Teaching immigration

I: Myths of immigration “The biggest challenge in teaching the history of immigration and ethnicity, I believe, is to help students to understand the relationship of popular myths about the immigrant experience to the actual experience of immigrants in American society.” - Gary Gerstle, leading forum on teaching immigration (on “History Matters” site, 1999)

II: Going beyond Ellis Island Asian immigration in 19th century; Angel Island, Chinese and Japanese exclusion Mexican immigration in 19th/20th c French-Canadian immigration Puerto Rican migration Immigration since 1965

III: Understanding Americanization Metaphors: The Uprooted [Oscar Handlin, 1951] The Transplanted [John Bodnar, 1985] melting pot salad bowl mosaic stew

‘Official’ Americanization Schools, settlement houses, local gov’t campaigns Intensified and became more coercive during WWI

Many immigrants did not wish to become “Americanized” Did not find process quick, easy, and liberatory; often alienating and disturbing Did not become undifferentiated “Americans”

Resisting Americanization: - Italian immigrants and others resisted sending children to school - Catholic immigrants staying away from Irish-dominated churches - avoiding settlement houses, etc. - As much as a third of new immigrants did not become citizens; many intended to return

On their own terms Immigrants and children flocked to movie theatres, amusement parks, etc. Often blended Old World and New World cultures (I.e., Yiddish theatre, early movie theatres, etc). Americanized “on their own terms,” blending ethnic and American identities, using institutions they created

IV: Comparing immigrant groups or waves 18th and 19th century immigrants “new” immigrants of 1880-1920 period Post-1965 immigrants from Latin America, Caribbean, Asia

Immigration and race New immigrants of 1880-1920 period as “in-between peoples”: seen as distinct races, though considered white for naturalization purposes Slav, Hebrew, Iberic, Mediterranean seen as low on the racial hierarchy, “wretched refuse”

Who is “white”? “The number of purely white People in the World is proportionately very small...In Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians, and Swedes are generally of what we call a swarthy complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who, with the English, make the principal body of white people on the face of the earth.” Benjamin Franklin, 1751

Histories of “whiteness” 2005 1998 1991

“White, but not our kind of white” Lynching of Italian immigrants in New Orleans, 1891; Greeks vicitmized by whites in Omaha riot, 1909 Greek and Italian immigrants seen as “nonwhite” in western mining areas; in MN’s Iron Range, Greeks, Serbs, South Italians, and Croatians were “black” Italians assigned to black schools in some southern educational systems “Only hunkies” work blast furnace jobs “too damn dirty and too damn hot for a white man.”

1995 1998

Do Latinos and Asians today “pursue whiteness”? How do black immigrants today respond to racial dynamics in U.S.?

V: Immigration policy 1790: free white men eligible for citizenship Pro-immigrant consensus prevailed through 1860s

Immigration policy Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 - beginning of immigration restriction Japanese “Gentlemen’s Agreement” 1921 and 1924 immigration restriction McCarran-Walter Immigration Act 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act 1965 - repealed quota system