Social Equality In The United States

Reconstruction ended well after 1877 marking the first of a pair of attempts at social equality in the US. It is bookended by the only good war that the US has been involved in that allowed the US to explode on to the world stage as a super power that is only now in its later years of dominance. In the nearly sixty-five years between the years of 1877 and 1945 the United States underwent dynamic changes in many respects. Its social framework for many of its citizens and immigrants changed radically, both in the roles that they functioned with in society but also in the changes to their political incorporation and disenfranchisement. Economically the United States was equally striking in its changes where the differences in the roles that …show more content…
The role of women in the end of the 19th century was exemplified by the so called ‘farm women’ of the territorial west who sought to settle under the auspices of the Homestead Act in the decades following the end of the Civil War. Women were expected to bear much of the burden of domestic labor at the home, the bearing and education of children, and caretaking of livestock. This is in stark contrast to the height of the Second World War in which the eponymous Rosie the Riveter campaign celebrated by Hollywood and the national media, the value of women in society who were able to step up to fill the role of men in a time of need. Although the right to vote had been extended to African American men in 1870, it did not allow women of any race to vote leaving them to remain disenfranchised from the political system. This wouldn’t change until nearly fifty years later when the Nineteenth Amendment, which allowed women to vote was ratified. Moving from a politically disenfranchised second citizen in 1877, to a star in popular culture for her contributions to society, women have undergone clear changes in their social roles in …show more content…
However, when taken in its entirety, the differences in the state of the union between those eras is striking. Women’s roles in society would continue to improve but still find inequality today. The roles of government, industry and labor change constantly and seek a balance in keeping with the forces of organized labor and the military industrial complex as a function of the world economy. US foreign policy becomes ever more entangled with foreign interests against the better judgement of isolationists from the post Reconstruction era. The US will continue to change and the retrospective look at the six decades from the end of Reconstruction to the end of the Second War suggests that the US will continue to change for years to