His 270: Immigration and Ethnicity in American History, 1815 to the present
Fall 2005
Dr. McClymer (Founders 112, ext. 7278)

Description: We will pay special attention this semester to the ways specific groups defined and pursued opportunity in nineteenth and twentieth-century America. We will look at the factors in various "old countries" which impelled some to emigrate (so-called "push" factors) and at those features of the United States which made it an attractive destination ("pull" factors). We will also look at the newcomers' receptions; their efforts to develop ways of becoming, and being accepted as, "American"; their rivalries with so-called Old Stock Americans — and with each other. (At right is a portrait of a young Jewish immigrant from Russia taken at Ellis Island in the 1906 by Lewis Hine. You will have a chance to work with some of his other images later in the semester.)

Since ethnic identities and racial identities overlapped in American culture, we will pay particular attention to events where these identities came most clearly into focus. For this reason we will start the course with the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City, during which thousands of poor whites, most of them Irish immigrants, attacked African Americans as part of their protest against the most recent draft levies. Much of our focus will be upon conflict and rivalries. But we will also look at the successes both of ethnic and racial groups in creating meaningful lives for themselves and at the successes of the so-called host society in absording so many diverse peoples.

Where feasible we will draw upon materials dealing with Worcester, Massachusetts to explore these themes. We will take a broadly cultural approach and will look at a wide variety of materials, including cartoons, popular songs, movies, and advertising campaigns in addition to government reports, newspaper stories and editorials, and memoirs. Because there is such a rich array of resources available, students will normally get to choose among a variety of approaches to topics.

Films will form an important portion of the resources we will explore and will include: "Gangs of New York," "The Godfather, Part II," "The Jazz Singer," and "Betty Boop: Minnie the Moocher." Filmmakers USE history; filmgoers often TAKE movies as history. Historians sometimes CONTEST the history presented in movies. Sometimes, as with "The Jazz Singer," we see movies as MAKING history.

Format: Class meetings will be conducted as WORKSHOPS. Students will work together on the course materials. Most of these will be posted or otherwise linked to the course website, others will be on reserve in the D'Alzon Library. All participants in the course, including the instructor, are students. Our goal is to work together to gain an understanding of how the related processes of emigration, ethnic identification, and "Americanization" have worked themselves out and how they have helped shape American life.

Prerequisites: None.

Requirements: Students will post notes, due one hour before class, to the course Blackboard site, in which they will respond to questions about that day's readings. In addition they will write several short essays and book and film reviews. Each student will give several oral reports. There will be no quizzes or examinations.

Materials:
Robert Orsi, The Madonna of One Hundred & Fifteenth Street: Faith & Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950, second edition (Yale University Press, 2002)
Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: Ameican Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882 (Hill and Wang, 2004)
John F. McClymer, The Birth of Modern America, 1919-1939 (Brandywine Press, 2005)
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2002)
+ relevant web sites

Class Schedule:

The Irish, The Chinese, and "The Chinese of the Eastern States"

Aug. 29: Introduction to course and to the New York City Draft Riots. Above is the central panel from a Harper's Weekly full-page illustration of the Riots. For the entire page, click on the image. We will break into five teams and look at the riots according to the contemporary reports found at Virtual New York, and according to Harper's Weekly. All of us will read the Introduction at the Virtual New York site and the Harper's Weekly materials. The teams will divvy up the four days of the riots + the Aftermath.

Aug. 31: Choose specific segments of documents, specific images, and other materials. You will show these in class; at least one hour before class, post brief but detailed notes about what you found interesting, odd, thought-provoking, enlightening, and/or mystifying about each piece of evidence you choose. [Note: This is, as you will quickly discover, a complicated story. So, I am looking for shallow, as opposed to profound, notes. Polished explanations are neither expected nor desired.]

.
 Homes of the Rioters. Sketch by an artist known only as "JHW". (source: New York Historical Society; retouched by John McClymer) The caption reads: "On the 13th of July not a single thief was left in the Five Points.- Capt. John Jourden, 6th ward Metropolitan Police." A highly laudatory account of the police response to the riot, taken from the coverage of the New York Times is available at the Making of America site.

Sept. 2: The "Five Points" did not supply all of the rioters, although contemporary press coverage could leave that impression. The neighborhood had long epitomized the dangers of urban life and of unregulated immigration. Its continuing hold on the popular imagination is shown in Martin Scorese's 2002 film, "Gangs of New York." Before viewing it, we will examine Gregory Christiano's Where the Gangs Lived, which contains contemporary descriptions of the neighborhood, and his 1857 — A Year to Forget, which contains sources on both the police riot of that year and of the gang battle that begins Scorcese's film.We will also examine the American Social History Project's Five Points: New York's Irish Working Class in the 1850s to allow us to contextualize the primary materials. Again, we will break into teams.

Sept. 5: Labor Day Holiday


"A Dead Rabbit, Sketched from life," Frank Leslie's Illustrated, July 18, 1857

Sept. 7: Reports on Where the Gangs Lived. Choose specific segments of documents, specific images, and other materials. You will show these in class; at least one hour before class, post brief but detailed notes about what you found interesting, odd, thought-provoking, enlightening, and/or mystifying about each piece of evidence you choose.

Sept. 9: Reports on 1857 — A Year to Forget — the Police Riots and the Gang Riots

DEAD RABBITS' FIGHT WITH THE BOWERY BOYS
New York July 4 1857.
Written at Hoboken, by Saugerties Bard. Air—Jordan

They had a dreadful fight, upon last Saturday night,
The papers gave the news accordin ;
Guns, pistols, clubs and sticks, hot water and old bricks,
Which drove them on the other side of Jordan.

                            CHORUS.
    Then pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,
    For Bayard is a hard street to travel;
    So pull off the coat and roll up the sleeve,
    The Bloody Sixth is a hard ward to travel I believe.

Like wild dogs they did fight, this Fourth of July night,
Of course they laid their plans accordin ;
Some were wounded and some killed, and lots of blood spill'd,
In the fight on the other side of Jordan
    Then pull off the coat, &c.

The new Police did join the Bowery boys in line,
With orders strict and right accordin ;
Bullets, clubs and bricks did fly, and many groan and die,
Hard road to travel over Jordan.
    Then pull off the coat, &c.

When the new police did interfere, this made the Rabbits sneer,
And very much enraged them accordin ;
With bricks they did go in, determined for to win,
And drive them on the other side of Jordan.
    Then take off the coat, &c.

At last the battle closed, yet few that night reposed,
For frightful were their dreams accordin;
For the devil on two sticks was a marching on the bricks,
All night on the other side of Jordan.
    Then pull off the coat, &c.

Upon the following day they had another fray,
The Black Birds and Dead Rabbits accordin ;
The soldiers were call'd out, to quell the mighty riot
And drove them on the other side of Jordan.
    Then pull off the coat, &c.

Martin Scorcese, "Gangs of New York," will be shown in the Media Center, MC 112 on Friday, Sept. 9 at 1:30 and again on Monday, Sept. 12 at 4:00.

New York Police Chief George W. Matsell Semi-Annual Report, 1849
In connection with this report, I deem it my duty, to call the attention of your Honor to a deplorable and growing evil which exists amid this community, and which is spread over the principal business parts of the city. It is an evil and a reproach to our municipality, for which the laws and ordinances afford no adequate remedy.

I allude to the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children of both sexes, who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks, &c.; children who are growing up in ignorance and profligacy, only destined to a life of misery, shame and crime, and ultimately to a felon's doom. Their numbers are almost incredible, and to those whose business and habits do not permit them a searching scrutiny, the degrading and disgusting practices of these almost infants, in the school of vice, prostitution and rowdyism, would certainly be beyond belief. The offspring of always careless, generally intemperate and oftentimes immoral and dishonest parents, they never see the inside of a schoolroom; and so far as our excellent system of public education i[s] concerned, and which may be truly said to be the foundation stone of our free institutions, is to them an entire nullity. Left in many instances to roam day and night wherever their inclination leads them, a large proportion of these juvenile vagrants are in the daily practice of pilfering wherever opportunity offers, and begging when they cannot steal.

In addition to which the female portion of the youngest class, those who have only seen some eight or twelve summers) are addicted to immoralities of the most loathsome description; each year makes fearful additions to the ranks of these prospective recruits of infamy and sin, and from this corrupt and festering fountain flows on a ceaseless stream to our lowest brothels, to the penitentiary and the state's prison.

Reports have been made to me from the captains of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth Patrol districts, from which it appears that the enormous number of two thousand nine hundred and fifty-five children are engaged as above described in these wards alone, and of these, two-thirds are females, between eight and sixteen years of age. This estimate, I believe, to be far short of the number actually thus engaged. Astounding as it may seem, there are many hundreds of parents in this city who absolutely drive their offspring forth to practices of theft and semi-bestiality, that they themselves may live lazily on the means thus secured. Selling the very bodies and souls of those in whom their own blood circulates, for the means of dissipation and debauchery.

These embryo courtezans and felons may be divided into several classes, as follows:
First, Those who congregate around the piers, &c., where merchandize is chiefly landed. Cunning and adroit in these operations, they daily pilfer immense quantities of cotton, sugar, spirits, coffee, teas, &c, from the bales, hogsheads, casks, bags, chests, &c,, with which the wharves are generally more or less loaded, and in the absence of other articles of plunder, they wrench the knobs from the doors, steal building hardware from unfinished buildings, lead and copper pipe, and even tin roofing. They will, even with the owner or consignee looking on, cut open a coffee bag in a manner so sly and artistical, that he is forced to believe the bag burst by accident, and in a few moments some fifteen or twenty pounds are transferred from the planking of the pier to their capacious baskets or aprons. It is no uncommon thing for a hogshead of sugar to be short from fifty to one hundred pounds, through these undetected depredations; and the same system of petty abstraction prevails in regard to all exposed articles of a movable nature.

In one instance an entire bale of cotton was stolen peacemeal, by this process, and the perpetrators were only caught when they returned for the purpose of filching the bag itself.

To guard all the property exposed along our docks would require a policeman upon each pier in the lower wards, a disposition of the force which the present state of the department will in no wise warrant, and which indeed would not, in my opinion, be advisable under any circumstances.

The number of children engaged in this nefarious occupation, is estimated at seven hundred and seventy in the district enumerated. Arrests are indeed frequently made, but it is my unpleasant duty to inform your Honor, that so far as I can learn from the captains of the river districts, these juvenile rogues generally manage to escape. Parents appear in their behalf, with tears and promises of a more careful supervision in future, and the petit pilferer is released from durance, with a simple reprimand from the sitting magistrate, to return in one hour to the docks, a more confirmed thieving vagabond than ever.
...
The second class of youthful vagrants are the "crossings sweepers." They are entirely different from those first mentioned, and in regard to moral degradation, they occupy a still lower position. Clothed in rags, filthy in the extreme, both in person and in language, it is humiliating to be compelled to recognize them as a part and portion of the human family. Consisting mainly of small girls, one looks in vain for a single attribute of innocent childhood in their impertinent and persevering demands. Their shameless advances, and the lewd billingsgate [foul language] of their voices, involuntarily gives rise to the question, "What fearful fruit will the seed of sin, thus early sown, bring forth in manhood?" Citizens generally suppose that in bestowing pennies upon these children, they are performing acts of charity and of mercy. This is a mistake. Whatever may be their gains during the day, the amount is almost ever spent during the night, in visiting the galleries of the minor theatres, or in the lowest dens of drunkenness and disease which abound in the "Five Points" and its vicinity; and they oftentimes waste large sums of money, amid half-grown boys of similar stamp, in the most disgusting scenes of precocious dissipation and debauchery. The number thus engaged is estimated, in the lower districts, at about one hundred.

The third class are also sufficiently well marked to present distinctive features. They likewise, are mostly girls of tender years, and frequently neatly dressed and modest looking. Their ostensible business is the sale of fruits, socks, toothpicks, &c., and with this ruse they gain ready access to countingrooms, offices and other places, where, in the secrecy and seclusion of a turned key, they submit their persons for the miserable bribe of a few shillings, to the most loathsome and degrading familiarities.

By these practices they frequently are enabled to carry home some two or three dollars daily. And this very money, to obtain which the miserable child exchanges its present and future welfare, is eagerly grasped by the often inebriate parents, who, with the full knowledge of the sacrifice by which it was obtained, scruple not to use it; and on the morrow the girl is again sent forth upon the same disgusting errand. The captain of the eleventh patrol district, in speaking of this class of children, says, "scenes of almost nightly occurrence might, if necessary, be related, which, for vileness and deep depravity, would absolutely stagger belief."

The captain of the second patrol district says, "this class of children is, probably, the most degraded of any in the city; the others steal, but most of the girls who sell fruit, &c., at the different offices, are in the daily habit of practising the most beastly and immoral things, (and when old enough they turn out as common prostitutes,) and frequently get four or five dollars per day in this way. I have known several instances where these children have grown up, and are now living in a state of prostitution, while others are already in the hospital, and some have been sent to the prison or Blackwell's Island."
These enormities have long been known to the department, and they come to me in such an unquestionable shape, that I cannot doubt the truth of the statement.

I am aware that there are honorable exceptions to the above, and some among the hundreds, included in this third class, are in reality honest children, endeavoring to gain a living by the legitimate sale of trifles, but the majority are vicious, and only so. The number is computed in the districts named at three hundred and eighty.

The fourth class are boys; they are termed "Baggage Smashers"; they congregate around steamboat landings and railroad depots, apparently for the purpose of carrying parcels, for persons arriving in the city. A large proportion of them have no homes whatever; they will not hesitate to steal when opportunity offers, and lead idle and dissolute lives, generally sleeping in the markets, under sheds, and occasionally in cheap lodgings, but the luxury of a bed, however, they seldom indulge in. Of an average larger growth, and more experienced than the classes before mentioned, there is more method in their evil propensities and not unfrequently are small burglaries traced home to them. There are about one hundred and twenty-three thus engaged.

A fifth class consists of boys similar to those last mentioned, with this exception, they have homes, and many of them, are the children of respectable parents, but through a mistaken leniency, or a criminal carelessness, they are suffered to spend their evenings and sabbaths in small gatherings on the corners of the streets, annoying the neighborhood and passers by with their wrangling and fighting propensities, and with the most reckless oaths and blasphemies. They will often steal, and many of them absent themselves from the roof of their parents or guardians, for weeks together, sleeping in markets, wagons and other places of shelter, consorting with the vilest of both sexes, and forming habits of vice and dissipation which cling to them through all their after years.

Frequent complaints are made by citizens in regard to the practices of these juvenile rowdies, but under existing regulations, the efforts of the Police are found inadequate to the suppression of the nuisance. The number of these is estimated at between sixteen and seventeen hundred.

Besides these, there are reported to me from the above named districts, twenty-three hundred and eighty-three children that do not attend school.

In presenting these disagreeable facts for the consideration of your Honour, I trust that I may be pardoned for the suggestion in conclusion, that in my opinion some method by which these children could be compelled to attend our schools regularly, or be apprenticed to some suitable occupation, would tend in time, more to improve the morals of the community, prevent crime, and relieve the city from its onerous burthen of expenses for the Alms House and Penitentiary than any other conservative or philanthropic movement with which I am at present acquainted.
All of which is respectfully submitted, GEO. W. MATSELL, Chief of Police .
Source: Semi-Annual Report of the Chief of Police From May 1, to October 31, 1849 (New York, 1850), 58-61; 62-66.

Sept. 12: Now that we have had a chance to look both at the Irish at their worst and at anti-Irish stereotypes, it is time to take up several prior questions: What were the circumstances of Irish emigration to the U.S.? How did they live once in the U.S.? — We will start with the "Tide of Irish Emigration" and then look at the 1851 Irish Census which, the census commissioners wrote, disclosed "a remarkable diminishment"of the population. We will also look at how Americans learned of the famine and at how the Irish remembered it.

Sept. 14: Movie review due: Scorcese's film touched off a debate within the historical profession. You can get a taste of this by looking at an interview with Tyler Anbinder, author of a well-reviewed book on the Five Points, and then at Joshua Brown's "The Gang's Not All Here." Brown directed the creation of the Five Points site of the American Social History Project we used. In your review (500-600 words) discuss what you would want Scorcese to do differently and also what seeing his movie helped you understand about the materials we have been examining. Be specific. Do not imagine yourself to be Roger Ebert. Do not nominate Daniel Day Lewis for an Oscar. Keep your focus upon the film as a popular history.


Map and Key from R.K. Chin, A Journey Through Chinatown		 * The Five Points intersection.
1 The Old Brewery. It was torn down in 1852, and replaced by the Five Points Mission in 1853. The triangle across the street is Paradise Square.
2 St. Philips African Episcopal Church, destroyed in the riots of 1834.
3 African Society for Mutual Relief.
4 65 Mott St, location of the first NYC tenement in 1827.
5 Chatham Square. Used as a huge open air market up until 1820.
6 The Tombs prison, erected 1838.
7 Five Points House of Industry, built 1856.
8 The Bowery Theatre.
9 Cow Bay.
10 Mulberry Bend. It was considered one of the worst slums in NYC. The entire block was demolished in 1896 and turned into a park.
11 Bottle Alley, and (12) Bandit's Roost were two of the many alleyways inside the Mulberry Bend.
13 The Tea Water Pump was a natural spring fed well that supplied much of Manhattan with water up until the end of the 18th century. NYC would be without a reliable water supply until 1842 with the opening of the Croton Aqueduct.


Sept. 16: Discussion of "The Starvation in Ireland" and "Skibberean." We will use some of the illustrations collected by Steve Taylor for his Views of the Famine site at Vassar. Brief account of the Palm Sunday Riot in Worcester (1847).

Immigration to the U.S. by decade, 1820-1970

Years Immigrants
1820-1829 128,502
1830-1839 538,381
1840-1849 1,427,337
1850-1859 2,814,554
1860-1869 2,081,261
1870-1879 2,742,287
1880-1889 5,248,568
1890-1899 3,694,294
1900-1909 8,202,388
1910-1919 6,347,380
1920-1929 4,295,510
1930-1939 699,375
1940-1949 856,608
1950-1959 2,499,268
1960-1969 3,213,749

As the table shows, migration to the U.S. quadrupled in the 1830s, then almost tripled in the 1840s, and then doubled again in the 1850s. This represented an overall increase of over 2000%. Many of these people came from England, Scotland, and Wales and from English-speaking Canada. These migrants were virtually all Protestant. They encountered almost no hostility from native-born white Americans. Many other immigrants, as we have already seen, came from Ireland. The overwhelming majority were Catholic and a substantial percentage did NOT speak English. People from western Ireland spoke Gaelic. Another important source of immigrants was Germany (or, more accurately, the almost forty German states that existed prior to unification in 1870-71.) Many of these were also Catholic. So were the increasing numbers of French-speaking Canadians. Nativist concerns spiked early in the 1830s and then grew steadily until the early 1850s. The formation of the Native American Party, aka the Know Nothings, represented the high water mark of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiment in the nineteenth century.

Sept. 19: Introduction to the Know-Nothings in Worcester. As we have already noticed, the Irish excited at least as much horror as sympathy. This alarm at what many saw as an invasion by a horde of barbarians took political form in the Native American Party (aka Know Nothings). The Know Nothings achieved their greatest success in Massachusetts where, in 1854, they swept the state-wide races winning every office. Nowhere were they stronger than in Worcester where, in that same year, they also won every single elective office. The Know Nothings pledged themselves to secrecy concerning their membership, hence their nickname. We can get some idea of the nature of their appeal from the excerpts from their newspaper and of the scope of their victory from the election results. Discussion on 1854 election results from the Aegis and the Spy. Post brief but detailed notes about what you found interesting, odd, thought-provoking, enlightening, and/or mystifying about the election and about the Know-Nothing message as contained in the party newspaper excerpts.

History abounds in irony. Chinese immigration began shortly after the Irish. The Irish were driven from their country by famine, the Chinese from theirs by the Taiping Rebellion (c. 1850-1864) in which an estimated 20 to 30 million died and other civil disturbances. First the discovery of gold and then the building of the transcontinental railroad attracked hundreds of thousands of Chinese, overwhelmingly male, to the West Coast of the U.S. There they encountered hostility even worse than that faced by the Irish. And the Irish played a leading role in the campaign to "kick the Chinese out of California."

Sept. 21: Chinese Exclusion; respond to the questions found on the site. In examining the campaign to exclude Chinese immigration, we will focus upon California and upon the role of Irish immigrants and upon working-class radicals as well as upon that of presidential hopeful, Senator James G. Blaine (Rep., Me).

Sept. 23: "The Chinese in California" is a special presentation at the Library of Congress' "American Memory" site. Browse through one of the following galleries — Chinese and Westward Expansion; San Francisco's Chinatown Community, a World Apart; San Francisco's Chinatown, Outsiders Looking In; Anti-Chinese Movement and Chinese Exclusion; and Sentiment Concerning the Chinese, Illustrations from Periodicals — and select several pieces of evidence which deepen, complicate, and or confuse your understanding of the exclusion controversy as discussed in the Chinese Exclusion site and by Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, pp. 3-26. Submit brief but detailed notes about the ways in which your selections helped you to understand materials you've examined concerning the early Chinese experience in the U.S. and about the ways in which the materials you've examined helped you to understand your selections. We will use this exercise as a way of summing up this segment of the course.

Sept. 26: We will next turn to how anti-Chinese stereotypes infected Massachusetts. We will begin with the remarks of Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor in Report published in early 1881 that "the Canadian French are the Chinese of the Eastern States." Discussion on excerpts from The Canadian French in New England, Thirteenth Annual Report, Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor (Boston, 1882, 1883). This was the transcript of a hearing, held by the Bureau, but organized and chaired by French Canadians who had protested Wright's comments. Wright limited his role to asking questions during the hearing and writing a brief commentary which he tacked on to the transcript. We will then look at two efforts by your professor to make some sense of this.

Sept. 28: John F. McClymer, "Carroll D. Wright, L'Abbé Jean-Baptiste Primeau, and French-Canadian Families," in The Human Tradition in The Gilded Age and Progressive Era, edited by Ballard C. Campbell (Wilmington, DE, 2000), pp. 1-18, on reserve in library; discussion on Wright's and Primeau's views of French-Canadian ethnicity

OR

John F. McClymer, "Un Dimsdale Canadien: Curé and Community in Late-Nineteenth-Century Worcester," in Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts, 1860-2000, edited by Reed Ueda and Conrad Edick Wright (Boston, 2003), pp. 61-87, on reserve in library; discussion on the ambiguities of ethnicity and assimilation

New Immigrant Menaces: Radicals and "Working Girls"

Sept. 30: Introduction: Immigrants from Europe, prior to the 1880s, overwhelmingly came from northern and western Europe — Ireland, England, Germany, Scandinavia. In the 1880s, the main sources of immigration started to shift to southern and eastern Euopean regions — Italy, Poland, Russia, Greece, Syria. This coincided with a dramatic rise in labor-management conflicts. Class warfare was not a Marxist slogan but a factual description of American society, particularly in the North, Midwest, and West, from the Panic of 1873 through the great strikes of 1919. We will break up into teams and approach this via four sets of sources. We may not proceed in this precise order. Three teams will report on the Haymarket Bombing and its aftermath. Two will look at Hull House as a response to immigration and urbanization. Another will examine the work of Jacob Riis, still another that of his contemporary Lewis Hine, and the last will look into the Homestead Strike. There is far more to work with here than we can do justice to. We will simply scratch the surface.

Oct. 3: Haymarket Prologue + Act I (team one) + Haymarket Acts II and III (team two) — Carl Smith, who organized this site and wrote the text, is a pioneer in using the internet to do what he calls "serious history." An earlier effort of his, also with the sponsorship of the Chicago Historical Society, on the Great Chicago Fire, has won numerous awards.

Oct. 5: Haymarket Acts IV, V, and Epilogue (team three)

then

Oct. 7: At the same time as the Haymarket bombing and trials Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr were founding Hull House, the first settlement house in the U.S. One key source is Addams' classic, Twenty Years at Hull House, particularly Chapter XI on "Immigrants and Their Children." (team four)

Oct. 10: Columbus Day holiday

Oct. 12: Another important resource is the collection of primary materials put together by the Hull House Museum, "Urban Experience in Chicago." Of special interest are the materials on The Attractions of Cosmopolitanism in Immigrant Neighborhoods, The Intractability of Ward Politics: The Failure to Find a Constituency, Immigrants' Protective League, and Immigration and the Hull-House Response. (team five) Since these materials are so extensive, members of this team should choose several resources to concentrate on. The instructor will be happy to act as a sounding board for your choices.

Oct. 14: No class (Instructor giving a paper at a conference at Cambridge University)

then

Oct. 17: How The Other Half Lives, Jacob Riis' 1890 study of life in New York City tenements, provides another avenue into the urban immigrant experience. In addition to his books, Riis toured the country giving lectures on the general topic of urban living conditions, especially among immigrants, and reform. A good deal of the impact of his work derived from his use of photography. Riis invented photojournalism and the style we call "photo realism." At right is an illustration, based upon one of his photographs, from How The Other Half Lives. Although himself an immigrant (from Denmark), Riis often portrayed Jewish, Chinese, and other newcomers in NYC in highly stereotypical terms. Choose several chapters to review and select appropriate illustrations. Think of this as a show-and-tell execise. (team six)

Oct. 19: Another early practitioner of "photo realism," also in the service of reform, was Lewis Hine. Not as well known as Riis, Hine nonetheless did more than anyone to shape the popular notions of the immigrant experience via his many photographs taken at Ellis Island. There is a collection of these at the George Eastman House. Hine had this to say about the use of photography in the cause of reform:

Whether it be a painting or photograph, the picture is a symbol that brings one immediately into close touch with reality. In fact, it is often more effective than the reality would have been, because, in the picture, the non-essential and conflicting interests have been eliminated.

The average person believes implicitly that the photograph cannot falsify. Of course, you and I know that this unbounded faith in the integrity of the photograph is often rudely shaken, for, while photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

Hine's 1905 photograph of an Italian family searching for their luggage at Ellis Island, like his photo of the young Russian Jewish reproduced at the top of this course page and also taken at Ellis Island at about the same time, has achieved this iconic status. The faces he photographed have become, for us, the face of European immigration around the turn of the twentieth century. This was not, as his comments insist, a mere matter of sticking his camera in front of various individuals and small groups and clicking the shutter. Hine wanted us to see with his eyes. And he succeeded. Choose six or so of his photographs of immigrants and discuss what he wanted us to see in each. Be careful to attend to both specific details (the way the boy holds his younger sister's hand) and to the overall composition of the image (the way the family group is positioned in front of stacks of baggage, for example). (team seven

then

Oct. 21: The Homestead Strike of 1892 and the Attempted Assassination of Henry Clay Frick by Alexander Berkman; respond to the questions found on the site.

Oct. 24-26: Discussion of Gerstle, American Crucible, pp. 3-80 (two classes); for Oct. 24 submit notes on the Introduction and Chapter 1 on how Gerstle's discussion deepens, clarifies, and/or complicates (confuses?) your understanding of the materials you have examined. How much light do the materials shed upon Gerstle's discussion? For Oct. 26 submit notes on Chapter 2 on how Gerstle's discussion deepens, clarifies, and/or complicates (confuses?) your understanding of the materials you have examined. How much light do the materials shed upon Gerstle's discussion?

Oct. 28: Introduction to The "Uprising of the Twenty Thousand" and the Triangle Fire; we will all do this. Our goal here is to use the story as a way of pulling together the disparate threads of our separate reports on Haymarket, the Homestead Strike, and assorted reform efforts. Because we will be approaching these materials with these different stories/approaches in mind, we will likely read them in somewhat different ways. This is important for several reasons. One is to break down the notion that there is a single correct way to interpret complicated events. Another is to encourage us to share ideas AND questions.Read The International Ladies Garment Worker’s Union and the Great Revolt of 1909 by Howard Sachar

AND

The Uprising of the 20,000

Oct. 31: Discussion on primary materials found at The Uprising of the 20,000 + Pauline Newman account of working in the Triangle factory, Life in the Shop and The Cooper Union Meeting

Nov. 2: Discussion on "What Sadie Knew" in The Birth of Modern America. The "working girl" did not simply pose a problem in terms of economic exploitation; she also challenged conventional ideas about the role(s) of women and the degree of independence women could/should enjoy. One way of making sense of this is to place it within the context of what we can call the Victorian Cultural Consensus. Above is John Sloan's "The Return from Toil." Sloan was art editor of The Masses, a radical magazine of the pre-war period. Although a socialist, Sloan disappointed many who shared his politics by emphasizing the "boisterous energy" of his "working girls." Socialist realist notions would require that they visably display the effects of long hours, low pay, and other sorts of exploitation. "What Sadie Knew" looks at the immigrant "working girl" as cultural pioneer. Submit two questions provoked by your reading of "What Sadie Knew." Focus on what deepened, complicated, or confused your understanding of the immigrant "working girl" experience.


Ninth-floor work area of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory immediately after the fire. The factory occupied the eight, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building in lower Manhattan. Most of those who died worked on the ninth floor.

The following account is by a United Press Service reporter who chanced to be walking by when the Triangle Fire broke out. He telephoned in this account, which then appeared in hundreds of newspapers on March 26 and March 27, 1911.

Eyewitness at the Triangle
by William G. Shepherd

I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.
Thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead. Sixty-two thud—deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.

The first ten thud—deads shocked me. I looked up—saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must come down, and something within me—something that I didn't know was there—steeled me.

I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud--then a silent, unmoving pile of clothing and twisted, broken limbs.
As I reached the scene of the fire, a cloud of smoke hung over the building. . . . I looked up to the seventh floor. There was a living picture in each window—four screaming heads of girls waving their arms.

"Call the firemen," they screamed—scores of them. "Get a ladder," cried others. They were all as alive and whole and sound as were we who stood on the sidewalk. I couldn't help thinking of that. We cried to them not to jump. We heard the siren of a fire engine in the distance. The other sirens sounded from several directions.

"Here they come," we yelled. "Don't jump; stay there."

One girl climbed onto the window sash. Those behind her tried to hold her back. Then she dropped into space. I didn't notice whether those above watched her drop because I had turned away. Then came that first thud. I looked up, another girl was climbing onto the window sill; others were crowding behind her. She dropped. I watched her fall, and again the dreadful sound. Two windows away two girls were climbing onto the sill; they were fighting each other and crowding for air. Behind them I saw many screaming heads. They fell almost together, but I heard two distinct thuds. Then the flames burst out through the windows on the floor below them, and curled up into their faces.

The firemen began to raise a ladder. Others took out a life net and, while they were rushing to the sidewalk with it, two more girls shot down. The firemen held it under them; the bodies broke it; the grotesque simile of a dog jumping through a hoop struck me. Before they could move the net another girl's body flashed through it. The thuds were just as loud, it seemed, as if there had been no net there. It seemed to me that the thuds were so loud that they might have been heard all over the city.

I had counted ten. Then my dulled senses began to work automatically. I noticed things that it had not occurred to me before to notice. Little details that the first shock had blinded me to. I looked up to see whether those above watched those who fell. I noticed that they did; they watched them every inch of the way down and probably heard the roaring thuds that we heard.

As I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror. A young man helped a girl to the window sill. Then he held her out, deliberately away from the building and let her drop. He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl the same way and let her drop. Then he held out a third girl who did not resist. I noticed that. They were as unresisting as if her were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity. Undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames, and his was only a terrible chivalry.

Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him. Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But quick as a flash he was on the window sill himself. His coat fluttered upward—the air filled his trouser legs. I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head.

Thud—dead, thud—dead—together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best.

We found out later that, in the room in which he stood, many girls were being burned to death by the flames and were screaming in an inferno of flame and heat. He chose the easiest way and was brave enough to even help the girl he loved to a quicker death, after she had given him a goodbye kiss. He leaped with an energy as if to arrive first in that mysterious land of eternity, but her thud—dead came first.

The firemen raised the longest ladder. It reached only to the sixth floor. I saw the last girl jump at it and miss it. And then the faces disappeared from the window. But now the crowd was enormous, though all this had occurred in less than seven minutes, the start of the fire and the thuds and deaths.

I heard screams around the corner and hurried there. What I had seen before was not so terrible as what had followed. Up in the [ninth] floor girls were burning to death before our very eyes. They were jammed in the windows. No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed. But, one by one, the jams broke. Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking—flaming bodies, with disheveled hair trailing upward. They had fought each other to die by jumping instead of by fire.

The whole, sound, unharmed girls who had jumped on the other side of the building had tried to fall feet down. But these fire torches, suffering ones, fell inertly, only intent that death should come to them on the sidewalk instead of in the furnace behind them.

On the sidewalk lay heaps of broken bodies. A policeman later went about with tags, which he fastened with wires to the wrists of the dead girls, numbering each with a lead pencil, and I saw him fasten tag no. 54 to the wrist of a girl who wore an engagement ring. A fireman who came downstairs from the building told me that there were at least fifty bodies in the big room on the seventh floor. Another fireman told me that more girls had jumped down an air shaft in the rear of the building. I went back there, into the narrow court, and saw a heap of dead girls. . . .

The floods of water from the firemen's hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer.

Nov. 4: Discussion notes on News Accounts and Magazine Articles on the Fire; it is almost impossible to overstate the impact of the fire. Uncounted thousands were eyewitnesses. Millions read the newspaper accounts, not just of the fire but of the horrifying scenes at the makeshift morgue. Each day brought new details as additional bodies were identified. Parents and relatives in Russia, Austria, Italy, and elsewhere knew people who worked in the garment trades. Had their child, neice, cousin been among the dead? It would take months for them to find out for certain. Choose two or three particulars about the coverage of the fire and its aftermath which you think would haunt the imaginations of contemporaries and briefly suggest what it is about each you find so compelling.

Nov. 7: Discussion notes on Mourning and Protest; grief mixed with anger in the aftermath of the blaze, especially on the Lower East Side. The city charged Triangle owners Harris and Blanck with manslaughter.

Nov. 9: Discussion notes on New York State Investigating Commission Hearings and Reports; few held out much hope initially that the New York legislative hearings would lead to anything worthwhile. Choose two or three specific excerpts from the testimony which struck you as particularly significant and briefly suggest what it about each you find so interesting.

Eugenics, Immigration Restriction, and Popular Culture (including Education)

Nov. 11: Discussion of McClymer, The Birth of Modern America, pp. 1-55

Nov. 14: Discussion of Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, pp. 2-58

Nov. 16: Discussion of Gerstle, American Crucible, pp. 81-127

Films: "The Jazz Singer" and "Betty Boop in Minnie, the Moocher" + scenes from "Whoopee!" will be shown on campus and will be available in the Media Center for private viewing.

Nov. 18: Film reviews: Submit brief but detailed notes about the ways in which the scenes from "The Jazz Singer," "Whoopee!" and "Minnie, the Moocher" helped you to understand materials you've examined concerning the cultural battles over Americanization and Americanism and about the ways in which the materials you've examined helped you to understand the movies. Those seeking to impress the instructor should consult Joel Rosenberg, "What You Ain't Heard Yet" Prooftexts - Volume 22, Number 1+2, Winter/Spring 2002, pp. 11-54 (available in PDF format via Project Muse at Assumption Library Databases; cannot use off campus). For more on Jolson, check out Musicals 01.

Nov. 21: Discussion of McClymer, The Birth of Modern America, pp. 72-91, 129-153 + "The Americanicanization of Irving Berlin." Submit two or three questions on the ways in which popular culture was being shaped by European ethnics and African Americans even as anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism became more virulent and racism against blacks became more violent. George M. Cohan, the Irish-American composer-performer, rivaled Berlin in popularity in the first decades of the twentieth century. He too did much to codify and express American patriotism. There is a good treatment at Musicals 101.

Nov. 23-25: Thanksgiving holidays

Nov. 28: Discussion of Gerstle, American Crucible, pp. 128-186 and Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, pp. 59-80.

Nov. 30: Leonard Covello, "The Influence of Southern Italian Family Mores Upon the School Situation in America," from Covello, The Social Background of the Italo-American School Child: A Study of the Southern Italian Family Mores and their Effect on the School Situation in Italy and America (Leiden, 1967), pp. 275-327 (on reserve in Library). Submit brief but detailed notes discussing how Covello, a high school principal and an Italian immigrant, viewed Southern Italian family beliefs and practices as impeding the work of the public schools.

"The Godfather, Part II" will be shown on campus and will be available in the Media Center for private viewing.

Dec. 2: Review of Robert Orsi, The Madonna of One Hundred & Fifteenth Street: Faith & Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950 (Yale University Press, 2002) due. Reviews (up to 750 words) should focus upon the following key issues: 1) How does Orsi's treatment of the Southern Italian family build upon that of Covello? How does it differ? 2) How did "The Godfather, Part II" deepen, clarify, complicate and/or confuse your understanding of the Southern Italian family?

WORLD WAR II: RIOTS, "RELOCATION,"REVENGE, RECONCILIATION

Dec. 5: The "Zoot Suit" riots + essay on "style warfare"+ newspaper coverage. We will divide into three groups, each taking one of the three sources linked above. Submit brief but detailed notes discussing what your source(s) tell you about the riots and their causes.

Dec. 7: Under the terms of the order reprinted below, over 120,000 Japanese immigrants and their children were "relocated" from the West Coast to ten internment camps where most were held for the duration of the war.

EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 9066

FEBRUARY 19, 1942

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas, The successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense material, national defense premises and national defense utilities. . . .

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorized and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deem such action necessary or desirable to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restriction the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom. such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. . . .

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area herein above authorized to be designated. including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Department. independent establishments and other Federal Agencies. to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid. hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities and service.

. . . .

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House, February 19, 1942.


Dust storm at Manzanar Camp, photographed by Dorothea Lange

Discussion of Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, pp. 81-97; Gerstle, American Crucible, pp. 187-237; McClymer, The Birth of Modern America, pp. 182-190.

Final projects: a review/riff on Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2002). Gerstle's is a recent effort to synthesize the history of American race (and ethnic) relations in the twentieth century. He organizes his book around two sorts of nationalisms he finds prevalent in American culture. One, "civic nationalism," is broadly inclusive — for the most part. The other, "racial nationalism," is fundamentally exclusive, i.e., its adherents deny that various groups can be "real" Americans. John McClymer, The Birth of Modern America attempts to synthesize the history of the interwar period. His treatment differs from Gerstle's is several ways. One is his emphasis upon anti-Catholicism. Exclusive nationalism is not purely an issue of race, according to him. Another is his focus upon the ascendancy of European ethnics and African Americans in shaping the popular culture of the period. They provided much of the impetus for inclusive nationalism during that era, he argues. Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door offers a third way of making sense of the American debate over nationalism and nationality. He views Gerstle's exclusionary nationalism as the "old nativism" and does not see it as prefiguring later battles to the same extent as Gerstle. We have studied in considerable detail some of the topics these works take up. One is what Gerstle calls "Hardening the Boundaries of the Nation, 1917-1929." Another is "Good War, Race War, 1941-45." As a result, one way to approach this project is to assess the three authors' treatments of some aspect of this course. This entails looking at their arguments and sources, and then at your sources and your understanding of the questions at issue.

Another way to approach this project is to look at a topic we have not covered.

I will be available to discuss your projects with you on an individual basis. We will set up one appointment during the last class. You should feel free to email me or stop by the office (Founders 112) or call (ext. 7278) to talk further about your project.

Dec. 14: Final Project Due