An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

CHAPTER FOUR
BLACK AND INDIGENOUS
(INTER)NATIONALISMS DURING THE
PROGRESSIVE ERA
HISTORIAN RAYFORD LOGAN called the period from the end of Reconstruction
to the early part of the twentieth century the “nadir” because that was when
Black dehumanization was perhaps at its height after enslavement. As
Logan argues, “The plight of the Negro worsened precisely because of the
efforts made to improve it.” 1 The same can be said of Native Americans.
Native people lost their treaty relationship with the US government. The US
dispossessed them of large chunks of their land. They could not even
govern their own affairs without the United States’ say-so. This period is
known as the Progressive Era.
Historians describe the Progressive Era as the period from the 1890s
until the 1920s. It was a period of middle-class reform, increased
urbanization, and the international exchange of ideas across borders.
However, the Progressive Era was also a time riddled with contradiction,
and thus one’s circumstances during it were dramatically varied depending
on their race, class, gender, and citizenship. As historian Glenda Gilmore
asserts, “One group’s progressive reform might become another group’s
repressive burden. One group’s attempts to introduce order into society
might depend on controlling another group’s behavior.” 2 It was also a time
when the US nation-state expanded its colonial borders in an attempt to
colonize others. The things that the US nation-state learned from colonizing
its Indigenous population were applied to other countries around the world,
from Cuba to the Philippines.