dutch Methods of Birth Control, and Magnetation Methods of Birth Control. Given that these countries would presumably have a much stronger religious influence, why was the suggestion of birth control so suppressed in the United States?

Given that the strike for better and safer working conditions for women failed before that Triangle Factory Fire, how did the fire impact the feminist movements afterwards?

Research

Identify at least one concept, event, or proper noun mentioned in the readings that is unfamiliar to you. Use reference tools on the Internet or in the library to look up information about it and report your findings, along with the source of the information you found.

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I researched the NAACP and specifically what their presence and mission in the 1910s and early 1920s. This is important to discover why they wrote the report and the prevalence of the organization during this time. “The NAACP devoted much of its energy during the interwar years to fighting the lynching of blacks throughout the United States by working for legislation, lobbying and educating the public. The organization sent its field secretary Walter F. White to Phillips County, Arkansas, in October 1919, to investigate the Elaine Race Riot. More than 200 black tenant farmers were killed by roving white vigilantes and federal troops after a deputy sheriff’s attack on a union meeting of sharecroppers left one white man dead. White published his report on the riot in the Chicago Daily News.[21] The NAACP organized the appeals for twelve black men sentenced to death a month later based on the fact that testimony used in their convictions was obtained by beatings and electric shocks. It gained a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision in Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86 (1923) that significantly expanded the Federal courts’ oversight of the states’ criminal justice systems in the years to come. White investigated eight race riots and 41 lynchings for the NAACP and directed its study Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States.[22] NAACP leaders Henry L. Moon, Roy Wilkins, Herbert Hill, and Thurgood Marshall in 1956. The NAACP also spent more than a decade seeking federal legislation against lynching, but Southern white Democrats voted as a block against it or used the filibuster in the Senate to block passage. Because of disfranchisement, there were no black representatives from the South in Congress. The NAACP regularly displayed a black flag stating”A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" from the window of its offices in New York to mark each lynching.”

Source: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Colored_People#The_Birth_of_the_NAACP

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I chose to research the murder of Lucy Fryer and the trial of Jesse Washington to better understand the circumstances that drove people to the lynching of Washington. Lucy Fryer was the wife of a prominent cotton farmer in Robinson, Texas. She was found bludgeoned to death on her farm on May 8, 1916. Jesse Washington was a farmhand who had been working on the farm for about 5 months. He was illiterate and possibly mentally handicapped. While he did confess to the rape and murder of Lucy Fryer, there is no evidence as to how this confession was elicited. It is likely that the confession was false due to Washington’s mental capacity and the fact that the attitude toward African Americans at that time likely caused coercion by law enforcement to force a confession. It should also be noted that the lynch mob was able to take Washington from a courthouse, a place where he should have been safe due to the presence of law enforcement officers, but it seems as if he was almost given up willingly with the ease with which he was taken.

http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/waco-horror-racism-gone-wild-image-attached-link-may-be-inappropriate-young-chi

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5401868

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I researched about the movie “The birth of a nation”. The movie was originally called “The Clansman” and was perceived as racist even in its’ own time period. The NAACP was thoroughly against it. However, the movie performed exceedingly well in the box office and was considered one of the great movies of the time. Even now, the movie is listed in the top 100 movies of the 20th century by the American Film Institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation

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What made the 1918 flu epidemic so catastrophic?

The 1918 flu outbreak differed from previous outbreaks in that it caused significant mortality among otherwise-healthy young adults, as opposed to the typical trend of higher mortality among the very young and very old. The epidemic was also very widespread, likely due partly to government censorship in the countries most involved in the war. The combination of high mortality and widespread infection led to an estimated death toll of 50-100 million, or 1-3% of the world’s population.

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic)

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The history behind lynching has always been an interesting topic. I learned that there were 492 lynching’s that took place between the years of 1882 and 1930. Apparently the lynching that most heard about was that of Jesse Washington. This took place in Waco Texas in 1916. I had no idea how gruesome some lynching were. I thought it just involved hanging someone. But in these articles there are accounts of burnings, drowning, and hundreds of guns shots.

http://usslave.blogspot.com/2012/01/1916-lynching-in-waco-texas.html http://books.google.com/books?id=ZVoEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA221&ots=0sUEYaNoR7&dq=the%20crisis%20walter%20white%20work%20of%20a%20mob&pg=PA221#v=onepage&q&f=false

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The influenza epidemic of 1918 was a worldwide outbreak of a particularly virulent strain of influenza. While most flu outbreaks killed those with weaker immune systems, such as young children or the elderly, this strain killed a disproportionate number of healthy adults. Over the two to three years that the outbreak persisted, between fifty and one hundred million people were killed, making it the deadliest epidemic in recorded human history. This particular strain was also known as the Spanish flu, due to disproportionate media coverage in Spain compared to other countries. Most nations involved in World War I attempted to cover up the true nature of the disease, but since Spain was neutral, the true numbers of infections and deaths were reported.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

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Margaret Sanger was an advocator for legalizing birth control and making it available to women. She challenged the Comstock laws that made contraceptives illegal by informing women about birth control and providing them with it. Her motivation initially came from watching her mother go through the pain of eleven childbirths and seven miscarriages. Her mother died at the reletivaly young age of 50, and Sanger was recorded telling her father “You caused this. Mother is dead from having too many children.” After this, she attended nursing school and worked in New York City as a visiting nurse. Sanger saw and treated many women who experienced trauma and suffering due to “five-dollar back-alley abortions”. This made Sanger especially motivated to find better contraceptives. She coined the term “birth control” in 1914. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which would become the Planned Parenthood Federation. She then advocated for birth control for many decades, and in 1960, the FDA approved the use of Envoid, the first oral contraceptive, developed by a collaboration of Sanger, medical expert Gregory Pincus, and sponsor Katharine McCormick. She lived to see the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut which ruled “that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right.” She died a year later.

Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_sanger.html

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Billy Sunday was an American baseball player turned evangelist during the 19th and 20th centuries. He became one of the most successful and influential evangelists, traveling to numerous U.S. cities and preaching to large crowds. He was widely accepted by different classes and types of people, and was able to make a great deal of money through his sermons. He showed strong support for Prohibitions, and it is believed that he had a great deal of influence in the adoption of the 18th Amendment.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Sunday#Religious_views

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Regarding the postcards, were public hangings happening anywhere outside of Texas in the early 1900s, or even more outside the south? It is likely there were. Hangings were by far the most common issuance of the death penalty at the turn of the 20th century and over 4600 executions took place between 1900-1935.

http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004087#VI

Was Billy Sunday widely influential or was he mostly heard where he could physically go and speak? Wikipedia said he was the most widely heard preacher before the use of electronic sound systems. That would count as widely influential.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Sunday

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Billy Sunday was a fundamentalist evangelist whose incredibly popular public speaking “replete with colorful illustrations” gathered a following that numbered in the millions by the time of his death. Before becoming an evangelical orator, Sunday was a noted baseball player with a promising future in professional sports. Sunday’s “eclectic” conservative preaching with emphasis on the sinfulness of liquor consumption helped the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. —Dorsett, L.W. “Sunday, Billy”. American National Biography Online.

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The incident at Camp Bragg involving Rafael F. Marchan and about 1700 other Puerto Ricans was part of a much larger transportation of Puerto Ricans to work in the United States in 1918. A report by the U.S. Employment Service Bulletin “estimated that 75,000 unemployed laborers in Puerto Rico were available for work in the United States at the time,” prompting the War Department to move much needed labor (this was towards the end of WWII) to the U.S. The Puerto Ricans were given jobs at “defense plants and military bases,” where they unfortunately faced “harsh conditions and even forced labor.” Marchan’s story is just one case where these workers were subjected to life-threatening conditions. In Arkansas “almost one hundred Puerto Rican migrants died” working in a picric acid factory. Even before Marchan and his countrymen got to Camp Bragg, 28 of them died of influenza on the ship they had arrived in, the City of Savannah.

Sources:

United States Department of Health and Human Services: http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/your_state/southeast/northcarolina/index.html

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Ricans_in_World_War_I#Puerto_Ricans_in_non-combat_roles

Answering Old Questions

Identify one of the Questions raised in earlier weeks that one of the assigned readings or media clips helps to answer. Then explain why you think this source sheds light on this specific question.

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How has social rebellion developed in American over the last 150 years? After the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire occurred, “15,000 shirtwaist makers walked out and demanded a 20% pay raise, a 52-hour workweek, and extra pay overtime.” This showed that the workers were able to take advantage of the situation and work to better their circumstances. They had suffered and the factories were now forced to meet their demands…or shut down. The massive casualties of the event showed the factory owners that they had been mistreating their workers but more importantly, it showed the entire country the terrible conditions that these immigrants were working in. Unionization of employees aided in the fight. They were able to band together to strike and picket in order to gain what they wanted. After only a few days, many of the factories gave in to the demands of the laborers in order to maintain production. Political pressures forced policy makers to enact laws that created standards for working conditions. More than 25 laws were passed in the coming year and the State Department of Labor was created to enforce them. These regulations are the legacy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

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Walter F. White’s “The Work of a Mob” sheds some light on the question of “How have views on race and/or methods of discrimination changed over time?” For starters, the article mentions that “If [violence is not suppressed], it is very probable that Federal intervention will not long be delayed.” The quote uses a peculiar choice of words—“not long be delayed”—rather than in a more straightforward manner of assertion such as that (government intervention) “will occur.” This mere suggestion of a possible government intervention stands in stark contrast to the 1957 situation in which President Eisenhower very swiftly deployed the 101st Airborne Division to escort the Little Rock Nine into Little Rock Central High School. (Of course, the 1957 crisis involved a more direct contradiction of law, but the event still highlights a noticeable difference in attitude on a national level). Furthermore, the article notes that “excitement ran high” amidst the (first) lynch mobs, suggesting (but certainly not providing direct evidence) that there was either little hesitation on the part of the “crowds of men and boys” or that the local lynch mob found some sort of open “thrill” in seeking “revenge” (or perhaps both). This “excitement,” however, appears to be of local origin/basis, and it is difficult to gauge how far one might generalize the racist/discriminatory sentiment (beyond the context of Georgia).

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How have views of race and/or methods of racial discrimination changed over time? Many of these sources show us that racial discrimination has changed significantly over time. We can see in the postcards and stories from the lynchings in Texas that thousands of average people were entirely accepting of the racially motivated murder of individuals without due process. Birth of A Nation, while it was criticized for its racism on its release, shows scenes of rampaging blacks killing white people, a scene which clearly carries a tone of warning and fear, something that would be impossible to put in a major film today. Fundamentally, these sources show a change from more open hostility an acceptance of killing to today’s discrimination.

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Walter White’s description of a Lynch Mob in the book “Crisis” and the excerpts from the website, “Without Sanctuary”, help to answer the question: How have views of race and/or methods of racial discrimination changed over time? Specifically, the articles answer the latter half of the question of how methods of discrimination have changed. The White article highlights an era when racial discrimination was at its worst, yet still shows that many Americans were opposed to the violent crimes—crimes that were going unpunished and even supported—being committed against African Americans. White himself ends his piece with a call to action, “Mob violence should be suppressed, and by State authorities. If this is not done, it is very probable that Federal intervention will not be long delayed.” What these articles do to answer the question is present a “tipping point” of public opinion on racial discrimination. The gruesome acts described in the two articles are combatted by White’s viewpoint that action must be taken against mobs. What would be beneficial to help better answer the question would be to know if White’s view was widely shared and, if it was, how much change the actions of people like White created in the changing of views on race and racial discrimination.

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The question, “If the conservative movement did not just spring out of nowhere in the 1970s, […] when and why did it begin?” can be attempted in reference to several events from the WWI era, specifically through comparison of Sanger’s birth control argument with the attitudes of the lynch mobs, the KKK propaganda film The Birth of a Nation, and Billy Sunday’s prohibitionist stance. While these events together are not completely characteristic of the conservative movement that gained strength in the 1970s, certain events – and underlying attitudes – in the 1910s mirror those of the 1970s. For example, Sanger argued for birth control in The Woman Rebel, but was overtly censored by conservative courts, similar to Schlafly’s fight against Steinem and Friedan’s progressive ERA in the late 1970s. The scenes and stories of the lynch mobs from the 1910s appear similar in scope to the busing riots of the 1970s, revealing the widespread racial tensions that partially fueled some conservative groups in both decades. While The Birth of the Nation was a shocking film, it was the first movie to be played in the White House (under Wilson), and like the 1970s “blaxploitation” by neoconservative Hollywood leaders, attempted (to differing degrees) to popularize an idea of white privilege. Similarly, the prohibitionist arguments of Sunday show that hardline conservatism was alive and well in the 1910s. Altogether, the articles from the 1910s, put into perspective with the events of the 1970s, seem to suggest that the conservative movement has very deep roots that have not been discovered yet in class – more knowledge of America’s past is required to get to the heart of this question.

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The Souvenir postcards from Lynchings in Texas can help tell us how views on the death penalty have changed over time. While it does not directly fit within the context of the death penalty because of racial motivation, it can provide us an insight into the preliminary/preceding thoughts of killing people for punishment. While the humanity of this idea was presumably not brought into question – assuming there was no humanity in these lynchings – the evolution away from lynching can certainly be seen as a precedent necessary in order to justify the changing views of murder as punishment. The ease with which these people watch these lynchings, as well as the writing on the back of this card which describes this as a “great day,” tells us that this Texan society is quite far from this progress. Additionally, the chants of “Get that Nigger” add a sense of sport to this event rather than the partial accomplishment that would result from enforcing the death penalty on criminals. But this source is limited as it cannot account for the nation’s views outside of Texas, nor does it directly answer the question of death penalty given the racial context.

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The final document, regarding birth control, seems to show one of the possible early starting points for the development of the full-fledged women’s rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, and can help answer where the movement may have come from. In this document, we have Sanger arguing for the use of birth control to prevent women from having to go see back alley physicians for abortions due to unexpected or unwanted pregnancies. Like the women’s rights groups of the mid-nineties, Sanger created her own newsletter and pamphlets to spread her message and attempt to persuade people as to the need for her solution. Sanger’s goal was to give women an option other than the black market physician for dealing with the possibility of pregnancy, and she is often looked at as the creator of the birth control movement for her work. This type of empowerment may have led other women to later move for greater rights, thus spawning the women’s rights movement.

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How have views or definitions of feminism changed over time? The Margaret Sanger piece paints an accurate picture of the state of the feminist movement during the 1910s and serves as a useful point for comparison. Sanger describes her fight to introduce contraception information and the state of the women’s sexual health movement. While there was evidently a demand for this information, federal and state laws prevented her from legally distributing contraception information on the grounds that it was obscene. This highlights an interesting fact about the state of the feminist movement: its questionable societal acceptability. During this time, frank and open discussions about women’s health issues were proscribed by law, highlighting not only the validity of feminism in society, but also the place of women in society. The feminist movement at this time was newly budding, and the government played a role in attempting to suppress it through decency laws. This serves as an excellent watermark against which to compare the progress of feminism. By 1973, for instance, the Supreme Court will have legalized abortion and in the decades to come further progress for women would be made. Though still not perfect, feminism has moved into mainstream acceptability, if not agreeability, and is a far cry from the days of government suppression of feminist activism that Sanger and her peers had to fight against.

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How have views or definitions of feminism changed over time?

Margaret Sanger’s article about birth control represents a major change in the feminist movement, and the incorporation of a plank that is still with the movement today. This is the idea of reproductive rights and birth control. Although the right to abortion did not enjoy unquestioned support at this time (1916), we see the push for access to birth control gaining steam. Judging by Sanger’s description, however, it seems the push was met with large opposition. This was a feminist charge that upset the status quo enough for suppression and anger to occur. Simply for “imparting knowledge to prevent contraception”, she was acting “in defiance of existing laws and their extreme penalty.” Her feminist charge was answered with three indictments by a Federal Grand Jury for simply discussing the issue in her magazine. This feminism was truly revolutionary, and was considered “seditious” by the mainstream establishment at the time. Birth control is something that we mostly take for granted today (with few arguments over health care coverage), but it was altogether an unacceptable thought to the sensibilities of the early 20th century.

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Posing New Questions

Identify any new questions raised by the readings that have not come up in class. (Using information from the readings to revise or improve one of our previous questions is acceptable here, too.)

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HOW HAVE LABOR LAWS AND CONDITIONS CHANGED SINCE THE 1910S? HAVE THERE BEEN NOTABLE DIFFERENCES IN CHANGES FOR MINORITIES VS. WOMEN VS. WHITE MALES? WHAT TYPE OF EVENTS BROUGHT ABOUT THESE CHANGES? IN INDUSTRY, HAVE EVENTS RESULTING IN MASSIVE DEATH COUNTS BEEN THE MAIN TRIGGERS OF CHANGE?

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Given that women’s rights arguments gained momentum in the 1960s-1970s with the ERA debate, why did this concern for women’s rights outside of the home not occur until then given that a sizeable portion of women were already working in unacceptable conditions(Triangle Shirtwaist Factory situation)?

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What resulted in the atmospheric shift that created the lynchings in Georgia and the fear of the black population present in the Birth of a Nation clip, or perhaps had this atmosphere been cultivated for a longer period of time and only become more obvious because of the new film media and more pervasive journalistic coverage?

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Given that lynching was one way of punishment for Negros, were there any other forms of punishment for Negros and did these forms change over time?

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Given that Margaret Sanger supported the use of contraceptives as early as 1914 and claimed that there was “widespread agitation in favor of birth control” after her return from Europe, (Sanger’s article, 1916) what was the reason behind the decades-long delay in support for contraceptive use that seemingly emerged until the 1910s?

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How did the cultural and political environment of the US reach the point where citizens were capable of the lynchings of 1918?

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Given that the KKK appeared as heroes in the clip ‘Birth of a Nation’, how did the rest of the nation respond to this group and especially their portrayal in this film? Did groups like this find success outside of the South?

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