preview

Analyzing The Challenges Of The Progressive Period

Decent Essays

As Arkansas entered into the Progressive period, the state faced many challenges. The state endured serious economic issues and racial riots. Along with these challenges, progressives attempted to improve many things through out the state and improve the quality of living. They encountered many opportunities that allowed them to improve the state along with the challenges that they faced. The Progressive period was considered the middle class movement. At this point in time, there was a great emergence of the middle class. This class was able to live comfortably and could provide for themselves. With the emergence of the middle class, improvements to the state were able to be made. The progressives in Arkansas were able to make progress, despite their challenges, throughout the state during this period that would make way …show more content…

As whites and blacks both went to the fields and worked on plantations, racial issues arose due to the competition of jobs. Whites were afraid that the blacks were going to take their jobs. The majority of night riding, white capping, and lynching occurred during the Reconstruction era, but many highly publicized lynchings still occurred during the Progressive period. Throughout “Nightriding and Racial Cleansing in the Arkansas Valley,” the majority of the cases of night riding involved whites harming blacks because they were scared that they were attempting to steal their job from them. The whites tried everything they could to drive the blacks out of their towns and counties so the threat of them taking their jobs would vacate. In one instance, white townspeople went to a farm and took the farmers fence and posts and would not return them until he had fired or gotten rid of all the black hired hands. The color line within the state was a huge challenge that the communities of Arkansas encountered throughout the Progressive

Get Access