Chapter 18 - The Victorians Make the Modern, 1880-1917

Question 1

Thomas Edison

Answer 1

independent inventor of the lightbulb and phonograph; earned praise from Americans everywhere

Question 2

John Muir

Answer 2

early American advocate of preservation of wilderness

Question 3

Booker T. Washington

Answer 3

African American leader of civil rights activism

Question 4

Frances Willard

Answer 4

leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

Question 5

Ida B. Wells

Answer 5

African American advocate of women’s suffrage and civil rights for blacks

Question 6

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

Answer 6

American author who became a bitter critic of America’s idea of “progress” (he was anti-slavery, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, etc.)

Question 7

Billy Sunday

Answer 7

American fundamentalist minister

Question 8

P.T. Barnum

Answer 8

showman who used the America’s expanding rail network to develop the traveling circus

Question 9

Alexander Graham Bell

Answer 9

inventor of the telephone

Question 10

Plessy v. Ferguson

Answer 10

upheld constitutionality of segregation laws - “separate but equal”

Question 11

Young Men’s Christian Association

Answer 11

promoter of athletic fitness in response to the rise of office work

Question 12

Negro Leagues

Answer 12

all-black baseball leagues formed by black players and fans who were excluded from white leagues

Question 13

Sierra Club

Answer 13

organization founded by John Muir that was dedicated to preserving America’s mountains

Question 14

National Park Service

Answer 14

federal agency that provided comprehensive oversight of the growing national park system

Question 15

National Audubon Society

Answer 15

national organization formed to advocate for broader government protections for wildlife

Question 16

Antiquities Act of 1906

Answer 16

enabled U.S. presidents to set aside “objects of historic and scientific interest” as national monuments

Question 17

Comstock Act (1873)

Answer 17

prohibited circulation of almost any information about sex and birth control

Question 18

liberal arts

Answer 18

form of education pioneered at Harvard in which students chose from a range of electives and developed skills in research, critical thinking, and leadership

Question 19

Atlanta Compromise

Answer 19

1895 speech by Booker T. Washington urging whites and African Americans to work together for the progress of all (misinterpreted by whites to be pro-segregation)

Question 20

maternalism

Answer 20

philosophy between domesticity and modern arguments for equality - the woman’s place is the home, and home is the community

Question 21

Women’s Christian Temperance Union

Answer 21

anti-alcohol women’s group

Question 22

National Association of Colored Women

Answer 22

organization founded by African American women for community support

Question 23

National American Woman Suffrage Association

Answer 23

union of the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association; advocated for women’s right to vote until national ratification of suffrage in 1920

Question 24

feminism

Answer 24

women’s full political, economic, and social equality

Question 25

natural selection

Answer 25

theory that genetic mutations that are suitable for a species’s environment become dominant in future generations

Question 26

Social Darwinism

Answer 26

the application of the principle of natural selection to human society

Question 27

eugenics

Answer 27

science of human breeding - many eugenicists argued that only the “best” quality humans should be allowed to reproduce

Question 28

realism

Answer 28

literary movement the grew as an effort to reject romanticism

Question 29

naturalism

Answer 29

literary movement suggesting that humans were only blind victims of forces beyond their control (not shapers of their own destinies)

Question 30

modernism

Answer 30

literary movement that rejected traditional canons of literary taste

Question 31

American Protective Association

Answer 31

anti-Catholic political organization of militant Protestants

Question 32

Social Gospel

Answer 32

movement to renew religious faith through dedication to public welfare and social justice

Question 33

fundamentalism

Answer 33

Protestant movement that rejected modernism and historical interpretations of scripture and asserted the literal truth of the Bible