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| American Federation of Labor |
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| Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the AFL was a loose alliance of national craft unions that organized skilled workers by craft and worked for specific pracital objectives such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. The AFL avoided politics, and while it did not expressly forbid black women workers from joining, it used exclusionary practices to keep them out. |
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| Legislation passed in 1882 that excluded Chinese immigrant workers for ten years and denied U.S. citizenship to Chinese nationals living in the United States. It was the first U.S. exclusionary law that was aimed at a specific racial group. |
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| Legislation passed by Congress in 1887 that aimed at breaking up traditional Indian life by promoting individual land ownership. It divided tribal lands into small plots that were distributed among members of each tribe. Provisions were made for Indian education and eventual citizenship. The law led to corruption, exploitation, and the weakening of Native American tribal culture. |
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| A group of about six thousand African Americans who left their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879, seeking freer lives in Kansas, where they worked as farmers or laborers. |
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| Legislation granting 160 acres of land to anyone who paid a $10 fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for five years. Although there was a good deal of fraud, the act encouraged a large migration to the West. Between 1862 and 1900, nearly 600,000 families claimed homesteads under its provisions. |
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| Beginning in May 1894, this strike of employees at the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago was one of the largest strikes in American history. Workers struck to protest wage cuts, high rents for company housing, and layoffs; the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, joined the strike in June. Extending into twenty-seven states and territories, it effectively paralyzed the western half of the nation. President Grover Cleveland secured an injunction to break the strike on the grounds that it obstructed the mail and sent federal troops to enforce it. The Supreme Court upheld the use of the injunction in In re Debs (1895). |
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| Located in poor districts of major cities, these were community centers that tried to soften the impact of urban life for immigrant and other families. Often run by young, educated women, they provided social services and a political boice for their neighborhoods. Chicago's Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in 1889, became the most famous of the settlement houses. |
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| Preached by a number of urban Protestant ministers, the Social Gospel focused as much on improving the conditions of life on Earth as on saving souls for the hereafter. Its adherents worked for child-labor laws and measures to alleviate poverty. |
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| American exceptionalism refers to the theory that the United States is qualitatively different from other countries. In this view, America's exceptionalism stems from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation," and developing a uniquely American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire. |
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| In U.S. history, series of statutes passed by the ex-Confederate states, 1865-66, dealing with the status of the newly freed slaves. They varied greatly from state to state as to their harshness and restrictiveness. Although the codes granted certain basic civil rights to blacks (the right to marry, to own personal property, and to sue in court), they also provided for the segregation of public facilities and placed severe restrictions on the freedman's status as a free laborer, his right to own real estate, and his right to testify in court. |
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| was an American activist and businessman best known for his role in establishing African-American settlements in Kansas. A former slave from Tennessee who escaped to freedom in 1846, he became a noted abolitionist, community leader, and spokesman for African American civil rights. |
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| The Burlingame Treaty, also known as the Burlingame-Seward Treaty of 1868, between the United States and China, amended the Treaty of Tientsin of 1858 and established formal friendly relations between the two countries, with the United States granting China most favored nation status. It was signed at Washington in 1868 and ratified at Beijing in 1869. |
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| The Chicago Defender is a Chicago-based weekly newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers. |
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| The Compromise of 1877 refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election, regarded as the second "corrupt bargain", and ended Congressional ("Radical") Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden on the understanding that Hayes would remove the federal troops whose support was essential for the survival of Republican state governments in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. |
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The Cult of Domesticity or Cult of True Womanhood[a] was a prevailing value system among the upper and middle classes during the nineteenth century in the United States and Great Britain. Although all women were supposed to emulate this ideal of femininity, black, working class, and immigrant women did not fit the definition of "true women".
Part of the Separate Spheres ideology, the cult of domesticity identified the home as women's "proper sphere" |
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| The Dawes Act (also called General Allotment Act, or Dawes Severalty Act of 1887), adopted by Congress in 1887, authorized the President of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act. The Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. The stated objective of the Dawes Act was to stimulate assimilation of Indians into American society. Individual ownership of land was seen as an essential step. The act also provided that the government would purchase Indian land "excess" to that needed for allotment and open it up for settlement by non-Indians. |
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| The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois, by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues, making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier, and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums, piano and sometimes saxophone and trumpet. The music developed in the first half of the twentieth century due to the Great Migration (African American) when Black workers moved from the South into the industrial cities of the North such as Chicago. |
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| Series of four acts passed by the U.S. Congress (1870 – 75) to protect the rights guaranteed to blacks by the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The acts authorized federal authorities to penalize any interference with the registration, voting, officeholding, or jury service of blacks. Violations produced over 5,000 indictments and 1,250 convictions throughout the South. The Supreme Court later ruled sections of the acts unconstitutional. |
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| Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932) was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism. |
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| The Great Man Theory was a popular 19th century idea according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianism utilized their power in a way that had a decisive historical impact. |
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| Herbert Baxter Adams (April 16, 1850 – July 30, 1901) was an American educator and historian |
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| The theory that social and cultural phenomena are determined by history. The belief that historical events are governed by laws. |
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| An ideology is a set of ideas that constitute one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things (compare worldview), as in several philosophical tendencies (see Political ideologies), or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to all members of this society (a "received consciousness" or product of socialization). |
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| Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935) was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. Beside presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, she was the most prominent reformer of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health, and world peace. |
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| Mamie Smith (née Robinson) (May 26, 1883 – September 16, 1946) was an American vaudeville singer, dancer, pianist and actress, who appeared in several films late in her career. As a vaudeville singer she performed a number of styles including jazz and blues. She entered blues history by being the first African American artist to make vocal blues recordings in 1920. |
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| Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues singer and musician. His landmark recordings from 1936–37 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that have influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson's shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise to much legend, including a Faustian myth. |
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| Anyways, the magnolia myth essentially said that black people didn't have it so bad when it came to slavery. It said that slaves "were happy, well-fed, and better-off," according to an article on Youth Noise. |
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- Patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.
- An extreme form of this, esp. marked by a feeling of superiority over other countries.
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- The policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants.
- A return to or emphasis on traditional or local customs, in opposition to outside influences.
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| The "new western history" movement emerged among professional historians in the 1980s, a belated manifestation of the 1970s "new social history" movement. The new western historians recast the study of American frontier history by focusing on race, class, gender, and environment in the trans-Mississippi West. The movement is best known through the work of Patricia Nelson Limerick, Richard White, William Cronon, and Donald Worster. |
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| The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 was a major racial conflict that began in Chicago, Illinois on July 27, 1919 and ended on August 3. During the riot, dozens died and hundreds were injured. It is considered the worst of the approximately 25 riots during the Red Summer of 1919, so named because of the violence and fatalities across the nation. The combination of prolonged arson, looting and murder was the worst race rioting in the history of Illinois |
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A "paper son" is a term used for young Chinese immigrants coming to the United States prior to 1944 who claimed to be a son of a citizen but were, in fact, sons on paper only.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the only law in American history to deny citizenship or entry based upon a specific nationality. The only immigrants allowed into the US were merchants, students, diplomats, and sons of citizens. |
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| Snakeheads (Chinese: 蛇頭; pinyin: shé tóu) are Chinese gangs that smuggle people to other countries. They are found in the Fujian region of China and smuggle their customers into wealthier Western countries such as those in Western Europe, North America, Australia, and some nearby wealthier countries such as Taiwan and Japan. |
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| Revisionist History of Reconstruction |
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| Revisionist historians of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War rejected the dominant Dunning School that found the blacks were tools of evil Carpetbaggers, and instead stressed economic greed on the part of northern businessmen. Indeed, in recent years a "neoabolitionist" revisionism has become standard, that uses the moral standards of the 19th century abolitionists to criticize racial policies. |
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| Red Summer describes the race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities in the United States during the summer and early autumn of 1919. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases groups of blacks fought back, notably in Chicago, where, along with Washington, D.C. and Elaine, Arkansas, the greatest number of fatalities occurred. The riots followed postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs among ethnic whites and blacks. |
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| Separate Spheres is an ideology that defines and prescribes separate spheres for women and men. Culturally located in Europe and North America, it emerged as a distinct ideology during the Industrial Revolution, although the basic idea of gendered separation of spheres is much older. |
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| Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. |
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| William Tweed was born in New York in 1823. A chairmaker he eventually became involved in politics and served as a alderman (1852-53) and as a congressman (1853-55). A member of the powerful Tammany Society, by 1865 Tweed and his three loyal companions, Peter Sweeney, Richard Connolly and Oakley Hall, ruled New York like despots. |
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| The supposed danger of Oriental hordes overwhelming the West. |
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| Cholera is an infection of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse, watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking water or eating food that has been contaminated by the feces of an infected person (even an asymptomatic one). The severity of the diarrhea and vomiting can lead to rapid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance, and death in some cases. The primary treatment is with oral rehydration solution (ORS) to replace water and electrolytes; if this is not tolerated or does not provide quick enough treatment, intravenous fluids can also be used. Antibiotics are beneficial in those with severe disease to shorten its duration and severity. Worldwide, it affects 3–5 million people and causes 100,000–130,000 deaths a year as of 2010. Cholera was one of the earliest infections to be studied by epidemiological methods. |
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A diaspora (from Greek διασπορά, "scattering, dispersion") is "the movement, migration, or scattering of people away from an established or ancestral homeland" or "people dispersed by whatever cause to more than one location", or "people settled far from their ancestral homelands".
The word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of people with common roots, particularly movements of an involuntary nature, such as the expulsion of Jews from the Middle East, the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, Tibetans who fled their homeland with the Dalai Lama in 1959 to escape the brutal invasion and occupation by China, or the century-long exile of the Messenians under Spartan rule. |
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| The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history (1865–1877).He supported the idea that the South had been ruined by Reconstruction. He contended that freedmen had proved incapable of self-government and thus had made segregation necessary. Dunning believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". |
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| The Frontier Thesis, also referred to as the Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that the origin of the distinctive egalitarian, democratic, aggressive, and innovative features of the American character has been the American frontier experience. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. In the thesis, the frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mind-sets and ending prior customs of the 19th century. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. |
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| Great Migration (African-American) |
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| The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration (1910–30), numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), in which 5 million or more people moved and to a wider variety of destinations. From 1965–70, 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, contributed to a large net migration of blacks to the other three cultural (and census-designated) regions of the United States. By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent lived in cities. 53 percent remained in the South, while 40 percent lived in the North and 7 percent in the West. |
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| The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) refers to a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police as they dispersed the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians, and the wounding of scores of others. |
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The Industrial Revolution was a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It began in the United Kingdom, then subsequently spread throughout Western Europe, North America, Japan, and eventually the rest of the world.
The Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in history; almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. Most notably, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. |
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| a tenement is a run-down and overcrowded apartment house. normally located in a poor section of a large city. |
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