The Fight for Civic Rights in America in the Progressive Era
Civic and Citizenship are terms that can and need to be defined to understand their evolution and meaning for Americans today. In particular, this is necessary for understanding the rights and duties that come from being a member in society. We can take this as our response to our membership in American society. The initial vision of what rights and duties the common citizen were allocated was a paternalistic, "limit the harm they can do" in spite of themselves approach. This was largely based on the influence of classical western attitudes, economic self interests and Revolutionary War era popular democracies. The white male elites of the Constitutional Convention allocated to the common people the rights to simply be passive and support their selected local elites. While there were some marginal changes to these civic rights for the lower classes through the late 1700s and the 1800s, it was not until the excesses of the Gilded Age (1870s-1890s) that major changes would be made to these rights and role. The Progressive Era of the late 1890s through 1920 saw a mass movement towards reform that was wildly uneven, contradictory, uncoordinated and thoroughly racist. While many concessions were made to the Progressive reformers, there were distinct limits and reactionary repression on more radical Anarchists and Socialists. Yet in spite of the unevenness and limitations, the common white American citizen undeniably emerged from the era with significant gains in new abilities to influence the decisions that influenced their lives. Today, there are new forms of disenfranchisement and much apathy and justified cynicism towards our civic affairs. But there are many examples and models of what can and must be done to hold onto and revitalize these hard won powers.