Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
A Republican president turned populist
The Gilded Age
The late 19th century was a time of electrification, railroads, and industrialization, with people moving from the farms to the cities. It was the Gilded Age, and the public felt the system wasn't working for them.
The Progressive Era
The Progressive Era that followed was one of the most dynamic periods in American history. The country passed antitrust laws, set up the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission, and broadened the vote to women by 1920.
The Jim Crow era
The same era also went backward on race. The country installed the Jim Crow era.
How did Roosevelt take on the trusts?
In 1902 Roosevelt's administration sued the Northern Securities Company, a giant railroad holding company formed by J.P. Morgan and others. The Supreme Court ruled in 1904 that it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered it dissolved. The case earned Roosevelt the nickname trust buster. His administration went on to file dozens of antitrust suits.
How did women win the vote by 1920?
Wyoming Territory gave women the vote in 1869, and several Western states followed over the next decades. A national campaign by groups such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association pushed for a constitutional amendment. Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919, and it was ratified in August 1920 when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.
How did Jim Crow spread during an era of reform?
The Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld racial segregation under the doctrine of separate but equal. Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, and other rules to keep Black citizens from voting. Mississippi rewrote its constitution in 1890 to include many of these measures, and other states copied its approach. Federal troops had left the South in 1877, and Congress did not pass a major civil rights law for decades.