Building Modern America Lecture

0:02 Hello class. Uh we're going to start our exploration of America at the turn of the 20th century. So, America at this time was rife with contradictions. On the one hand, uh we have economic growth that expanded prosperity, but on the other hand, we have great income inequality and this huge gap between the rich and the poor. We also have the rise of progressive reform movements coupled with increasing acts of racial and ethnic violence. We're going to start by discussing the historic background of this time, and as we do that, we're going to explore the following questions. How was America changing at the turn of the 20th century? What issues are Americans facing as our country becomes more urban, industrialized, and modern? And how do

0:49 women and people of color experience the new modern America? So, take a look at these two photos. Um they're representative of the great divide in America at the turn of the 20th century. On the left is Cornelius Vanderbilt's mansion on 5th Avenue. Uh Vanderbilt amassed his for- fortune through um the railroad and shipping industries, and his mansion occupied an entire city block. It featured very lavish, very ostentatious design elements. On the right, we have an image of an immigrant family during the same period living in a New York City tenement. Um tenement housing is a type of apartment style housing where a building is usually repurposed to fit as many

1:34 occupants as possible. They were known for severe overcrowding, lack of indoor plumbing, there were horrible fire hazards, so people were um heating each individual apartment usually with um coal heat, which um if you have a hot coal that falls out of the fireplace, you're going to light the entire building on fire. They also lacked proper ventilation, so they were extremely unsanitary, especially in times of sickness. So, this era of extremes is called the Gilded Age. The ostentation of wealthy businessmen was in stark contrast to the extreme poverty of their workers. 19th century America looks prosperous on the surface, but underneath the thin veneer of gold lies serious problems.

2:21 Um innovation and the growth of industries like steel, oil, electricity, railroads, mass production of goods, these um really helped the standard of living for the middle class and upper class. Um but they created massive wealth for the very few. Some of these few were Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie. Um immigration at this time provided workers for these industries, but there were few or even no safety nets for things like housing, sanitation, workplace safety, or to prevent crime. So, how is this inaccurate ideal, um this Gilded Age, exposed to the general public? The answer is investigative journalism.

3:07 At the time, there was this controversy uh surrounding whether these journalists were really doing any good or if they were just looking for ways to sell newspapers. So, some people thought these journalists were like vultures that were preying on the evils of society, and they coined the term muckraking. So, muckraking is the practice of investigative journalism um of searching for and exposing corruption in politics and business. I'm going to read you this quote from uh President Teddy Roosevelt from a 1906 speech. In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, you may recall the description of the man with the muckrake, the man who could look no way but downward with the muckrake in his hands, who was offered a celestial crown for his muckrake, but who could neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to

3:52 himself the filth of the floor. Pilgrim's Progress was a very popular allegorical Christian novel that describes the fate of people who um either choose to live good Christian lives versus those that choose not to. Um Roosevelt here is criticizing journalists for choosing to only see the negative, but the irony of this is that Roosevelt would later change his mind um and he would decide to view this kind of journalism positively and instead support reform movements. The Gilded Age was um a time of extreme political corruption where local mob bosses used bribery to control the vote in many major cities. The Tammany Hall scandal is one of the most famous examples of this. Tammany Hall began as a uh service to

4:39 help immigrants, most mostly Irish immigrants, find jobs and housing. In [snorts] exchange, their votes would then support Tammany candidates. What this did was then create really powerful political networks. Um under their leader, William Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall um forged contractor bills. Uh one of these was for the construction of the New York County Courthouse, and then would pocket the extra money. Um a really great example of muckraking is Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly. He used cartoons like the one on the left to expose Tweed's abuse of immigrant communities and the lack of government oversight. Uh muckraking was famously used to explore the unsafe and unsanitary

5:25 housing conditions um for the poor in major cities. Jacob Riis, um who wrote for the New York Evening Sun, spent 3 years researching, documenting, and photographing conditions in tenement neighborhoods in New York City. Here are a couple quotes from his book, How the Other Half Lives. "Half a dozen blocks up Mulberry Street, there's a rag picker's settlement, a sort of overflow from the band that exists today in all its pristine nastiness. Something like 40 families are packed into five old two-story and attic houses that were built to hold five. And out in the yards, additional crowds are or were until very recently accommodated in sheds built of all sorts of old boards and used as drying racks.

6:11 In a room not 13 ft either way, swept slept 12 men and women. Two or three in bunks set in a sort of alcove, the rest on the floor. A kerosene lamp burned dimly in the fearful atmosphere, probably to guide other and later arrivals to their beds, for it was only just past midnight. A baby's fretful wail came from an adjoining hall room where, in the semi-darkness, three recumbent figures could be made out. Muckrakers also exposed unsafe working conditions in factories. Uh so, a really famous example of this is Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, which is a fictional novel that's based on Sinclair's research um on the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Uh it follows the character Jurgis, who is a Lithuanian immigrant. Um and he and his

6:59 family are viciously exploited by the American meatpacking industry. Uh Sinclair initially intended his book as this scathing criticism of capitalism, poverty, the exploitation of workers. Um But what what ultimately ended up happening was that audiences were more concerned with how it affected them directly. They were more um disgusted by unsanitary factory conditions. These conditions um made it such that um meats that were unfit for human consumption were being sort of sanitized to make them look appealing and then shipped across the United States and sold in markets. Um So, what what this resulted in was the

7:45 passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. Eventually, these would evolve into the modern Food and Drug Administration. So, um there was a very important result from the publication of his book. It was just not the result that Sinclair ultimately hoped for and he was a bit disappointed that the audiences really only cared about how um the negative aspects of this industry affected them personally. And here's a quote from The Jungle. All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making 23 instead of 22 and 1/2 cents an hour. And then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice

8:31 as efficient as those of any other country. If we're the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage earners to this pitch of frenzy. So, what this quote is telling us is that on the one hand, you have a worker who is so deeply exploited by the system that they're willing to work harder, work longer hours, put their own safety aside just to make half a cent more per hour. Um and on the other side, we see the captains of these industries um sort of joking about how amazing they are because they're able to get their workers to work so hard in this way. Um Women were also active as muckraking

9:18 journalists. Uh we have Ida Tarbell, who wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. She was a pioneering investigative journalist who exposed the unfair, ruthless business practices of Standard Oil, which was then one of the most powerful corporations in the United States. Um she helped turn public opinion against monopolies and contributed to the 1911 Supreme Court decision that broke Standard Oil into dozens of smaller companies under an antitrust law. Mr. Rockefeller secured an alliance with the railroads to drive out rivals. For 15 years he received rebates of varying amounts on least the greater part of his shipments and for at least a portion of that time he collected drawbacks of the oil other people shipped. At the same

10:04 time he worked with the railroads to prevent other people getting oil to manufacture or if they got it he worked with the railroads to prevent the shipment of the product. If it reached a dealer he did his utmost to bully or wheedle him to countermand his order. If he failed in that he undersold until the dealer losing on his purchase was glad enough to buy thereafter of Mr. Rockefeller. So this quote is demonstrating how Rockefeller was able to create a monopoly with the Standard Oil Company so that smaller businesses would be driven out. So all of this muckraking muckraking helped stir public opinion toward reform. Um, this is known as the progressive movement and it resulted in

10:51 several positive regulations. So there was the regulation of big business, antitrust laws broke up those monopolies like the one of the Standard Oil Company. And it created more government oversight of major corporations. It improved working conditions. So workplace safety laws, the 8-hour work day and weekends off and child labor laws. So if it weren't for the um, progressive movement uh, we might still be working six or seven days a week. Uh, we might be working 12 or 14-hour work days. Fighting political corruption. So secret ballots. Um, prior to this time when you went to the polls to vote, um, your ballot wasn't necessarily kept secret from the people that were standing behind you in line. Anybody could see

11:37 who you were voting for. >> [snorts] >> There's also the 17th Amendment, which was direct election of senators. Then there's social reform, uh public health measures, improvement of tenement conditions. Over time there were several different um laws passed to improve tenement conditions, improve ventilation, uh requiring windows to be in um every room, requiring um adequate places to dis- dispose of garbage. And then there was consumer protection. So, the book The Jungle helped create the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. The Progressive Movement was also concerned with the health of society as a whole, and it was largely enacted by women who felt that effective government

12:24 regulation of humanity's worst tendencies could make America a safer place for all, especially um for children and the family. Um in the 19th century, women became increasingly concerned with um alcohol abuse as a threat to families. There was poverty, domestic violence, and abandonment of families. Uh there were groups that arose like the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Uh they organized to discourage the use of alcohol. And the important thing about the temperance movement is how it brought women into politics publicly for the first time in America. Uh it led many women to view direct political participation as imperative for social reform.

13:10 The uh industrialization of America really changed women's roles in society. We see more women working outside the home as nurses, factory workers, teachers, and office workers. Um this meant that women were politically visible for the first time, especially in progressiveist organizations. Um the opposition to feminism uh assumed that the votes of husbands and fathers represented the entire family. Um but issues like temperance where women are looking at uh men making poor decisions for their families that's resulting in the destitution of women and children. Um these types of things made it really clear that women's voices needed to be heard separately from men's voices.

13:56 While um first-wave feminists and suffragettes um did advocate for underprivileged women or women of the the poorest classes of society uh what we see is that educated middle and upper-class women had the most visible voices. Now, when we discuss the vast inequalities of the early 20th century in America it's very important that we talk about issues of race and racism toward African Americans. Um remember that this is only around 40 years after the Civil War and the end of slavery. People at this time were alive who had once been slaves or whose parents had been slaves. People who had once owned slaves were still alive.

14:42 Um we also have to consider that freedom from slavery did not just immediately solve issues of racism and inequality. Um as a little refresher, after the Civil War the US government sought to rebuild the South's infrastructure and define the rights of formerly enslaved African Americans. We have the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery in 1865. The 14th Amendment which granted citizenship and equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment prohibited denying voting rights based on race. White Southerners then resisted this by passing black codes. Forced um these forced African Americans into low-wage labor and it limited their property ownership and voting rights. This is also the time in which the Ku Klux Klan used violence to suppress the

15:29 political and civil rights of black Americans. After the US military pulled out of the South in the 1870s, um white southern southerners called redeemers uh regained political control. Southern states then passed what's known as Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation. They required separate schools, separate bathrooms, railroad cars, restaurants, hotels. Um we have the landmark case Plessy versus Ferguson in 1896. Um Homer Plessy, who was a black man, he deliberately sat in a whites-only rail car and was arrested. The Supreme Court um ended up deciding in favor of upholding the Jim Crow law that stated

16:14 that Plessy should have only sat in a colored-only car. These laws would end up standing for nearly 60 years, um and separate was really never equal. White establishments were always nicer, newer, cleaner. Um many times there was no establishment at all for blacks. Blacks were also systematically disenfranchised by things like poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, and intimidation or violence. Um even though African Americans had been given the right to vote, what white legislators were doing everything in their power to ensure that they really couldn't exercise that vote. Um literacy tests, as an example, were deliberately confusing, and they had nothing to do with whether the individual could effectively vote or

17:00 not. So I'm going to play a clip from the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. The first half of the film depicts the Civil War, while the second half focuses on the Reconstruction period. It portrays Reconstruction um as a period of chaos in which the newly enfranchised African-Americans pose a genuine threat to white southerners. Um, the end of the film represents, uh, the Ku Klux Klan as these heroic saviors that restore order in the South. Um, unfortunately, this film was one of the earliest blockbuster films and it's, um, popularity directly contributed to the revival of the Ku Klux Klan,

17:46 uh, which ended up arising much larger and more powerful than it had been in the original reconstruction period. The scene we're going to watch, um, depicts a meeting of, um, a southern government body where African-Americans are portrayed as having, um, been unfairly given seats in this legislature, um, being incompetent and uncivilized. Well, I'm having an issue playing the video. Hold on a moment, students.

18:49 All right, we're back. Let me go ahead and play the clip for you guys.

21:25 >> All right. Hopefully you guys get the idea. Let's get back to the presentation. I don't know what that is. Okay. So, The Birth of a Nation is really just one example of how deeply entrenched and widespread racist depictions of African-Americans were at the time. Uh one of the most popular forms of entertainment um at the time was vaudeville, which is sort of a a local or traveling variety show that would have several short pieces with singing,

22:11 dancing, and comedy skits. It's kind of like an old-timey Saturday Night Live, um but the problem with vaudeville was the use of blackface um as you can see on the left. Um where actors um white actors dressed up as racist caricatures of African-Americans and performed in skits that um lampooned black culture. These extremely racist depictions were often part of what's called a minstrel show, which combined music and comedy skits together. Um these used either blackface or actual African-American performers, um but the intention is to entertain white audiences with race racial stereotypes. Another um unfortunate development at

22:57 the time was the rise of scientific racism and eugenics. So, scientific racism is the pseudo-scientific belief in a biological hierarchy of races based on perceived intelligence or civilizational achievement. Um for example, this society um built huge cathedrals and this society um lived in small little handmade huts. Um so, that means that the society that could build uh a cathedral is automatically better, more intelligent, and more worthy. Eugenics was the belief that society could be improved by encouraging reproduction among people deemed fit and discouraging reproduction or even sterilizing those who were deemed unfit.

23:43 Um this could include people of color, um marginalized ethnic groups, those living in poverty, the disabled, um the mentally ill. So, now that we've got a basis for understanding the history and the context of the early 20th century, um I'm going to move on to a discussion of the ways in which artistic culture responded to modern America. How are artists and writers responding to modernity? How is art and literature used to communicate the feelings, attitudes, and needs of modern Americans including women, immigrants, and black Americans? And how does art promote social reform? I'm going to begin by giving you something to compare everything to.

24:30 American art of the 20th century was largely a reaction to the most popular art movement that came before it, romanticism. So, romanticism is an 18th and 19th century movement in Western Europe um with historical, literary, or mythological subjects. It emphasizes emotion over reason. So, artists want to invoke feelings of wonder, fear, passion, patriotism, or even melancholy. There's um an emphasis on this concept called the sublime. This in the sublime nature is this mysterious vast awe-inspiring thing that's terrifying in its magnitude. Think of the word awful. It means full of awe. And we've we've kind of changed out the word awful to

25:15 mean something bad these days, but what it what it meant at that that time is something that induces awe to the point that you're terrified at how large it is and how small you are. And then it also featured dramatic composition. This is contrast of light and shadow and vivid use of color. We're going to go through several different artworks and I don't need you to memorize all of these artworks. What I'm hoping is that as we look at several representative examples of a movement, you'll start to understand how art changed as we enter into the modern period. Before exams, I will give you a study guide that will detail which artworks and movements you'll really need to commit to memory to do well on the exam. So on the left here we have Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog.

26:02 It shows this romantic fascination with nature, emotion, and the concept of the sublime. The figure in the center is shown conquering the natural world, standing on a precipice where he's perceived as either equal to or above nature. On the right we have the painting The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up by J. M. W. Turner. The HMS Temeraire is an old sailing ship which is being towed to a shipyard to be dismantled. So by putting these two images together, it's juxtaposing this elegant sailing ship with this sort of dark squat tugboat that's polluting into the air. The idea is that we're romanticizing the

26:48 past and the passing of this old age of sail um and we're putting it into a comparison with the modern industrial age. All right, on the left we have John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott. So, this is a good example of how romantic artists drew from mythological subjects. So, it takes its subject from uh Lord Tennyson's poem of the same name, which was in turn drawn from Arthurian legend. So, like the Knights of the Round Table, um and the story of Lady Elaine, who has unrequited love for uh Lancelot. And then on the right we have Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. Um Delacroix is presenting an ideal-

27:34 idealized image of the French Revolution. He's making it more mythology than reality. Um Lady Liberty is presented as this real figure, um who is actually fighting alongside the common people. The first major reaction to Romanticism is the Hudson River School. So, from the 1830s to the 1870s, American artists were inspired to um basically put their own spin on the European romantic movement. >> [snorts] >> Um what they did was depict these grand American landscapes, so forests, mountains, rivers, waterfalls. It has this sense of national pride in that they're celebrating the unique landscapes of the United States. They also invoke this sense of the sublime, this feeling of um awesome

28:21 wonder or awfulness, um and they use dramatic color, light, and shadow. Here's a couple of examples. The Oxbow and Among the Sierra Nevada are both showing how the American version of Romanticism is moving a little more toward realism in depicting these very real landscapes, but emphasizing their majesty. We get a full reaction to romanticism with the art movement American realism. So first we need to know a little bit about what realist art is. Realist art is a rejection of the idealization and dramatization of romanticism. They want to depict nature as it really is using observation and accuracy. It's not so much about majesty anymore.

29:08 They want to depict modern life as it actually exists. Um they depict the ordinary and the mundane. Things that people didn't really think were um were uh deserving subjects of depiction in art. This is Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic. The gross here doesn't mean like nasty, it rather it's the name of the surgeon, um the guy with the sort of bald head and white hair in the center there, um who runs the clinic. His name's Dr. Samuel D. Gross. Um at this time surgery was not something that painters of earlier times would have thought of as a suitable subject for art. Um Eakins is pushing the boundaries of what counts as art and depicting something that's very modern, very

29:54 scientific. Next we're going to look at a couple of paintings by Henry Ossawa Tanner. So Tanner's an African-American artist who celebrated the everyday lives of common people. Um The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor um are both showing African-Americans engaging in normal daily activities. They provide this slice of American life. Um these are also subjects that romantic art would not thought um would not have thought of as as worth painting or a worthy subject of art. Art to um romantic artists needed to be lofty. It needed to feel like an important moment that stands outside of time. Um and art for American realists was about what is

30:40 happening right now. And next we have Mary Cassatt, which is showing um the everyday lives of mothers, um giving us a woman's perspective on American realism. Like Tanner, the subject she chose would not have been originally thought of as worthy of art. Okay, so we're going to take everything one step further by exploring the Ashcan School. Um the Ashcan School decided to focus on the realities of American urban life. This means crowded streets, the struggles of poverty, immigrant neighborhoods tenements. Um what they were emphasizing was social honesty over objective beauty.

31:26 Um one of the things that we might notice about the earlier American realists is that they are still um idealizing something. They're choosing these quiet, intimate moments to depict, things that we might think of as beautiful, a tender moment between um a father and son or a mother and a child. Um what the Ashcan School was was doing was fully rebelling against any of those strict, conservative policies of the National Academy of Design, who had told them, "Art needs to be beautiful." Um it earned its name when the Academy critics called their work the art of the Ashcan. Um Ashcan at that time would have meant like garbage can. It's just like garbage art. It doesn't depict anything worthy of art. It's not beautiful. Um we're first going to take a look at an

32:11 example by George Bellows called the the Cliff Dwellers. Um as you can see, this painting doesn't really have anything that's traditionally beautiful about it. I'm going to read this critique of the painting from um Henry McBride for the New York Sun to give you an idea um of how this painting was received at the time. "Can New York really be like that in summer? The dreadful people crowding the street like naked urchins, the vendors of unhygienic lollipops, the battalion of mothers nursing their infants near the footlights, where you have to see them, the streetcar clanging its mad way through the throng, the gentlemen on the fire escapes doing their toilets, and the housewives hanging out their wash. Can anything in Bedlam or Hogarth's prints equal this? Uh just for your reference, Bedlam was a

32:59 notoriously inhumane insane asylum in London. Um and Hogarth's prints refers to these engravings that were made by the artist William Hogarth who depicted crowded and unsanitary conditions in London in the 18th century. To those um who would have seen this painting but were unfamiliar with tenement neighborhoods in New York City, this image would have been shocking. Um and they could only really find ways to compare it by thinking of the conditions of people in um pre-industrial cities. To them it was unthinkable that in a modern industrial city people would have been living like this. And then we've got John Sloan's The Hairdresser's Window. This is another example of depicting unglamorous, not

33:45 traditionally beautiful scenes. Um it emphasizes energy and activity with all of these people walking by below the window. Um and it emphasizes the growing importance of commercial storefronts to the American um experience of the city. All right. So now we're going to turn to some poetry and literature of the early 1900s. The poetry and literature of this time was critical of social inequalities. It commented on the new wealth industrialization brought. And um those who were oppressed because of their class status, their race, or their gender began to use literature as a way to raise their voices in protest. We're going to start with Edwin

34:30 Arlington Robinson's Richard Cory. I want you to read the poem and as you read, pay attention to the following. How does Robinson critique the Gilded Age and its um and reveal its social issues? How does the poem challenge the idea that appearance reveals the truth about an individual? And how does the poem challenge the idea of the American dream? So, if you have not yet read the poem, this is your chance to pause the video, read the poem, and come back and then we will discuss some of the answers to these questions. All right, so here are some things to remember about Richard Cory. Robinson's central idea is that wealth doesn't make you happy. Um the working class are impressed by Cory's outward appearance, um but he

35:16 ends up so miserable that he ends his own life. And despite the realization that wealth doesn't make you happy, the working class still feel stuck toiling endlessly for their wealthy bosses. So, what is what is this doing? It's posing the question, does industrial capitalism make anyone happy? Next, we're going to read um Kate Chopin's The Awakening. As you read the excerpts, consider the following questions. How did the social expectations of the 19th and early 20th century shape how women viewed themselves? How does Edna move towards self-actualization? Is this process markedly different for women? How does Chopin critique the limitations

36:01 placed on women? And then finally, compare The Awakening to Mary Cassatt's artworks. Um the excerpts that you're about to read um have been pulled from a a full-length novel that follows Edna Pontellier. She's a middle-class American woman who is slowly having these realizations about her place as a woman in society. On the outside, Edna has everything that should make her happy. She has a loving husband, she has two beautiful children, she has a nice home, and she doesn't need to work. But, um she realizes that she really doesn't know who she is or what she truly wants out of life. Society has always told Edna where her place was and what kind of person a good woman should be. And ultimately, she decides to embark on

36:47 a journey of self-actualization. She wants to figure out who she is and what she really wants out of life. Now, here are the things to remember about the the Awakening. Many women in the early 1900s felt very limited by the restraints of gender roles. Women were often barred from any kind of independence and freedom. Their role was defined for them early on. They should marry, raise children, and that's pretty much it. Um Edna has started to question this role, and her swim in the ocean is demonstrating her first step toward independence. Women at this time were not taught how to how to swim. It was an activity for men and boys. Mary Cassatt's paintings emphasize the beauty of motherhood. So, if we compare

37:33 them to the Awakening, um we see a woman painting women doing everyday things was not common at this time. Um it's showing two sides of the problem. On the one hand, uh women need visibility and respect for their role. So, Mary Cassatt's paintings are trying to make these house housewives and mothers visible. But then on the other hand, women want the freedom to shape their own lives. They don't want to have to be just a housewife or a mother if that's not something that makes them feel, um actualized. All right, finally, we are going to read W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois is one of the most important and influential black American

38:19 civil rights activists and writers of the early 20th century. Um, his last name is French like Du Bois, but it's pronounced in this uniquely American way, Du Bois, Du Bois. The uh Souls of Black Folk explores the experience of being black in America. Read the excerpted chapter and consider these questions. What does Du Bois mean by double consciousness? Do you think you've ever experienced this? How does Du Bois use the veil as a symbol? And why does Du Bois feel that there is a conflict between being both American and black? So, the concept of double consciousness, Du Bois is describing the experience of seeing oneself through one's own eyes

39:05 while also constantly being aware of how you're viewed and judged by a racist society. This creates this sense of twoness. So, being both black and American while living in a society that often treats those identities as conflicting or unequal. The idea of the veil is this invisible barrier that separates whites from blacks. It prevents genuine understanding from one group to the other. It's essentially saying that a white person can never really understand how a black person feels being black in a racist society. And the question that Du Bois Du Bois is constantly asked is how does it feel to be a problem? This is that silent question that he feels that all white people are asking

39:52 of him. Du Bois incorporates music into his writing to emphasize its importance on a true understanding of the African-American experience. Black spirituals are religious songs originally created by enslaved African-Americans. They blend Christian themes and biblical stories with African music traditions um, something called call and response which is where a leader calls out a line and then a group sings a predetermined response. Um, these songs express faith, suffering, hope, the desire for freedom, um, biblical stories like Exodus, which details the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt, resonated very

40:37 powerfully, um, with the experience of enslaved people and continue to resonate, um, in the era after slavery in which freedom was essentially conditional. It existed alongside institutionalized racism. Spirituals would become one of the most influential foundations, um, for later African-American musical traditions and that includes gospel, blues and jazz. Um, the black spirituals are really the foundation upon which we can learn, um, more about how American music evolved in the 20th century. So, as you listen to the the playlist of black spirituals, consider these two questions. How did black spirituals emphasize the goals of social equality? What connections can you find between Du

41:22 Bois's essay and the music of black Americans? All right, you made it through. Here's some final thoughts. So, who benefits from industrialization and who suffers as a result? Can you see ways in which, um, some Americans are benefiting so greatly from the new industrial landscape and other Americans are, um, severely suffering from issues such as income inequality and protection under the law? How did awareness of social inequality shape art and literature? How does the art and literature of the 20th century demonstrate new explorations of the self? And then finally, how did journalism, art and literature contribute to the achievement of progressive goals?

42:10 Okay, so remember to take quiz number two. Um quiz number two is going to cover readings from Robinson, Chopin, and Du Bois. Um and there will also be um a question on Riis's How the Other Half Lives. So, make sure you will listening carefully to the lecture. I will see you all next time.