Indian activism was sparked by attempts at assimilation through education and federal policies during the so-called Progressive Era (ca. 1890-1920). The concept of the “vanishing Red Man” provoked the founding of the Society of American Indians, an advocacy and reform group, in 1911. But even U.S. citizenship, granted to American Indians after 1924, did not protect them from coerced relocation to urban centers after World War II. However, this relocation planted the seeds for an Indian civil rights movement, and Chicago's American Indian Center became the first of its kind in 1953.
