AP U.S. History- Chapter 25 Vocab Free Essay Example

Jane Addams

a middle-class woman dedicated to uplifting the urban masses; college educated (one of first generation); established the Hull House in Chicago in 1889 (most prominent American settlement house, mostly for immigrants); condemned war and poverty; won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931

W.E.B du Bois

William James

one of America’s most brilliant intellectuals who served for 35 years on the Harvard faculty; Principles of Psychology (1890) established modern discipline of behavioral psychology; The Will to Believe (1897) and Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) explored the philosophy and psychology of religion; Pragmatism (1907) colorfully described America’s greatest contribution to the history of philosophy, most famous of his writings, held that the truth of an idea was to be tested by its practical consequences

Mark Twain

Missouri-born author; leapt to fame with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1867); teamed up with Charles Dudney Warner in 1873 to write The Gilded Age which gave a name to the era; since he was from the frontiers of Missouri, he typified a new breed of American authors in revolt against the elegant refinements of the old New England school of writing; wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884; England’s Oxford University awarded him an honorary degree in 1907; was a journalist, humorist, satirist, and foe of social injustice; made his most enduring contribution in recapturing frontier realism and humor in the authentic American dialect

settlement house

a neighborhood center in impoverished areas; prominent ones include Hull House (Chicago) and Henry Street Settlement (New York); tended to serve immigrants

pragmatism

the concept that the truth of any idea was to be tested, above all, by its practical consequences; coined in William James’s writing called Pragmatism (1907)

New Immigration

from the 1850s to the 1870s more than two million migrants had arrived in America; more than 5 million immigrants arrived in America by the 1880s; before the 1880s, most immigrants had come from the British Isles and western Europe (Germany and Scandinavia), Anglo-Saxon and Protestant with high literacy rates and a representative government, fitted easily into American society and tended to take up farming; in the 1880s, this changed, the New Immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, Greece, Poland), many worshipped in orthodox churches or synagogues, little history of democratic government, largely illiterate and impoverished, preferred to seek industrial jobs in crowded cities (rather than farms), totaled only 19% of immigrants in the 1880s but by the 1910s they made up 66% of immigrants, hived together in cities like New York and Chicago (“Little Italys” and “Little Polands”), some Americans feared that they could not assimilate to life in America and this bred nativism

chain migration

people following each other from a specific place in one country to a specific place in another country (“Little Italy”)

Morrill Act

passed in 1862, it aided in the growth of higher education; provided a generous grant of the public lands to the states for support of education; “land-grant colleges” (became state colleges) in turn bound themselves to provide certain services, such as military training; extended by the Hatch Act (1887) which provided federal funds for the establishment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the land-grant colleges; these two acts spawned over a hundred colleges and universities

push/pull factors

push- what makes them want to leave their countries, poverty (famines), religious/political oppression, and lack of class mobility; pull- what makes them want to come to America, opportunity and freedom

Columbian Exposition

an exposition held in Chicago in 1893 to honor the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage; so-called dream of loveliness; visited by over 27 million people; raised American artistic standards and promote city planning; was a revival of classical architectural forms, and a setback for realism

Florence Kelley

a woman who worked at the Hull House; successfully lobbied in 1893 for an Illinois antisweatshop law that protected women workers and prohibited child labor; lifelong battler for the welfare of women, children, blacks, and consumers; later moved to the Henry Street Settlement in New York and served for three decades as general secretary of the National Consumers League

Booker T. Washington

champion of black education (44% of nonwhites were illiterate in 1900); ex-slave; called in 1881 to head the black normal and industrial school at Tuskegee, Alabama; taught balck students useful trades so that they could gain self-respect and economic security; his self-help approach to solving the nation’s racial problems was called “accomodationist” because it stopped short of directly challenging white supremacy; avoided the issue of social equality due to imminent southern white racism; instead acquiesced in segregation in return for the right to develop (however modestly and painstakingly) the economic and educational resources of the black community; thought that economic independence would be the ticket to black political and civil rights; taught and researched at Tuskegee Institute; became an internationally famous agricultural chemist, boosted southern economy by discovering hundreds of new uses of the peanut, sweet potato, and soybean

“Atlanta speech”

given in 1895 to a predominantly white audience; the speech in which Booker T. Washington argued for blacks to put aside social equality and focus instead on self-improvement through work; appealed this idea to whites by permitting segregation and pointing out how useful a black workforce would be

Horatio Alger

Puritan-reared New England writer; interested in New York newsboys; wrote more than a hundred volumes of juvenile fiction that sold over 100 million copies; his stock formula was that virtue, honesty, and industry are rewarded by success, wealth, and honor- a kind of survival of the purest, especially nonsmokers, nondrinkers, nonswerers, and nonliars; implanted morality and the conviction that there is always room at the top

Carrie Chapman Catt

a leader of a new generation of women who had taken command of the suffrage battle; under her, the suffragists de-emphasized the argument that women desrved the vote as a matter of right, because they were in all respects the equals of men; instead, she stressed the desirability of giving women the vote if they were to continue to discharge their traditional duties as homemakers and mothers in the increasingly public world of the city; women had the special responsibility for the health of the family and the education of the children; they needed a voice on boards of public health, police commissions, and school boards to fulfill these responsibilities in the city; by linking the ballot to a traditional definition of women’s role, suffragists made gains in the early 1900s

nativism

antiforeignism; touched off by the Irish and German arrivals in the 1840s and 1850s; fear of being outbred, outvoted, and mixing “fairer” Anglo-Saxon blood with “inferior” southern European blood; blamed immigrants for the degradation of urban government; angered for immigrants taking low wages (made well-paying jobs harder to find); anger at immigrants bringing doctrines like socialism, communism, and anarchism to America; organizations against immigrants included the American Protective Association (antiforeign) and organized labor (due to economic strain of immigration); 1882, first restrictive law banged the gate shut in the faces of paupers, criminals, and convicts; 1885, Congress prohibited the importation of foreign workers under contract, usually for substandard wages; 1882, law to prohibit Chinese immigration

yellow journalism

gets its name from the colored comic “Yellow Kid” in the New York World; type of news sensationalism; flair for scandal and sensational rumor; sex, scandal, and other human-interest stories burst into the headlines, as vulgarization of the press accompanied the growth of circulation; done by Joseph Pulitzer (New York World) versus William Randolph Hearst (San Francisco Examiner)

Hull House

the most prominent American settlement house; established in Chicago in 1889 by Jane Addams; located in a poor immigrant neighborhood of Greeks, Italians, Russians, and Germans; offered instruction in English, counseling to help newcomers cope with American big-city life, child-care services for working mothers, and cultural activities for neighborhood residents

American Protective Association

an antiforeign organization created in 1887; soon claimed a million members; urged voting against Roman Catholic candidates for office and sponsored the publication of slanderous materials against immigrants

Women’s Christian Temperance Union

organized in 1874 to push for the prohibition of alcohol and lead by Frances E. Willard (also a champion of planned parenthood); another leader was Carrie A. Nation, who smashed saloon bottles and bars which brought considerable disrepute to the prohibition movement because of the violence of her one-woman crusade; the white ribbon was its symbol of purity

Ellis Island

a portal on an island in the New York Harbor through which immigrants entered America; designated as the site of the first Federal immigration station in 1890 by President Benjamin Harrison; this station was used by a majority of immigrants