0.1 The progressive era (part ii)  (Page 7/11)

Wells tried, unsuccessfully, to get the U.S. Congress to make lynching a federal crime. She did succeed, however, in helping black women by founding the National Association of Colored Women as well as helping all black people through the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She worked tirelessly for a wide range of reform movements including woman suffrage. Nonetheless, she is most known for her work regarding lynching, publishing many works to include an 1895 book entitled The Red Record . Following World War II President Harry S. Truman supported legislation to make lynching a federal crime. He too was unsuccessful. Interestingly enough, while most Progressive reform bypassed African Americans, the reality of marginalized black male voters might have been one reason why so many black women such as Ida B. Wells became active in so many Progressive Era movements.

Native Americans

Throughout Reconstruction, U.S. policy towards Native Americans typically resulted in their marginalization. Believing in his invincibility, General George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry to their ultimate demise in the early summer of 1876 in an area of the Dakota Territory known as Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux. The “Battle of Little Bighorn,” as Americans referred to the first successful plains Indians assault on U.S. forces since the Blackhawk Wars of the early nineteenth century, launched the career of Ruth Custer as a professional widow and refocused American might to remove the “Indian threat” from the West (especially in areas were Americans discovered huge quantities of gold, such as in the Black Hills region of the Dakota Territory). American pursuit of the various Sioux Indians ended in December 1890 when several hundred women and children were gunned down by elements of the new 7th Cavalry (Custer’s old unit) using cannons and the new Gatling gun, which fired hundreds of rounds per minute. Forced upon the reservation, the U.S .government concluded the “Indian Wars,” which began during the early colonial period.

Yet the reservation system seemed to run counter to American ideas on life, liberty, and property ownership since the Indians were prohibited from private ownership on the reservations and of course the Homestead Act (1862) did not apply to Indians. Senator Dawes introduced a new way of organizing the reservations along the ideas of American life, liberty, and property rights.

The Dawes-Severalty Act cut the reservations into homesteads. Indians were allowed to privately own their own homesteads, provided that they did not engage in any “Indian” activities. In fact, Indians were allowed to become American citizens, provided that they “adopted the habits of civilized life.” To help the Indians adopt said “civilized life” and to evolve into proper Americans, Indian schools began all over the country with the financial support of the U.S. government and under the control, typically, of Christian missionary organizations. One of the most well-known of these schools was located in Pennsylvania, the Carlisle School, established by an Army officer named Richard Pratt who spent some of his early military career attempting to educate Indian prisoners. The Carlisle school came into existence because Pratt was unsuccessful in placing any of his released students into traditional universities. Not unlike blacks or women, most American universities refused to accept Indians as students.