Women form part of the vulnerable groups of populations because of their susceptibility as soft targets in the predominantly male-dominated society, which in itself is more patriarchal. At the turn of the century in the United States, the role of women was restricted to being wives and mothers, whose main concern should be doing house chores and raising children. They were lacking economic freedom, and education was also not an option because even wealthy families who could afford a maid considered that the wife that does not have other responsibilities is a sign of status. The industrial revolution created more jobs; hence, women were expected to be responsible only for keeping the house clean and their families fed. However, the Progressives were fighting to achieve voting rights for women with activist organizations such as NAWSA (Bystrom, 2018). After decades of bringing awareness to women’s questions, the women achieved their right to vote in 1919, which proves the effectiveness of the Progressives’ efforts.
The second minority group is African Americans. The Civil War also led to segregation; slavery existed before the Civil War, but it never got to the point where blacks were regarded as equals after the war. Individuals who used to back slavery and Southern lawmakers passed a law known as the black codes. The black codes restricted the blacks’ rights and segregated them from whites. The Industrial Revolution changed the type of jobs that African Americans were mainly assigned to do. However, it still mainly involved hard labor due to existing segregation and lack of education. The Civil Rights Movement, led by progressive organizations such as Niagara Movement, demanded social, political, and economic equality for African Americans in the United States. They designed “The Declaration of Principles” that were spread across the country among Black people (Corbett et al., 2017). Later the Niagara movement transformed into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Although the goals of the organizations were not achieved, they provided new leaders of the Civil Rights movement for African Americans, such as W. E. B. Du Bois provided the groundwork for future generations.
References
Bystrom, D. G. (2018). National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Women in the American Political System: An Encyclopedia of Women as Voters, Candidates, and Office Holders [2 volumes], 326.
Corbett, P. S., Janssen, V., Lund, J. M., Pfannestiel, T. J., Vickery, P. S., & Roberts, O. (2017). US history. OpenStax.