1. Immigration

2. Answer on your paper: What is immigration in your own words?
Why do you think immigrants would have come in the late 1800s-early 1900s?
What do you think the reaction was of people already in America?
What were the challenges that immigrants faced?
What do you think immigrant’s journey was like in the early 1900s?
What are the immigrant stories in your family?

3. The New Colossus BY EMMA LAZARUS
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Where have you seen lines from this poem before?
What do you think this poem is about?
How does this poem make you feel about being an American?
When do you think it was written?

4. When you look at the following image….
What do you think

6. Backlash against Immigrants
Nativism - the belief that native-born Americans are superior to foreigners
Know Nothing Party – a nativist political group that got the nickname from the New York Times
Named for their unwillingness to talk about their party’s activities, saying “I know nothing”
Called themselves the “Native American Party”
Why would this be ironic to modern students of US history?

7. Social Darwinism
The belief that white, wealthy, Anglo-Saxon Americans were biologically superior to other groups
The misapplication of biological evolutionary language of Charles Darwin to politics, economics, and society
Social Darwinists embraced laissez-faire capitalism and racism.
Believed that government should not interfere in the “survival of the fittest” by helping the poor and promoted the idea that some races were biologically superior to others
Eugenics- a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of the human race
Fitter Family Competitions – at state fairs, families would be judged on their health, quantity of children, heritage, and appearance.
What other things do we judge like this? _____________________________

8. A history of Racism

9. Chinese Immigrants and the Chinese Exclusion Act
During the Civil War, the north passed laws that helped industry, because the Southern representatives couldn’t block them
Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act of 1863: the government would give railroad companies free land and loan them money to build the transcontinental railroad. Afterward, the railroad companies were supposed to sell the land on both sides of the track and pay back the government but they never did that.
Two companies competed to get the most land and money: Union Pacific (built tracks from East to West) and Central Pacific (built tracks from West to East).
On May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific railway met the Union Pacific Railway in Promontory Point, Utah, marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad.
Two groups who were discriminated against, the Irish and the Chinese, found jobs constructing the Railroad.
The Chinese built from the Pacific towards the interior, using explosives to blast through mountains to form tunnels.

10. Golden Spike Ceremony at Promontory Point, Utah, 1869

11. ET- Answer the following questions on a sheet of paper
ET- Answer the following questions on a sheet of paper. Turn it in before you leave. These are USCIS questions
What do we call the first ten amendments?
How many US Senators are there?
How old do citizens have to be to vote for President?
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
Name one US Territory.
Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
Name two national US Holidays.
How many justices are on the Supreme Court?