Key definitions

• Capitalism


  An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private individuals. The market determines the distribution and price of commodities. Workers sell their labour for wages, producers sell and trade for the best profit. Private ownership is a key feature.
• Jim Crow Laws


  State-based laws segregating white Americans and African Americans. To the extent of education, housing, work, transport and sexual relations
• Isolationism


  The belief that a country's interests are best served by not becoming involved in political debates concerning other countries
• Nativism


  An anti-immigration movement that favoured the right of native-born residents over those of immigrants.
• Progressives


  A group of individuals in 1910 who worked to bring change in America's political and social life. One of their main aims was to expose corruption in the political and government systems, and to address increasing social strains from rapid industrialisation and growth. They did not extend these beliefs to African American groups.
• Social darwinism


  A pseudo-science based on Darwin's theory of evolution, which emphasised the survival of the fittest in society. They argued that the weak and poor were just that because of the evolutionary scale.
• Socialism


  A belief that business, industry, service and the monetary system should be owned and controlled by the community as a whole through the government.
• White supremacist


  A person who believes that white people are more superior to all other races, and that they should have all control over others.
• Collective bargaining


  When a union representing a group of workers negotiates wages and working conditions with their employers.
• Black Codes


  Laws after slavery which placed freed slaves under white control.
• 1867 Reconstruction Act


  Established to try and rebuild the south into a labour-free economy, free slaves, establish schools and medical care. However the South continued to oppose any laws that gave black men the same rights as white men.
• Ku Klux Klan


  A secret terrorist organisation in the US that targeted African Americans, Jews and Catholics. From the 1920's, members wore distinctive white hoods and gown to hide their identity.
• Scientific Racism

  White scientist and anthropologists who drew on Darwin's theories and argued that intelligence was determined by race and evolution. These views were widely accepted as scientific fact in the US, Europe and Australia.

  The intermingling of races was seen as dangerous because it was thought that the black race could pollute and weaken the white race.
• Lynching


  A public execution without a trial which usually drew large crowds of white spectators.
• Prohibition


  Legal prevention of the manufacture, sale and transportation (not the consumption) of alcoholic beverages in the United States from 1920 to 1933 under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment.