Why am I passionate about this?
I study the Gilded Age and Progressive Era because it has so many practical applications for the present. As we face our own Gilded Age of enormous technological achievements paired with ongoing problems stemming from what Bob La Follette called âthe encroachment of the powerful few upon the rights of the many,â why reinvent the wheel? What worked for progressive reformers in their struggles to create a more equitable and just society? What didnât work, and why? To help answer those questions I wrote Fighting Bob La Follette: The Righteous Reformer and Belle La Follette: Progressive Era Reformer, and co-edited A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Nancy's book list on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
Why did Nancy love this book?
To understand American race relations today, the history of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is a vital starting point. In the wake of the Reconstruction, legalized segregation formalized institutional racism. With no federal lynch law, many states and municipalities refused to prosecute lynchings, striving instead to perpetuate myths of lynching as the only appropriate response to naturally lascivious Black men who desired inherently pure and virtuous white women. This exceptional biography traces the fascinating life of journalist and womenâs suffrage advocate Ida Wells, who fearlessly fought against racism, segregation, and, especially, lynching. She was a leader in progressive era reform, despite the discrimination she endured even from many progressives due to her sex and her race.
1 author picked Ida as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Pulitzer Prize Board citation to Ida B. Wells, as an early pioneer of investigative journalism and civil rights icon
From a thinker who Maya Angelou has praised for shining âa brilliant light on the lives of women left in the shadow of history,â comes the definitive biography of Ida B. Wellsâcrusading journalist and pioneer in the fight for womenâs suffrage and against segregation and lynchings
Ida B. Wells was born into slavery and raised in the Victorian age yet emergedâthrough her fierce political battles and progressive thinkingâas the first âmodernâ black women in the nationâs history.
Wells began her activistâŚ