All throughout American history people have been experiencing prejudice, whether it is because of their race, their class, their ethnicity, etc. Another deciding characteristic of inequality is gender. American women during the turn of the 19th century were constantly treated like they were inferior to men. Men got better everything from food, to clothes, to opportunities and jobs. Women didn’t have control over their belongings, their ideas, or even their bodies. They faced a constant struggle of conflict between standing up for themselves, and remaining obedient to the men in their lives.
Women of all races and ethnicities were prone to discrimination, although women that were not white endured the worst. Not only did they have to serve
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men, but they were also beneath other women as well. Maggie Lena Walker wrote an address specifically to black men stating “If you love these black women – your own women – your wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters…if you love these black women, feed them…”(Walker, 164). She wrote this because the men would say that their women were important and that they cared about them, but their actions said otherwise. They would keep all of the best resources and opportunities for themselves and leave the women with whatever was left, if there was anything. Walker also expressed her thoughts/opinions on working women. During this time it was hard enough for a woman to get a job but it was that much harder for a black woman. Walker told the men she was addressing that “Women of your race, your own flesh and blood, are as polite and capable of any other women on Broad Street…”(Walker, 164). She, along with many other women, believed that they deserved the same opportunities that white women and men received. Another big problem during this time was lynching.
African Americans were being tortured and killed without any kind of legal help or justice, like a trial or a lawyer. People of all ages, genders, and class were subject to lynching for various reasons. Some of these reasons were disruption, theft, or even just disrespect. A major cause of lynching involved women, specifically white women. Foner wrote that men “considered preserving the purity of white womanhood a justification for extralegal vengeance” (Foner, 58). It wasn’t really okay for a black man to even look at a white woman too long, let alone talk to her or be with her alone. When a white man or woman suspected a black man of mistreating a white woman the consequences could very well be deadly. This was the case even if the suspicion was incorrect. In a document Foner also wrote about a sheriff that suspected a black man and “led the mob against him in order to save his daughters reputation” (Foner, 60). In this specific case, the sheriff lied about what happened so that the other people in his town didn’t look down on his family. Whether or not this man was at fault didn’t mean anything to the sheriff or anyone else involved. White men during this time were blind to fairness as long as their women remained pristine, whether or not the women wanted
to/were. In general men just didn’t respect women. Similar to how people would often call slaves or workers boy and kid, men often didn’t respect women enough to use their name. A document written about a woman’s experiences described a time where a man said to his wife, “Woman! Stay in your place!” (Yezierska, 84). Not only is he disrespecting her and taking away her individuality, but he is also limiting the opportunities that she has. She also wrote ‘“Woman!” Father said, laughing into her eyes” (Yezierska, 84). Now he is also laughing at her ideas and ambitions. She later states that she has no choice but to “suffer here such bitter hell” (Yezierska, 84). Women in the turn of the century didn’t have control or say over basically anything. They may have run the household, but as soon as their husband got home he was in charge. Women didn’t make much money, if any, because they often didn’t work. They struggled to support their growing families. Back then birth control was illegal. Even the idea or talking about it was not allowed. Women were having baby after baby causing many health, money, and emotional issues. They couldn’t stand up and support themselves, so how could they give their multiple children a good life? This was especially hard when their fathers got all of the good food, clothes, and other necessary resources. Another issue with children was that the father often didn’t care about them. There was no way for someone to know whether they would have a boy or a girl, and obviously boys were favored. Even male children were seen as more important than girls, and their dads didn’t mind telling them that. On page 84, Yezierska wrote that “Always father was throwing up to mother that she had borne him no son to be an honor to his days…” Her father disregarded any of his daughters solely because they were girls. Eventually women had enough and they began to stand up for themselves. They started to get together and form organizations that supported women and their freedom of equality. They started out by making small improvements like spreading awareness across the country and causing the organizations to expand in size and impact. They also would meet “to protest the treatment [Wells] had received” (Foner, 62). Along with the millions of other women that were constantly being disrespected and put down. They agreed with Maggie Lena Walker’s statement that “we [women] are being more and more oppressed each day that we live” (Walker, 163). Even to this day women are treated differently and stereotypes continue to be amplified. Maybe equality will finally be realistic by the turn of the next century.
Dye drew together the essays of esteemed scholars, such as Ellen Carol DuBois, Barbara Sicherman, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, to shed light on the intersectionality between race, gender, and social class at the turn of the 20th Century. While many believe that it was a period of widespread activism and reform, these scholars support the idea that the Progressive Era was more of a conservative than liberal movement, in that it failed to challenge stereotypes about the female’s role in society and created a limited public sphere for women. While the women’s suffrage movement provided more opportunities for white middle-class women, it failed to lessen, or even worsened, the marginalization of immigrant and minority women. Many white-middle class women sympathized with European and Jewish immigrants and were willing to overlook socioeconomic class, but few supported the cause of colored women for labor and education
Today, women and men have equal rights, however, not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man’s place, not a woman’s, just like it was a man’s duty to vote and not a woman’s.
Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.
towards African Americans are presented in number of works of scholars from all types of divers
There are two ways to approach searching the manuscripts collection. You can use the site specific google search on the Manuscripts Department website, or you can search the library catalog and limit the results to the Manuscripts Department. I chose to use the search engine on the Manuscripts Department webpage because it includes brief snippets from the results that allowed you to quickly look at some description and rule out the results that are totally irrelevant to your search without having to open each one individually. As you look at search results, you will notice that the results have names like papers and collections. This is because archival and manuscript materials are organized by provenance rather than subject. What this means is that materials are grouped together the way they were received. All of an organization’s, individual’s, or family’s papers will be grouped together and as much as possible they will be kept in the original order that the creator stored them in. This means that most collections have materials related to a wide range of subjects and gathering all the material on a particular topic or person requires looking at multiple collections.
many men were involved in the war, women finally had their chance to take on many of
One of the things that was the most prominent after the Reconstruction and that takes a major role in “They Say”, was the lynching of African Americans. In “They Say”, Ida B. Wells must rush back home to Memphis, because of a riot, in which deputies were shot by negroes (Davidson, 124). After the shooting of these deputies, the negro men were put in jail, and later taken out by people, which then lynched them (Davidson, 125). Lynching of negroes was becoming so common, that people expected to see them in newspapers even if they took place in small towns (Davidson, 114). Blacks would be hanged and tortured for petty reasons that caused no one any real harm. Ida B. Wells did some research on lynching and found that many, were supposedly because of rapes to white women. However, Wells discovered that there were no rapes, rather the relationships were consensual, and it was just white men that tried to maintain the “purity” of their white women (Davidson, 155). Wells was an activist against lynching and she tried to show her views on her newspaper. She first realized that government did not take care of them and urged her fellow African Americans to leave town and try to settle in another place (Davidson, 150). She later wrote a speech against lynching and said that relationships between black men and white women were consensual not rape (Davidson, 156). Whites were outraged and even threaten to kill her. Although Wells’s accusation were true, she was not able to make any drastic
To begin with, there are many events in United States history that have shaped our general understanding of women’s involvement in economics, politics, the debates of gender and sexuality, and so forth. Women for many centuries have not been seen as a significant part of history, however under thorough analyzation of certain events, there are many women and woman-based events responsible for the progressiveness we experience in our daily lives as men, women, children, and individuals altogether. Many of these events aid people today to reflect on the treatment of current individuals today and to raise awareness to significant issues that were not resolved or acknowledged in the past.
When you think of American history, do you think of war, slavery, or segregation? Something that these have in common is gender equality. Gender equality is something that has been an issue in America since the first day it was inhabited. This is a problem in America. A more particular time period would be, World War II. During this time, women were being used to do men’s jobs and duties but, they still had to have a feminine aspect to them. While most men were at war, the women picked up jobs playing baseball, and working in factories to build the necessary items for war and daily living. During World War II, it was necessary for women to work. The government statistics prove this:
...hite woman therefore many false accusations were placed upon him an African American. His action was first seen as an insult then as a form of attack toward the white women and as members of the white social class began to increase causing a mob the accusations led to the beliefs of rape. Consequently, a common practice in the south during the late 1800’s to middle 1900’s was taken about. Throughout 1883 and 1905 lynching was a common widespread practice mainly in the south (Foner, 522). Lynching is described as “a practice in which people (usually black) accused of a crime were murdered by mobs before standard trials (Foner, A-82).” Unfortunately, lynching in the south only needed one accusation or form of misunderstanding for an innocent to get murdered by a mob.
Society has long since considered women the lessor gender and one of the most highly debated topics in society through the years has been that of women’s equality. The debates began over the meaning between a man and woman’s morality and a woman’s rights and obligations in society. After the 19th Amendment was sanctioned around 1920, the ball started rolling on women’s suffrage. Modern times have brought about the union of these causes, but due to the differences between the genetic makeup and socio demographics, the battle over women’s equality issue still continues to exist. While men have always held the covenant role of the dominant sex, it was only since the end of the 19th century that the movement for women’s equality and the entitlement of women have become more prevalent. “The general consensus at the time was that men were more capable of dealing with the competitive work world they now found themselves thrust into. Women, it was assumed, were unable to handle the pressures outside of the home. They couldn’t vote, were discourages from working, and were excluded from politics. Their duty to society was raising moral children, passing on the values that were unjustly thrust upon them as society began to modernize” (America’s Job Exchange, 2013). Although there have been many improvements in the changes of women’s equality towards the lives of women’s freedom and rights in society, some liberals believe that women have a journey to go before they receive total equality. After WWII, women continued to progress in there crusade towards receiving equality in many areas such as pay and education, discrimination in employment, reproductive rights and later was followed by not only white women but women from other nationalities ...
During the 1800s, society believed there to be a defined difference in character among men and women. Women were viewed simply as passive wives and mothers, while men were viewed as individuals with many different roles and opportunities. For women, education was not expected past a certain point, and those who pushed the limits were looked down on for their ambition. Marriage was an absolute necessity, and a career that surpassed any duties as housewife was practically unheard of. Jane Austen, a female author of the time, lived and wrote within this particular period. Many of her novels centered around women, such as Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice, who were able to live independent lives while bravely defying the rules of society. The roles expected of women in the nineteenth century can be portrayed clearly by Jane Austen's female characters of Pride and Prejudice.
The 20th century brought a tidal wave of tolerance and equal rights for a diverse variety of people in the United States. When the century opened, women did not have an equal position with their male counter parts either in the public or private sectors of society. Women first received their right to vote with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920, and the beginnings of an equal footing in the workplace during the obligatory utilization of American women as factory employees during the Second World War. Similarly, African Americans spent the 1950's and 60's fighting for their own basic civil rights that had been denied them, such as going to the school or restaurant of their choice. Or something as simple and unpretentious as where they were allowed to sit on a bus. However, by the end of the 20th Century, women, blacks, and other minorities could be found in the highest echelons of American Society. From the corporate offices of IBM, to the U.S. Supreme Court bench, an obvious ideological revolution bringing ...
Throughout history, women have always been seen as inferior to men or in reality to anyone. According to Stephanie Muntone in her article “Women’s Rights in the 19th Century” she states that “a woman was seen as a second-class citizen in a republic founded on the principles of liberty and equality.” America is the country where everyone is considered equal but this is only according to white rich men. Women did not even have the right to vote; when they finally did, they felt a little independent. According to Muntone in London, there was a World’s Anti-Slavery convention in which women could attend but the conventional leaders only allo...
Gender inequality has plagued the world for as long as we’ve inhabited it. Women in the United States have been in the shadow of men, not allowed basic human rights, because they were told that that’s how things are supposed to be. Centuries later, women have received many entitlements in which they deserve, but not without the ongoing battle of equality. Stereotypes of women in America after the American Revolution enforced the existing social hierarchy. As their social values continued to plummet nearing the 20th century, the main responses of women included banning together to fight for equal rights, and remote causes such as the “Declaration of Sentiments” helped launch history-changing movements like the American Women’s Rights Movement.