The Progressives and Minority Rights

By the time the Era ended, progressives had accomplished many of their goals and changed American life for the better.  But Progressives did not address all the evils of early twentieth-century society.  The area of race relations and minority rights represented one prominent exception to the progressive push for reform.  The same labor reformers, suffrage advocates, social scientists, and political leaders who worked to improve the lives of many turned a blind eye to the problems of minorities in America.

African Americans

W. E. B. Du Bois considered the problem of the “color line in America” to be the most pressing issue facing the nation at the turn of the twentieth century.  Frustrated with the failure of government and progressive leaders to address these concerns, Du Bois and other leaders wanted to confront racism directly, but they did not receive help from the majority of progressives or from the administrations of Roosevelt, Taft, or Wilson.  For example, Wilson acquiesced and allowed segregation of federal offices.  It was during the progressive era that the federal government looked the other way as Southern states and cities solidified the disfranchisement of African Americans and extended segregation further into all areas of everyday life. African Americans still had several decades to wait before seeing any real change in their place in society.

American Indians

American Indians also faced prejudices during the Progressive Era.  Most progressives, even some who were sympathetic to blacks, viewed Native Americans as fundamentally inferior to whites.  Many progressives believed Native American children needed only a vocational education, rather than a more comprehensive, traditional education.  American Indians fought broader cultural stereotypes and combated misunderstanding through their defense of traditional patterns of life, including the peyote religion.  But Congress continued to pass land laws that diminished the culture of many tribes. 

The 1887 Dawes Severalty Act called for communal, tribal lands to be surveyed and divided into “allotments” for individual families.  Legislation passed during the Progressive Era made it increasingly easier to sell inherited allotments and easier for the federal government to take control of individual allotments.  This allowed outsiders to easily purchase Indian lands.  Tens of thousands of Native Americans were made landless.  For both the landless and those who retained their land, Federal legislation brought an end to traditional livelihoods and culture.

Immigration

Progressives allowed and perpetuated prejudice against both nonwhites and some groups of whites as well.  The 1907 Gentleman’s Agreement with Japan, designed to restrict immigration from Japan, illustrated the widespread desire to stop immigration from Asia.  In 1907, Congress appointed the Dillingham Commission, named after the head of the commission, Senator William Dillingham, to study the problem of immigration.  After two years, the Dillingham Commission produced a 41-volume report concluding, among other things, that immigration from southern and eastern Europe posed a serious threat to the United States and should be limited.  The commission’s findings were an integral step in leading to the immigration reduction laws passed in the 1920s. 

The 1920s immigration restrictions favored immigration from northern and western Europe and allocated quotas of allowable immigration in order to prevent immigration from changing the “national character.”