Segregation vs. Vice

The American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, well-known as Mark Twain named the late 19^th century the “Gilded Age”, because the period was gleam on the surface but crooked beneath. This was a period of avarice and guile: of immoral speculators, commercial pirates, shady business practices, and scandal-plagued politics. This period showed technological advance, a large immigration, and powerful political views, as well as quarrels over tariffs and political corruption. The modern America flourished with the arrival of new media: the radio, the telephone, and the phonograph; the increase of mass-circulation newspapers; the introduction of new means of transport, such as the automobile, streetcars and electric trains; the development of new sports such as basketball and football. [1]

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Lincoln, freed slaves from the yoke of the dominant slaveholders, but not on equal terms with the whites. “To a great degree, equality was simply not part of the national agenda-not in race relations or anywhere else”[2]

Segregation laws, which deprived the blacks their constitutional rights, such as Jim Crow were implemented at local and states levels. After the Plessy vs. Ferguson case, “the subsequent events would show it legally legitimated a racist state in which African Americans were systematically deprived of political, civil and social equality for decades to come” [3]

While Whites increasingly supported the idea of ​​"separate by equal", blacks increasingly demanded equality; so that, the civil rights movement or “the black freedom movement” took place to fight for what was at stake: freedom to exercise rights, such as voting, or freedom from physical coercion. The pivotal figure in the fight for equality was Dr. Martin Luter King Jr. who more than anyone else uttered the moral and cultural basis for equality in America.[4]

In Chicago, vice and corruption had its best at this time. The white slave trade was conspicuous; girls from thirteen to seventeen years old were tricked by the “false employment snare” (want ads in big-city newspapers). Being trapped in a “den of vice”, they were apprehended in debt slavery; the madam stripped of their robes and made them dress in the scanty clothes of the brothels. Men were betting on the virtue of women as betting on the speed of a horse, they also, used to put drugs in the ladies’ drink for sex. [6]

Chicago was the perfect place for gambling, prostitutes and pimps, thieves, swindlers, and dopers; brothels lined Wells Street-the origin of the biggest red-light region in United States history; the sex trade even had its own newspaper [7]
Following,"The Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in America history" [8]

Click on the following link to know more about Everleigh club:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everleigh_Club

Prostitution and vice were prevailing trends at this time, but did not have a great impact on American culture as it was racism and segregation. This period of American history impacted its culture since it marked the starting point for the struggle of Americans for what they know is right. Blacks, who expected more than freedom of the Emancipation Proclamation, found racism and segregation. Struggles demanding equality finally bore fruit: equal rights regardless of skin color or race.

 

 

[1] www.digitalhistory.uh.edu
 

[2] Jim Cullen, The American Dream (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003),116.

 

[3] Cullen, 106.

 

[4] Cullen, 110.

 

[5] Karen Abbott, Sin In The Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, And The Battle For America’s Soul (New York: Random House, Inc., 2008) 65.

[6] Abbott, 49.

[7] Abbott, 10.

[8] Abbott, cover.