The “Welfare Rights State” and the “Civil Rights State”: Policy Paradox and State Building in the Progressive Era

1993 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen L. McDonagh
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Governing System ◽  
National Perspective ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
The New Deal

An enduring contribution of the new institutionalism is its affirmation of the significance of the Progressive era. As a result, we have learned not only how the “big bang” explosion of welfare legislation in the New Deal rests upon structures and precedents set in the early twentieth-century decades, but also how this early reform period continues to influence contemporary policies and politics. Alan Dawley, Bruce Ackerman, and Morton Keller, for example, point to an activist state established in the Progressive era to check a laissez-faire governing system as the foundation of subsequent New Deal accomplishments upon which reformers built “where progressives had left off.” Theda Skocpol adds a cross-national perspective, showing how the American welfare state instituted in the early twentieth century evidenced a distinctive “maternalist” dynamic oriented toward addressing women's economic needs, in contrast to “paternalistic” norms in Western European nations assisting male workers.

Working with the New Deal from Colorado, 1933–1934

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Muncy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Rocky Mountain ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
National Government ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The New Deal ◽  
The U.S

This chapter details events in Josephine Roche's life from 1933 to 1934. Roche's experience at Rocky Mountain Fuel primed her for the New Deal. As Franklin Roosevelt's administration began to grapple in 1933 with the devastation caused by the Great Depression, Roche was asked to serve in several capacities. Early on, the most important was in the National Recovery Administration, an attempt to stabilize the U.S. economy through industry-wide economic planning. Shortly after that, Roche broke through yet another gender barrier by running for governor of Colorado. She took this bold step because the sitting state executive refused to cooperate with the relief programs of the New Deal, and Roche wanted Colorado effectively linked with the national government. She did not succeed, but her gubernatorial bid was nevertheless significant. It demonstrated both the centralizing force that Washington exerted through the New Deal and some of the bases for resistance. It also drew a direct line between progressivism in the early twentieth century and progressivism in the New Deal, highlighting a range of tactics for diminishing inequality that New Dealers brought straight from the Progressive Era into the 1930s.

Look Away! Dixie’s Landed!

2018 ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Nina Silber
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The New Deal

The pro-Confederate Lost Cause memory of the Civil War continued to have considerable staying power during the 1930s, seen most notably in the popularity of the book and film versions of Gone With the Wind. At the same time, the Lost Cause was adapted to fit the sensibilities of this era. Many white Americans, for example, were drawn to the suffering of Civil War era white southerners in light of the economic trials of the 30s. Conservatives also doubled-down on the Lost Cause narrative as they pushed back against aspects of the New Deal agenda, as well as a reawakened civil rights movement and anti-lynching campaign. Finally, conservatives adapted the Lost Cause story to target Northern radicals and communists as the same kind of agitators who punished white southerners during Reconstruction. Black activists and communists tried to expose the racist and unpatriotic underpinnings of the Lost Cause but often fell short.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Nina Silber
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
State Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Central Objective ◽  
Familial Influences ◽  
The New Deal

This introduction lays out the book’s central objective: to explore why Americans returned to the Civil War throughout the New Deal years. The Civil War offered a prism for exploring the emotional upheaval people experienced in light of the Depression; the political debates that swirled around the state-building initiatives of the New Deal; and struggles over race and civil rights. Also explored here is the evolution of this book, including personal and familial influences on the author.

1900–1915

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Barbara Barksdale Clowse
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Rural Families ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us

Bradley emphasized prevention with patients because curing diseases remained problematic in early twentieth century medicine. The zeitgeist of the Progressive Era boded well for expanding health care in urban areas, but the doctor worried about rural families, especially in Appalachia. She closed her Atlanta office in 1915 and became a rural field doctor for the US Children’s Bureau.

How Texas Turned Red

2020 ◽  
pp. 90-108
Author(s):  
Kenneth P. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
The South ◽  
Dormant State ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explains how Texas came to align with the Republican Party. Texas is now the essential Republican state, but for most of its history it was part of the solid Democratic South. In the mid-twentieth century, the Texas Democratic Party divided into liberal and conservative factions—partly over race and civil rights but also over a range of questions including New Deal economic policies and anti-communism. Texas Democrats engaged in what V. O. Key called the most intense intraparty fight of any state in the South. The long-dormant state Republican Party began to revive in the 1960s as many Texans became alienated from a national Democratic Party that was shifting to the left. Republican gains produced a period of balanced two-party competition that lasted from the 1970s through the 1990s. By the early 2000s, the GOP established dominance, making Texas the nation’s largest and most powerful Republican state.

Nine The Fall of the Original Ninth Amendment and the Rise of New Deal Constitutionalism

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lash Kurt T
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
Present Discussion ◽  
Ninth Amendment ◽  
The New Deal

This chapter begins with a fairly exhaustive account of the use of the Ninth Amendment in state and federal courts prior to the New Deal. There is nothing new here in terms of theory: one finds the same analysis of the Ninth Amendment already developed in prior chapters repeated over and over again in state and federal courts throughout the Progressive era. There is a purpose, however, to including this history. One of the most durable myths about the Ninth Amendment is that it attracted little attention prior to the modern Supreme Court's discovery of the Ninth in Griswold v. Connecticut. The present discussion puts this myth permanently to rest. The second half of the chapter helps explain how the myth arose in the first place.

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