- Historical Eras > Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913) (x)
We found 277 items that match your search
An Economist Declares Mexicans "An Undesirable Class of Residents"
Discussions of the "Mexican problem" in the early 20th century often revolved around issues of race and culture, much as they did with other immigrant groups. Samuel Bryan published this study of Mexican immigrants in a leading Progressive social [...]
A Railroad Titan Explains Why the Chinese are Good for White Workers
The "divide-and-conquer" tactics used by bosses pitted different ethnic groups against one another and native-born workers against all immigrants. It often worked out better for white workers than for Asians. Charles Crocker, one of the "Big Four" [...]
Growers Explain Why They Hire Immigrant Workers
Many bosses deliberately hired workers who did not share common languages or ethnic backgrounds. Here, a manager of a Hawaii sugar plantation explains this anti-labor tactic to a Honolulu commission investigating strike activity. Other growers had [...]
California Workingmen Feel Threatened by Chinese Laborers
California held a series of anti-Chinese conventions in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. After Chinese immigration was forbidden by federal law in 1882, white laborers organized boycotts of Chinese-owned businesses and won pledges from state leaders not [...]
The Poetry of Chinese Immigration
In this activity students read poems written by Chinese immigrants to understand the hopes of and challenges faced by Chinese immigrants during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Then students write an original poem about the Chinese [...]
Booker T. Washington Recommends that African Americans "Cast Down Their Buckets"
In 1895, Booker T. Washington gave what later came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise speech before the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. His address was one of the most important and influential speeches in American history, [...]
Booker T. Washington Puts Economic Advancement Ahead of Political Rights
Booker T. Washington, born a slave in 1858, was the most influential black leader at the turn of the century. He had worked as a laborer and domestic servant after the Civil War, eventually attending Virginia's Hampton Institute. In 1881, he founded [...]
W.E.B. DuBois Critiques Racial Accommodation
The most influential public critique of Booker T. Washington’s policy of racial accommodation and gradualism came in 1903 when black leader and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois published an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk with the [...]
W.E.B. DuBois Defines "The Talented Tenth"
At the beginning of the twentieth century, as now, access to quality public education was uneven, and the problem disproportionately impacted African-American children. W.E.B. DuBois, himself highly educated, was sharply critical of Booker T. [...]
An Activist Advocates for Women's Leadership in Improving Black Life
Mary Church Terrell was one of the first African-American women to complete a college degree. Terrell, an educator and activist, also founded the National Association of Colored Women. The National Association was organized into many local [...]