Sources for America’s History: Printed Page 566
Compare the views of Hughes on African American culture with the perspectives of Booker T. Washington (Document 18-3), J. B. Rayner (Document 20-4), and W. E. B. Du Bois (Document 20-6). To what extent did they agree on the means for surpassing the social, economic, and political limitations imposed by a majority white culture?
Examine Sunday’s appeal in light of longer-term cultural values of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Do you see his antialcohol crusade akin to Victorianism or an expression of progressivism, both, or neither? If you were writing a biography of Sunday, in what context would you place him?
What argument about the immigrant experience in America can you make using the evidence from the Sacco and Vanzetti trial together with Kaztauskis’s experience (Document 17-3), the Chinese Exclusion Act (Document 17-4), and Ganz’s memory of the tenements (Document 19-3)?
How do Hughes and Catt use the popular impressions of their respective groups to advocate for their betterment or recognition? What other parallels do you find between the Harlem Renaissance and the women’s rights movement?