In this course, we will explore the struggles and triumph "inbetween peoples" after Reconstruction and before WWII.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
-Thomas Jefferson
This statement from the Declaration of Independence was intended to be one of the defining characteristics of the United States of America. Or was it? Mr. Jefferson himself was a slave-owner, as were many of his contemporaries. He penned those careful [...]
At the turn of the 20th century, “Americans” were in desperate need to categorize people based on race and ethnicity. They wished to protect and maintain the purity of the nation by instituting quotas that would limit the number of immigrants entering the country while also increasing the percentage of natives. Americans and immigrants [...]
Mae Ngai’s article explores the mostly unsuccessful attempts of the American government, specifically Joseph Hill and his Immigration Quota Board, to create a categorical form of reference with which Congress and Herbert Hoover could control the seemingly uncontrollable flux of immigrants which had begun in the late 19th century and had continued until the mid-1920’s. [...]
In his book Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, David Roediger examines the unique process of Americanization for immigrants coming to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. These immigrants, generally from Southern and Eastern Europe, had to define themselves as American through more [...]