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Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)
Founded in 1874, this organization advocated for the prohibition of alcohol, using women's supposedly greater purity and morality as a rallying point. Advocates of prohibition in the United States found common cause with activists elsewhere, especially in Britain, and in the 1880s they founded the World Women's Christian Temperance Union, which sent missionaries around the world to spread the gospel of temperance. -
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were laws created by white southerners to enforce racial segregation across the South. -
National American Woman’s Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed in 1890 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). -
Anti-Saloon League
The most successful political action group that forced the prohibition issue into the forefront of state and local elections and pioneered the strategy of the single-issue pressure group. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson is a key Supreme Court case in U.S. history. It shaped racial policy in the United States for over half a century by upholding the legality of racial segregation. -
New York Tenement House Law
This law established model housing code for safety and sanitation, this included the minimum size and window requirements, the requirement of one full bathroom for every two families, indoor plumbing, and set up the Tenement House Department to perform inspections. -
National Child Labor Committee
This committee was founded in 1904. They collected evidence to document the hardships faced by child laborers. This committee was know for hiring a photographer named Lewis Hines to photograph children working in their labor environments. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
This act regulated production of scale food and medicines. This prevented poisonous or spoiled products from being sold and formed Food and Drug Administration (FDA). -
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair's novel that inspired pro-consumer federal laws regulating meat, food, and drugs. -
Meat Inspection Act
This act authorized federal inspection of meat products. It states meat sources must be inspected before and after the death, and set sanitary standards at slaughterhouses and processing plants. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
A Industrial disaster, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for safer and better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry; located in the Asch Building. -
The National Woman's Party (NWP)
An American women's organization formed in 1916 as an outgrowth of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which had been formed in 1913 by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to fight for women's suffrage. -
17th Amendment
This amendment stablished that senators were to be elected directly. This law was intended to create a more democratic, fair society. -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 was a statute enacted by the U.S. Congress which sought to address the evils of child labor by prohibiting the sale in interstate commerce of goods manufactured by children in the United States, thus giving an expanded importance to the constitutional clause giving Congress the task of regulating interstate commerce. -
The 19th Amendment
This amendment extended the right to vote to women in federal or state elections. Though Congress passed the amendment in 1919, it was ratified in 1920.
