Niagara Movement In 1905, W. E. B.

Du Bois met with a group of black intellectuals in Niagara Falls, Canada, to discuss a program of protest and action aimed at securing equal rights for blacks. They and others who later joined the group became known as the Niagara Movement. On Lincolns birthday in 1908, DuBois, other members of the Niagara Movement, and a group of white progressives founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Their mission was no less than to abolish all forms of segregation and to increase educational opportunities for African-American children. By 1920, the NAACP was the nations largest civil rights organization, with over 100,000 members. Muller v. Oregon Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision in United States Supreme Court history, as it justifies both sex discrimination and usage of labor laws during the time period. The case upheld Oregon state restrictions on the working hours of women as justified by the special state interest in protecting women's health. The ruling had important implications for protective labor legislation. Facts of the Case Oregon enacted a law that limited women to ten hours of work in factories and laundries. Question Does the Oregon law violate a woman's freedom of contract implicit in the liberty protected by due process of the Fourteenth Amendment? Conclusion There was no constitutional violation. The factory and laundry owners claimed that there was no reasonable connection between the law and public health, safety, or welfare. In a famous brief in defense of the Oregon law, attorney Louis Brandeis elaborately detailed expert reports on the harmful physical, economic and social effects of long working hours on women. Brewer's opinion was based on the proposition that physical and social differences between the sexes warranted a different rule respecting labor contracts. Theretofore, gender was not a basis for such distinctions. Brewer's opinion conveyed the accepted wisdom of the day: that women were unequal and inferior to men. Square Deal Following President McKinleys assassination in September 1901, Theo- dore Roosevelt went to the White House at the age of 42, the youngest president in U.S. history and also the most athletic. He was unusual not simply because of his age and vigor but also because he believed that the president should do much more than lead the executive departments. He thought it was the presi- dents job to set the legislative agenda for Congress as well. Thus, by the accident of McKinleys death, the Progressive movement suddenly shot into high gear under the dynamic leadership of an activist, reform-minded president. Square Deal for labor. Presidents in the 19th century had consistently taken the side of business in its conflicts with laborHayes in the railroad strike of 1877, Cleveland in the Pullman strike of 1894. Roosevelt, however, in the first economic crisis of his presidency, demonstrated that he favored neither business nor labor but insisted on a Square Deal for both. The crisis involved a strike of anthracite coal miners through much of 1902. If the strike continued, many Americans feared thatwithout coalthey would freeze to death when winter

came. Roosevelt took the unusual step of trying to mediate the labor dispute by calling a union leader and coal mine owners to the White House. The mine owners stubborn refusal to compromise angered the president. To ensure the delivery of coal to consumers, he threatened to take over the mines with federal troops. The owners finally agreed to accept the findings of a special commission, which granted a 10 percent wage increase and a nine- hour day to the miners (but did not grant union recognition). Voters overwhelmingly approved Roosevelt and his Square Deal by electing him by a landslide in 1904. Yellow Journalism Actively promoting war fever in the United States were sensationalistic city newspapers with their bold and lurid headlines of crime, disaster, and scandal. Yellow journalism, as this type of newspaper reporting was called, went to new extremes as two New York newspapersJoseph Pulitzers New York World and William Randolph Hearsts New York Jour- nalprinted exaggerated and false accounts of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. Believing what they read daily in their newspapers, many Americans urged Congress and the president to intervene in Cuba to put a stop to the atrocities and suffering. The Fed Wilsons next major initiative concerned the banking system and the money supply. He was persuaded that the gold standard was inflexible and that banks, rather than serving the public interest, were too much influenced by stock speculators on Wall Street. The president again went directly to Congress in 1913 to propose a plan for building both stability and flexibility into the U.S. financial system. Rejecting the Republican proposal for a private national bank, he proposed a national banking system with 12 district banks supervised by a Federal Reserve Board. After months of debate, Congress finally passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1914. Ever since, Americans have purchased goods and services using the Federal Reserve Notes (dollar bills) issued by the federally regulated banking system. Sacco and Vanzetti Although liberal American artists and intellectuals were few in number, they were a vocal minority who protested against racist and nativist prejudices. They rallied to the support of two Italian immi- grants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who in 1921 had been convicted in a Massachusetts court of committing robbery and murder. Liberals protested that the two men were innocent, and that they had been accused, convicted, and sentenced to die simply because they were poor Italians and anarchists (who were against all government). After six years of appeals and national and international debates over the fairness of their trial, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927. Schenck v. United States Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), was a United States Supreme Court decision that upheld the Espionage Act of 1917and concluded that a defendant did not have a First Amendment right to express freedom of speech against the draft during World War I. Ultimately, the case established the "clear and present danger" test, which lasted until 1969 when protection for speech was raised in Brandenburg v. Ohio to "Imminent lawless action". Facts of the Case

During World War I, Schenck mailed circulars to draftees. The circulars suggested that the draft was a monstrous wrong motivated by the capitalist system. The circulars urged "Do not submit to intimidation" but advised only peaceful action such as petitioning to repeal the Conscription Act. Schenck was charged with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act by attempting to cause insubordination in the military and to obstruct recruitment. Question Are Schenck's actions (words, expression) protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment? Conclusion Decision: 9 votes for United States, 0 vote(s) against Legal provision: 1917 Espionage Act; US Const Amend 1 Holmes, speaking for a unanimous Court, concluded that Schenck is not protected in this situation. The character of every act depends on the circumstances. "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent." During wartime, utterances tolerable in peacetime can be punished. Harlem Renaissance By 1930, almost 20 percent of African Americans lived in the North, as migration from the South continued. In the North, African Americans still faced discrimination in housing and jobs, but for most, there was at least some improvement in their earnings and material standard of living. The largest African American community developed in the Harlem section of New York City. With a population of almost 200,000 by 1930, Harlem became famous in the 1920s for its concentration of talented actors, artists, musicians, and writers. So promising was their artistic achievement that it was referred to as the Harlem Renaissance. Poets and musicians. The leading Harlem poets included Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude McKay. Commenting on the African American heritage, their poems expressed a range of emotions, from bitterness and resentment to joy and hope. The Jazz Age resulted from the broad popularity among whites and African Americans of jazz music and artists such as Duke Ellington and Louis Arm- strong. African American artists received acclaim in many areas, including the great blues singer Bessie Smith, and the multitalented singer and actor Paul Robeson. Yet while they might perform before integrated audiences in Harlem, they often found themselves and their audiences segregated in much of the rest of the nation. Palmer Raids A series of unexplained bombings caused Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to establish a special office under J. Edgar Hoover to gather information on radicals. Palmer also ordered mass arrests of anarchists, Socialists, and labor agitators. From November 1919 through January 1920, over 6,000 people were arrested, based on limited criminal evidence. Most of the suspects were foreign born, and 500 of them, including the outspoken radical Emma Goldman, were deported. The scare faded almost as quickly as it arose. Palmer warned of huge riots on May Day, 1920, but they never took place. His loss of credibility, coupled with rising concerns about civil liberties, caused the hysteria to recede.