The right to vote is a particularly compelling way to examine the goals and successes of progressive reform, while at the same time highlighting the ambiguity of that success. Women, after years of struggle, gained the vote during the Progressive Era. Their activism, while working toward for laudable goal, occasionally used and reinforced American racism, xenophobia, and religious bias to further their ends by claiming that women needed to vote to counteract other growing elements in American society. At the same time, the racist biases of the American people came into sharper relief as African-Americans increasingly were denied the right to vote and segregation grew through Jim Crow laws.
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