Reference no: EM132267159

IDA B. WELLS FROM Southern Horrors (1892)

Study Questions

1. What did Wells mean in referring to “Afro-American Sampsons and white Delilahs”? What is her evidence for the prevalence of consensual interracial relationships? How did the white men of the South respond to her writings and claims?

2. How does Wells explain the growing frequency of lynching in the post–Civil War period? How large a part did rape charges play in these episodes? What explains this?

3. Wells says that boycott, emigration, and the press are weapons to use in the fight against lynching. Elaborate on the contributions each of these might make.

4. Explain fully Wells’s statement that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.” Why didn’t more African Americans respond violently to white oppression in the 1890s? Would a tactic of armed self-defense rather than nonviolence have more effectively promoted the cause of black civil rights through the history of the freedom struggle?

IGNATIUS DONNELLY : Populist Party Platform (1892)

Study Questions

1. According to the Populists, what is fundamentally wrong with the country? How do they propose to fix it? How is their view of the role of government a departure for a party dominated by farmers?

2. Which of the Populist proposals strike you as being most radical? Why? Which seem most moderate? Where would the Populists fit on the political spectrum today?

3. What parts of the Populist platform would most appeal to industrial workers? Why would the Populists adopt a strategy of appealing to urban as well as rural voters?

4. Was Populism’s ultimate failure primarily due to its underlying ideas, or were other factors more responsible? Explain. What does the experience of the People’s party teach about third parties in American history?

JACOB RIIS FROM How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Study Questions

1. In the first photograph, what is most significant about the living conditions depicted? What would you guess to be the occupations or the ethnicity of the men pictured?

2. What are the most revealing details of urban life captured in the second photo? What seems to be the attitude of the people photographed toward the picture taker?

3. What warning did “the man with the knife” (the subject of one of the last chapters in Riis’s book) represent to New York society? Why did Riis note that his offense occurred on Fifth Avenue? What does Riis put forward as solutions to the dangerous conditions growing in the city?

4. What ethnic stereotypes does Riis employ in describing Italians and other immigrant New Yorkers? How might Riis’s own ethnic identity be a source of his bias toward Italians especially? In what ways does he view them sympathetically?

5. Compare and contrast the social and economic divisions of Jacob Riis’s era to those of the United States in the twenty-first century. What has or has not fundamentally changed?

6. In your judgment, is it Riis’s photos or his writings that most effectively promote his objective of urban reform? To what degree did he bring different or similar skills to both these areas of his work?