Women in the Progressive Era: Relentless Pursuit of Liberty and Equality

“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

The exacerbation of issues that plagued America for centuries combined with the disturbing realities of urban and factory life gave birth to the Progressive Movement—a movement composed of a diverse coalition that sought to improve modern industrial society and American democracy. This period spawned many ardent American activists. Social critics such as Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, and Jane Adams advocated for wide-reaching social reform. Others targeted causes that would improve life for specific groups. Ida B. Wells and Alice Paul emerged as the leaders of two organized and passionate movements that, in many ways, defined this era. Wells launched her anti-lynching campaign in the late 1800s and Alice Paul, in the early 1900s, vowed to finish the job that her predecessors, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had begun. Although some regard these two movements as disparate, Wells’ and Paul’s radical and literary backgrounds and the tactics they employed, drove The Women’s Suffrage Movement and the campaign for racial equality closer to the finish line.

Before these women decided to take a stand against the injustice cultivated in the soil of their homeland, both Ida B. Wells and Alice Paul encountered radical ideologies during childhood. Wells, who was born a slave in 1862, grew up in a home led by a politically active mother and father who advocated for civil rights in the post Civil War era. They taught her from a very young age that she had a responsibility to alleviate the ills that plagued her community. Both of her parents, “forward-looking people,” emphasized the importance of education. Wells once wrote of her childhood, “Our job was to go to school and learn a...

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...ns. In the process of paving the way for their successors, Paul and Wells also demolished stereotypes and expectations that had inhibited women and Blacks for centuries. Wells transformed the Negro into the Afro-American and demonstrated that her people had the capacity to not only read and write, but also craft articulate arguments against injustice. Explicitly shown in her biopic, Paul and the NWP redefined femininity and showed America that women could assert themselves and use their voices without rejecting their womanhood. Both of these formidable women stood tall in a society dominated by men and bravely attacked the hypocrisy that had characterized their country for centuries. They did not attempt to overthrow the government or destroy America. They merely sought to improve her and help sculpt her into the flawless beauty that she was destined to be.