Daily Life in the Gilded Age

1. Daily Life in the Gilded Age Chapter 17 Section 1 Angela Brown

2. Education • End of the Civil War ½ of white children attended free public schools. • High school diploma the exception • 1870 2% of 17 year olds graduated from high school – few went to college • 1900 – 31 states had laws requiring children ages 8-14 to attend school. • 1910 – 60% U.S. children attended school with more than a million students in high school.

3. Immigrants and Education • Many immigrants placed a high value on U.S. public education. • One of the most important functions of public schools was to teach literacy. • Literacy Skills – the ability to read and write • Public school played a role in assimilating immigrants to the American way of life.

4. Assimilation – the process by which people of one culture become part of another. • Teachers taught thrift, patriotism and hard work. • Fearing Americanization, many immigrants sent their children to religious schools where they could learn their own cultural traditions in their native language. • As immigrants shared customs and habits from their own homelands, they enriched their new country and helped to redefine American culture.

5. Uneven Support for Schools: • Schools for African Americans received far less money than white schools. • Mexican American in parts of the Southwest and California were segregated and less funded. • 1900, a small percentage of Native American children were receiving any formal schooling.

6. Higher Education Expands • 1880-1900 more than 250 new American colleges and universities opened. • Rockefeller $40 million to University of Chicago. • 1890s average annual incomes just under a thousand dollars. • Few could afford college. • 1915 some middle income families to college. • The availability of advanced education would distinguish the U.S. from other industrialized nations.

7. Women in Higher Education • Educators and philanthropists established private women’s colleges with high academic standards. • 1865 Vassar College, NY • Under pressure to admit women, some men’s colleges founded separate institutions for women.

8. 1873 Cornwell and Boston University welcomed women as students and professors. • 1879 Harvard in Massachusetts established Radcliffe. • 1886 Tulane University in Louisiana established Sophie Newcomb College. • 1889 Columbia in NY opened Barnard.

9. 1891 Brown in Rhode Island started Pembroke. • Coed universities – Oberlin, Knox, Antioch, Swarthmore, and Bates existed before the Civil War. • Most scholarships went to men, if they could afford college parents feared college made daughters too independent or “unmarriageable” = unacceptable friends.

10. African Americans and Higher Education • Had to fight prejudice • Oberlin, Bates, Bowdoin accepted African Americans • 1890 – 160 African Americans attending white colleges. • African American Colleges: Fisk, Atlanta; Hampton Institute and Howard founded through American Missionary Association.

11. 1856 Wilberforce University in Ohio - nation’s oldest African American school • 1900 – 2,000 students had graduation from 34 African American schools • African American colleges accepted both women and men however it has been estimated that 30 black women were in college in 1891.

12. Booker T. Washington • 1856 born into slavery • 1872 attended Hampton Institute in Virginia. • Founded Tuskegee Institute in 1881. • Taught skills and attitudes to help succeed in life – put aside desire for political equality.

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14. Booker T. Washington • Focused on economic security by gaining vocational skills. • Win white acceptance eventually by succeeding economically • Relieved fears of white’s who thought education would call for more equality within society.

15. Booker T. Washington • Washington was consulted by whites on race relations. • T. Roosevelt invited him to the White House in 1901. • Autobiography, Up From Slavery 1901 classic

16. W.E.B. DuBois • Graduated Fisk University • 1895 first African American to earn a Ph.D from Harvard. • Taught at Atlanta University. • 1905 help found Niagara Movement. • A group of African Americans called for full civil liberties, an end to racial discrimination, and recognition of Human brotherhood.

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18. W.E.B. DuBois • DuBois argued the brightest African Americans had to lead their people in a quest for political and social equality and civil rights. • Urged advanced liberal arts education rather than vocational like Washington. • Rejected Washington’s message = Atlanta Compromise

19. 1910 became publications director for NAACP. • (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) • Be proud of African and American heritage he stressed. • Wrote, The Souls of Black Folk