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The Shift To The Progressive Era On American Government And Society

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The Shift to the Progressive Era on American Government and Society The Gilded Age permanently altered life in the United States. While America’s richest one percent seized half of the country’s wealth, America’s bottom fifty percent faced immense economic and social hardships.1 As people began to recognize the problems the Gilded Age created, they sought to find solutions, giving rise to the Progressive Era. The transition from the Gilded Age to the Progressive Era led to many changes in the political ideologies and actions of Americans and sparked many transformations in American government and society. These included improvements in economic, gender, and racial equality throughout the country, through both national and grassroots trends. …show more content…

In 1911, the Society of American Indians was founded to promote discussion on issues pertaining to Native Americans. 9 Its founding helped make Native American issues known to the public and helped fight for Native American citizenship, which was recognized in 1924 under the Indian Citizenship Act. 10. In 1906, Mary Church Terrell, a Black civil rights activist, spoke out against racial discrimination in her speech “What It Means to be Colored in the U.S.,” explaining how even in areas that had a relatively high proportion of people of color, discrimination was still rampant. 11. Terrell’s speech helped point out how racism in the United States is systemic, something that is still being tackled in the modern-day. At the same time, African Americans led by W.E.B. DuBois met in Niagara Falls, Canada and crafted a statement demanding “every single right that belongs to a freeborn American.”12 The Niagara Movement inspired the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which would become one of the leading civil rights organizations responsible for bringing down Jim Crow laws. 13. While the Gilded Age was a period of fierce racial discrimination, the Progressive Era opened up a new discussion on the treatment of racial minorities in

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