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Lara Fitzgerald Subject: U.S. History Grade Level: 11 Topic: U.S. Immigration Essential Questions: Why do we move from place to place? What should we keep from our past, and what should we throw away to assimilate into a new environment? How do we define an American? General Objectives: Virginia Standards of Learning VUS.8 The student will demonstrate knowledge of how the nation grew and changed from the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century by a) explaining the relationship among territorial expansion, westward movement of the population, new immigration, growth of cities, and the admission of new states to the Union VUS.14 The student will demonstrate knowledge of economic, social, cultural, and political developments in the contemporary United States by a) analyzing the effects of increased participation of women in the labor force; b) analyzing how changing patterns of immigration affect the diversity of the United States population, the reasons new immigrants choose to come to this country, and their contributions to contemporary America; General Objectives: NCSS Standards I. Culture d. compare and analyze societal patterns for preserving and transmitting culture while adapting to environmental or social change; e. demonstrate the value of cultural diversity, as well as cohesion, within and across groups; Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to describe the reasons for persons to immigrate to the U.S. during the past 150 years. Students will be able to compare problems and prejudices against persons immigrating to the U.S. at different periods of time. Students will be able to discuss how people choose what aspects of their native culture to keep and which to disregard in order to assimilate to a new culture. Students will be able to express views about how people of different cultures can co-exist in contemporary society. Assessment: Following an introduction of the idea of the U.S. as a salad bowl and/or a melting pot, students will first be assessed on their creation of another image for the United States. They will be split into partners, and each SET of partners will be responsible for one image with an explanation of that image and how it represents the United States as a community of people. There will be a rubric to evaluate each pair’s image that will measure students’ creativity, explanation of image and connection to U.S., and overall neatness/organization. After students have had a sufficient amount of time to complete the assignment, volunteers will be asked to share their images and interpretations. Students will be assessed on preparation and participation in a simulation involving immigrants to the United States. Each student will be assigned to a group (preferably no more than 3-4 in one group). Students may choose which group as long as groups are chosen by interest not by persons in the group. This will be done prior to this class. When students come to class, they will have time reserved in the computer lab to look at two specific websites for information on their specific immigrant group. If the computer lab is unavailable, students will be able to read physical copies of articles from “Immigrants… The Changing Face of America” from the Library of Congress online collection. Students will then be asked to present their information as if they were representatives of an organization of current American citizens from that background. This part of the lesson will occur over two class periods (computer lab for research within this lesson and presentations during the next class period). Students will be assessed on their conduct in the lab and within their groups, their reading preparation, and their presentation (graded by a class evaluation and a teacher evaluation using the same rubric). Students will be asked to write a narrative about moving to a new place. They will be asked to describe how they feel about the move and assimilating to a new culture. They will also be asked to discuss what about their own family traditions (whether culturally related or not) they would bring with them and which they would sacrifice (if any) in order to more easily assimilate to culture. The narrative will be peer-reviewed and revised in a future class. As a final quick assessment, students will be asked to describe (on an index card) one new thing they learned about a specific immigrant group or immigration in general that they did not know before. They will also be asked to write down anything they are still interested in covering more in depth. Content Outline: *students will be constructing most of the content themselves, but here is a timeline of immigration to the U.S. shortened from one provided by the Library of Congress online collection, “Immigration… Changing the Face of America”. 1786 The U.S. establishes first Native American reservation and policy of dealing with each tribe as an independent nation. Native American 1790 The federal government requires two years of residency for naturalization All Groups 1808 Congress bans importation of slaves. African American 1816 The American Colonization Society forms—assists in repatriating free African African American Americans to a Liberian colony on the west coast of Africa. 1819 Congress establishes reporting on immigration. All Groups 1830 Congress passes the Removal Act, forcing Native Americans to settle in Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River. Native American 1838 Cherokee Indians forced on thousand-mile march to the established Indian Territory. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees die on this “Trail of Tears.” Native American 1845 Potato crop fails in Ireland sparking the Potato Famine which kills one million Irish and prompts almost 500,000 to immigrate to America over the next five years. The Mexican-American War ends: U.S. acquires additional territory and people Mexican under its jurisdiction. 1848 1849 The California Gold Rush sparks first mass immigration from China. Chinese 1860 Poland’s religious and economic conditions prompt immigration of approximately two million Poles by 1914. Polish & Russian 1864 Congress legalizes the importation of contract laborers. 1868 The 14th Amendment of the Constitution endows African Americans with citizenship. African American Japanese laborers arrive in Hawaii to work in sugar cane fields. Japanese 1876 California Senate committee investigates the “social, moral, and political effect Chinese of Chinese immigration.” 1877 United States Congress investigates the criminal influence of Chinese immigrants. Chinese 1880 Italy’s troubled economy, crop failures, and political climate begin the start of mass immigration with nearly four million Italian immigrants arriving in the United States. Italian 1882 Russia’s May Laws severely restrict the ability of Jewish citizens to live and work in Russia. The country’s instability prompts more than three million Russians to immigrate to the United States over three decades. Polish & Russian The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspends immigration of Chinese laborers under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. Chinese 1887 The Dawes Act dissolves many Indian reservations in United States. Native American 1900 Congress establishes a civil government in Puerto Rico and the Jones Act grants U.S. citizenship to island inhabitants. U.S. citizens can travel freely between the mainland and the island without a passport. Cuban & Puerto Rican 1907 The United States and Japan form a “Gentleman’s Agreement” in which Japan ends issuance of passports to laborers and the U.S. agrees not to prohibit Japanese immigration. 1911 The Dillingham Commission identifies Mexican laborers as the best solution to the Southwest labor shortage. Mexicans are exempted from immigrant “head taxes” set in 1903 and 1907. Mexican 1913 California’s Alien Land Law rules that aliens “ineligible to citizenship” were ineligible to own agricultural property. Japanese 1915 The Supreme Court rules in Ozawa v. United States that first-generation Japanese are ineligible for citizenship and cannot apply for naturalization. Japanese 1917 The U.S. enters World War I and anti-German sentiment swells at home. The names of schools, foods, streets, towns, and even some families, are changed to sound less Germanic. German 1924 Immigration Act of 1924 establishes fixed quotas of national origin and Japanese eliminates Far East immigration. President Calvin Coolidge signs a bill granting Native Americans full citizenship. Native American 1929 Congress makes annual immigration quotas permanent. 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, authorizing the building of “relocation camps” for Japanese Americans living along the Pacific Coast. Japanese Congress allows for importation of agricultural workers from within North, Central, and South America. The Bracero Program allows Mexican laborers to work in the U.S. Mexican 1943 The Magnuson Act of 1943 repeals the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, establishes quotas for Chinese immigrants, and makes them eligible for U.S. citizenship. Chinese 1945 The War Bride Act and the G.I. Fiancées Act allows immigration of foreign-born Chinese wives, fiancé(e)s, husbands, and children of U.S. armed forces personnel. The United States admits persons fleeing persecution in their native lands; allowing 205,000 refugees to enter within two years. 1950 Bureau of Indian Affairs terminates federal services for Native Americans in lieu Native American of state supervision. 1952 The Immigration and Nationality Act allows individuals of all races to be eligible for naturalization. The act also reaffirms national origins quota system, limits immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere while leaving the Western Hemisphere unrestricted, establishes preferences for skilled workers and relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens; and tightens security and screening standards and procedures. The Bureau of Indian Affairs begins selling 1.6 million acres of Native American Native American land to developers. 1953 Congress amends the 1948 refugee policy to allow for the admission of 200,000 more refugees. 1959 Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution prompts mass exodus of more than 200,000 people within three years. Cuban & Puerto Rican 1961 The Cuban Refugee Program handles influx of immigrants to Miami with 300,000 immigrants relocated across the U.S. during the next two decades. Cuban & Puerto Rican 1965 The Immigration Act of 1965 abolishes quota system in favor of quota systems Chinese with 20,000 immigrants per country limits. Preference is given to immediate families of immigrants and skilled workers. The Bracero Program ends after temporarily employing almost 4.5 million Mexican nationals. Mexican 1966 The Cuban Refugee Act permits more than 400,000 people to enter the United Cuban & Puerto States. Rican 1980 The Refugee Act redefines criteria and procedures for admitting refugees. 1986 The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legalizes illegal aliens residing in the U.S. unlawfully since 1982. 1988 The Civil Liberties Act provides compensation of $20,000 and a presidential apology to all Japanese-American survivors of the World War II internment camps. Japanese 90 minute lesson: Teacher Activity Student Activity Introductory Hook [5-10 min]: The instructor will begin by reciting a poem by Walt Whitman… “You, Whoever You Are You, whoever you are!... All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! All you of centuries hence when you listen to me! All you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same! Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent! Each of us is inevitable, Each of us is limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. Students will be asked to react to the poem, and interpret for themselves what Walt Whitman is trying to say with the poem. The instructor will ask for volunteers to give their answers. If the instructor does not get a sufficient number of volunteers, students can talk to a partner first. Walt Whitman Melting Pot or Salad Bowl? [15 min]: The instructor will introduce the concept of images of the U.S. as a melting pot of cultures mixed into one and/or a salad bowl as a diverse group of different cultures. The instructor will then instruct students to split into partners. In partners, students will be asked to construct one image per set of partners of the U.S. and how cultures are represented within the country. There are minimal guidelines. Students must have a visual image and an explanation of how that image depicts American culture. After students have been given the chance to construct an image, each partner will be asked to share their image and explanation. This assignment will be graded simply for completion. Immigration Project [30 min]: The instructor will ask students to get into their groups (if they are not already sitting with their groups) and take the students over to the computer lab to look at two specific websites on U.S. immigration. If the computer lab is unavailable physical copies of articles about In their groups either at the computer lab or in the classroom with their articles, the groups will pull out important and interesting information on the assigned immigrant group and produce a written outline of that information. A rubric will be provided, so specific immigrant groups from the “Immigration… The Changing Face of America” presentation from the Library of Congress’ online collections. The students have a rubric and are only assigned to look at two specific websites, so the instructor will want to monitor the students to make sure they are on task (and not on random internet sites). students have a guideline of what information is needed and what is expected for the outline and presentation. *After 30 minutes, students will stop. They will have time to put everything together and present during the next class period. Immigrant Narrative [30 min]: The instructor will take the first 5 minutes to explain this assignment to the students. Students will have 20 minutes to write about a personal experience moving or a fictional account of what an immigrant might feel like in a new place. After 20 minutes, the instructor will ask 3 or 4 students to volunteer to summarize their narratives. This is designed to be a reflective, notebook assignment. Students will be asked to write a personal narrative as if they were an immigrant arriving at a new place (The student may choose where they are from and the new place). They may use a real story if they have actually moved, but they must still explain the differences in places and what traits, traditions, and aspects of their culture they wanted to keep and what they needed to give up to “fit in”. There is no required length for the narrative, but the student must thoroughly describe a new situation, what they had to give up, and what they kept. Exit Card [5 min]: The instructor will hand out index cards for each student. Two questions will be written on an overhead. The instructor must collect one index card from each student before they leave. Each student will be asked to write down one new thing they learned about the specific immigrant group that they researched (or immigration in general) and what they may like to learn more about. *After presentations, students will be asked to fill out another exit card describing an immigrant group that was presented by a different group. Materials Needed for Lesson: Computer lab (hard copies of articles if computer lab not available), overhead projector, overheads Differentiation: This lesson differentiates for students by providing them with a variety of activities on an individual, small group, and whole class level. Students will not be doing much intensive reading individually. The “hook” taps into students’ emotional and linguistic abilities, and gives students the chance to participate in discussion. The immigrant project allows students to work in small groups and organize information according to their group strengths. The narrative gives students a chance to work individually and tap into their personal stories. Students are interacting with the content the majority of the lesson with little straight lecture. Students present the information to each other and get exposure to major themes a number of times. Subject Matter Integration: This lesson is not necessarily a lesson that fits within a specific unit (chronologically). Ideally, I will teach this topic a number of times throughout the course, since immigration becomes an influential issue a number of times in U.S. history. I would probably teach this lesson later on during the semester when the students have a good grasp on the class atmosphere and can take a large amount of responsibility for their learning (since there is minimal teacher instruction). This lesson fits within a unit looking at the U.S. during the turn of the 19th century with the first large scale restrictions on immigrants to the United States. However, the essential questions come up consistently throughout history, and they may want to be referred back to a number of times. Reflections on Lesson Plan: This lesson plan requires a lot of responsibility and effort on the part of the students, particularly because there is little instructor interference (if the lesson goes well). I realize that these activities ask a lot of students using their time efficiently and being able to switch gears a number of times within one class period. Again, I wouldn’t teach a lesson resembling this one until I had a firm grasp on my students and they were comfortable with each other and the class atmosphere. Additional Resources: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/introduction3.html (articles on different immigrant groups located at this site) http://www.pbs.org/destinationamerica/ Immigration Project: Rubric Group Cooperation Participation, group interaction Research Depth Background paragraph on group’s journey to U.S., when largest numbers came, personal accounts, culture Written Outline Organization, useful information Physical Presentation Planning, group participation, structure 1 Does not participate in group research or presentation 2 Participates with group at certain times and small if any part in presentation 3 Interacts well with group and takes an equal part in presentation Provides little background and/or information on immigrant group Provides background history of group with little to some additional information Provides concise, but thorough background of group’s journey to U.S. with reference to personal accounts and/or culture No overall organization and little useful information Organizational Sketch with some useful information, but little detail Easily Identifiable organizational structure with detailed information Little Planning or Group effort, hard to follow Somewhat planned, most of group participated, and at times hard to follow Well planned with full group participation and easy to follow Russia and Eastern European Immigrants Article Introduction The story of immigration from the Russian Empire is almost too complex to tell. In the 19th century, Russia was the largest country in the world—it reached from the Baltic to the Pacific, and covered substantial portions of both Europe and Asia. The population of the Empire was extremely diverse and included the peoples of dozens of conquered nations— Belarussians and Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Bukharans, Uzbeks and Azerbaijanis. Issues of national identity were rarely clear. Borders were uncertain, the census was unreliable, and many of the subjugated nations clung to their own group identities, refusing to call themselves Russians. The Russian Empire in 1890 To learn more about the ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire, visit The Empire That Was Russia. By the end of the 19th century, this vast country was on the verge of an era of tumultuous change and suffered from overpopulation, widespread famines and political unrest. Many of the Empire’s peoples found it impossible to stay any longer and joined the great worldwide migration of the last decades of the century. Within a few decades, the Empire would be overthrown in a socialist revolution, then torn apart by years of war. Three of the groups to join the exodus were the Russians, the Poles and the Jewish people of Eastern Europe. All three groups took different paths, but their journeys would soon bring them to America. Russian Beginnings The first Russians to come to U.S. territory didn’t even have to leave Russia to do so. In the 18th century, Russian explorers traveling east from Siberia discovered Alaska and claimed it as a possession of their emperor, or czar. The Aleutian island of Kodiak became the first Russian settlement in 1784, and traders and fur hunters founded trading posts throughout the territory. Eventually, Russia’s possessions ranged far down the Pacific coast, reaching all the way to Fort Ross in California, a mere 100 miles north of San Francisco. The czar never planned to hold onto Alaska and sold the territory to the Sitka, Alaska in 1827 U.S. in 1867. Russian cultural influences persisted long afterwards however. The Russian Orthodox religion had arrived with the first traders, and missionaries continued to found primary schools and seminaries for generations to come. Many Native Aleuts and Eskimos converted to the new faith, and Russian Orthodox churches can still be found in Alaska today. Struggling to Leave Home The next great wave of emigration from the Russian Empire came in the late 19th century—but the Russians were barely included in it. In the 1880s, the Russian countryside was strained by severe land shortages. Facing poverty and starvation, farmers and peasants from across the Empire sought a brighter future overseas, and millions set sail for the United States. Ethnic Russians, however, could not share in this hope; the imperial government barred them from leaving the country. Over the next few decades, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Lithuanians, and Poles arrived at Ellis Island by the hundreds of thousands. Russians, however, made the journey only a few at a time, and only by braving many hazards. The U.S. census of 1910 found only 65,000 Russians in the country. Russian farm children in Colorado The Russians who did make the journey formed small communities and took work where they could find it. Some took advantage of the Homestead Act and headed west to found new family farms on the seemingly endless American plains. A number of pacifist sects, such as the Dukhobors and Molokans, settled in California and Oregon, where they maintained their traditional practices—and distinctive music—well into the 21st century. Many Russians went to work in the growing industries of the 19th century, toiling in the mines, mills, and sweatshops of the East Coast and Great Lakes. To hear music and speeches from the Russian Molokan community, visit the collection California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. Russian Molokan church in California Some of these early Russians were circular immigrants—they planned to stay only long enough to save some money and then to return home to Russia. Many of those who did return, however, found their homeland in the midst of the greatest turmoil in its history. Revolution and Persecution In 1917 the imperial government of Russia was overthrown by socialist revolutionaries called Bolsheviks, and all the lands of the Empire were convulsed by four years of civil war. As the Russian Empire died and the communist Soviet Union came into being, tens of millions of people were caught up in anarchy, bloodshed, and widespread property destruction, and more than 2 million fled the country. More than 30,000 made their way to the United States. These new Russian immigrants had mostly been prominent citizens of the Empire—aristocrats, professionals, and former imperial officials—and were called “White Russians” because of their opposition to the “red” Soviet state. The Russian immigrant family, 1918 White Russians were welcomed by the U.S. government, which was concerned about the spread of socialism, and Russian-speaking bankers in quickly formed organizations to provide aid to their homeland. In the Chicago, 1916 meanwhile, though, they had to find ways to support themselves in America. Many took up manual labor for the first time in their lives, and tales spread of former princes working as headwaiters and generals driving taxis. At the same time, they had to learn to live with the older generation of Russian immigrants. Many of these farmers and laborers had suffered terribly at the hands of the imperial aristocracy, and the White Russians did not always find a warm welcome when they asked the Russian American community for help. Soviet Exiles Soon, though, all Russian Americans fell victim to a wave of xenophobic panic that spread through U.S. society. After the Russian Revolution, the American government began to fear that the U.S. was in danger of its own communist revolution and cracked down on political and labor organizations. Russian immigrants were singled out as a particular danger, and their unions, political parties, and social clubs were spied upon and raided by federal agents. In New York City alone more than 5,000 Russian immigrants were arrested. During the worst years of the Red Scare, 1919 and 1920, thousands of Russians were deported without a formal trial. Ironically, most were sent to the Soviet Union—a new nation that the older generation of immigrants had never lived in, Russian American steelworkers, and that the White Russians wanted to overthrow. As a result of the Pennsylvania Red Scare, the Russian American community began to keep a low profile. Fear of persecution led many Russians to convert to Protestantism, to change their names, and to deny their heritage to any outsiders. In the 1930s, fears of a new world war brought several thousand more Russians to the U.S. These immigrants were fairly affluent and well educated, and many were able to eventually find work in their old professions. Some had been farmers in the old country and founded a string of successful farms in the midAtlantic states. Others gravitated to established Russian American communities in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, New York City, and Cleveland. Vladimir Nabokov This wave of Russian immigrants also carried with it the latest intellectual and artistic currents from Europe. The interwar years saw many of the major thinkers of the Russian avant-garde make their way to New York, where they influenced and enriched the burgeoning modernist movement. The composer Igor Stravinsky was able to present his challenging symphonies to U.S. audiences, while the choreographic vision of George Balanchine helped bring much of 20th century American dance into being. Later, the novelist Vladimir Nabokov brought his elegant prose and incisive critical sensibility to bear on the cultural landscape of his new homeland, illuminating both its promise and its paradoxes. The end of World War II saw an even greater upheaval, as refugees from across Europe fled the chaos and depression of the postwar years. More than 20,000 Russian refugees—known as “displaced persons” successfully reached the United States. By this time, though, tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union were rising, and prospective emigrants became pawns in a global geopolitical game. In 1952, the Soviet government had become embarrassed by the high rate at which its artists and scientists were decamping to America, and it established strict controls over emigration. Just as it had been during the rule of the czars, Russian immigration to the U.S. became a rare and risky undertaking. The Great Thaw Cartoon about Soviet refugees, 1953 For two decades, any Soviet citizen who dared move to the U.S. became a nonperson—the Soviet Union stripped defectors of their citizenship, cut them off from contact with their families, and sometimes made it illegal to even mention their names. In the early 1970s, however, relations between the two superpowers began to thaw. The authorities began allowing a few thousand dissatisfied citizens to leave the U.S.S.R. each year, including Jewish Soviets, dissidents, writers, and others deemed “undesirable” by the state. Cultural ties were also extended, and Soviet artists and musicians were sent on tours of the United States; when some of these cultural ambassadors chose to defect, the Soviet government was embarrassed once more. The defectors of the 1970s included a number of world-renowned artists, such as the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and the Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky. Many joined the sizable group of Russian Americans who had long Russian American Marine agitated against abuses of the Soviet system, most notably the fiercely critical novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a survivor of many years as a Soviet political prisoner. In the late 1980s, as the U.S.S.R. entered its death throes, these activists saw their efforts come to fruition. Before it finally collapsed in 1990, the Soviet Union threw open its gates to all emigrants, and hundreds of thousands of Russians began to find their way to the U.S. once more. A New Revolution Today, the United States is in midst of the greatest wave of Russian immigration that the nation has ever seen. Although it is difficult to keep an accurate count, some sources suggest that Russian Americans currently represent the second-largest national group in the U.S., following only Mexican Americans. The Russian language is growing at an astonishing rate and can be heard in expanding enclaves across the country, from the street corners of Borough Park in Brooklyn to the café tables of North Hollywood. This new Russian American community is predominantly young and highly educated and still carries memories of the turmoil of the 20th century. The ways in which this generation will enrich and transform its new homeland will make for one of the most compelling stories of the 21st. The Nation of Polonia Poles first came to prominence in American life during the Revolutionary War. The colonies’ battle for independence from Britain fired the imagination of adventurers and freedom fighters from around the world, and more than 100 Poles came to fight on the side of the rebels. Two of them—Count Kazimierz Pulaski and Tadeusz Kósciuszko—had experience in the independence struggles of their homeland and were recruited by Benjamin Franklin to help lead the fledgling American army. Both played pivotal roles in the colonists’ victory and were hailed as heroes of the new republic. Towns and counties throughout the U.S. now bear their names, and Pulaski Day celebrations are held every year in Polish American cities. The Polish people’s own fight for independence was less successful, and their national identity came under harsh attack. By the 19th century, the ancient state of Poland had been conquered and divided up by three imperial powers—the Russian, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian empires. Although they were separated by distance and political barriers, Poles were unified by a belief in their own Thaddeus Kósciuszko independence, in their freedom to worship as Roman Catholics, and in their distinct identity as a people. The difficulty of maintaining this identity under hostile imperial regimes led many Poles to seek freedom overseas. The first permanent settlement of Poles in U.S. sprang up on the Texas plains, where a few hundred men, women, and children from Silesia founded the town of Panna Maria in 1854. The small farm community grew and thrived, and soon more and more Poles were making their way to the shores of America. At the turn of the 20 th century, Polish immigration exploded. Imperial repression, land shortages, and chronic unemployment made life more and more untenable for the Poles of Farmhouse in Panna Maria, Europe, and as the 19 th century waned they left Texas for America by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, given the many different routes Poles took to the U.S., but the 1910 census found more than 900,000 new immigrants who spoke Polish. After World War I, Poland regained its independence, and immigration began to slow. Even so, it is estimated that more than 2 million Poles had immigrated by the 1920s. Not all intended to stay. Many of the earlier Poles were known as za chlebem, or “for-bread” immigrants, who came planning to earn a nest egg and return home. Whatever their intentions, most Polish immigrants ended up remaining in the United States. However, they still kept one eye on their homeland and passionately guarded their language, faith, and sense of themselves as Poles. Polish neighborhood in Chicago, 1903 Life in Polonia As Poles poured into the country, they came together in communities that preserved many aspects of the Polish way of life. Most Polish immigrants had come in search of a decent livelihood, and so were drawn to the areas of the country where good work was available. In Poland, owning land had been a great source of pride, and many Poles struck out for farm country, founding agricultural towns in the mid-Atlantic states and New England. The Great Lakes region reminded some recent immigrants of home, and Polish names soon dotted the maps of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan. Polish American tobacco farmers, Connecticut America’s cities were the destination of most Poles, however. Heavy industry had played an aggressive role in recruiting throughout Europe, and new Polish immigrants were drawn to jobs in the factories, steel mills, slaughterhouses, and foundries of the U.S. industrial belt. Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Detroit, New York, and Cleveland became anchor cities of the new Polish communities, and Polish was spoken in the mines of Appalachia and the Alleghenies. Wherever they settled, Polish immigrants went about building communities that were fiercely committed to the preservation of their national heritage and culture. A national network of Polish-language newspapers, social clubs, and, eventually, radio and television stations helped keep the Polish language alive. Parochial schools were built within walking distance of every Polish neighborhood, and more than 900 Polish Catholic churches were founded. Polish Polish American children leaving music, dance, literature, and folklore were all kept alive through many decades in an English-speaking land. Polish American communities might be widely church scattered, from Krakow, Wisconsin, and Wilno, Minnesota, to Bucktown in Chicago and Cleveland’s Fleet Avenue. However, Polish Americans always made it clear that, while they were citizens of the United States, they were also loyal to Polonia—the community of Poles worldwide. That loyalty was galvanized by the dark decades of the Second World War and by the Cold War tensions that followed it. Millions of Poles in Europe perished or lost their homes during World War II, and thousands fled the Soviet takeover of Poland that followed it. Polish Americans opened their homes to any refugees who were able to escape, and they once more agitated for their country’s freedom. When that freedom finally came with the fall of the Soviet Union, countless family reunions took place, as European Poles met long-lost relatives and Polish Americans set foot on Polish soil for the first time. Polish American firehouse, Pennsylvania Today, Poles are moving to the United States again, as a generation newly freed from foreign domination seeks its fortune overseas. They find a country shaped by the achievements of the Polish Americans that came before them, such as the poet Czeslaw Milosz, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, the baseball player Stan Musial, and the politicians Barbara Mikulski and Edward Muskie. New Polish American communities are now rising up in New York, Detroit, and Chicago, sometimes occupying the same city blocks as their predecessors did a century before, and keeping the spirit of Polonia alive. Leopold Stokowski A People at Risk Just as ethnic Russians and Poles were finding their way to American shores, one of the most dramatic chapters in world history was underway—the mass migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States. In a few short decades, from 1880 to 1920, a vast number of the Jewish people living in the lands ruled by Russia—including Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, as well as neighboring regions—moved en masse to the U.S. In so doing, they left a centuries-old legacy behind, and changed the culture of the United States profoundly. Jewish communities had played a vital role in the culture of Eastern Europe for centuries, but in the 19th century they were in danger of annihilation. Of all the ethnic and national groups that lived Jewish refugee children pass the under the rule of the Russian czars, the Statue of Liberty, 1939 Eastern European Jews had long been the most isolated and endured the harshest treatment. Separated from other residents of the Empire by barriers of language and of faith, as well as by an array of brutally oppressive laws, most never considered Editorial cartoon calling for the themselves Russians. Eastern European Jews were socially and liberation of Jews in Russia, 1904 physically segregated, locked into urban ghettoes or restricted to small villages called shtetls, barred from almost all means of making a living, and subject to random attacks by non-Jewish neighbors or imperial officials. In the 1880s, however, the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe were overwhelmed by a wave of statesponsored murder and destruction. When the czar was assassinated in 1881, the crime was blamed, falsely, on a Jewish conspiracy, and the government launched a wave of state-sponsored massacres known as pogroms. Hundreds of Jewish villages and neighborhoods were burned by rampaging mobs, and thousands of Jews were slaughtered by Russian soldiers and peasants. The pogroms caused an international outcry, but they would continue to break out for decades to come. For tens of thousands of the Empire’s Jewish residents, who were already struggling to survive famines and land shortages, this represented the breaking point. In an article for The Atlantic, the journalist Abraham Cahan described a meeting of the Jewish community of Kiev, during which one speaker proclaimed: There is no hope for Israel in Russia. The salvation of the downtrodden people lies in other parts, in a land beyond the seas, which knows no distinction of race or faith, which is a mother to Jew and Gentile alike. In the great republic is our redemption from the brutalities and ignominies to which we are subjected in this our birthplace. In America we shall find rest; the stars and stripes will wave over the true home of our people. To America, brethren! To America! The cry “To America!” spread across Eastern Europe and launched a massive human migration. Jewish immigrants came to the United States by any possible means, defying the czar’s laws against emigration. Many fled by night, eluding Russian border guards and murderous highway gangs and bribing officials to allow them passage to Western Europe. From there, they endured a weeklong ocean voyage, generally crammed into stifling steerage compartments with little access to kosher food. Arriving at Ellis Island In the 1880s, more than 200,000 Eastern European Jews arrived in the U.S. In the next decade, the number was over 300,000, and between 1900 and 1914 it topped 1.5 million, most passing through the new immigrant processing center at Ellis Island. All in all, between 1880 and 1924, when the U.S. Congress cut immigration back severely, it is estimated that as many as 3 million Eastern European Jews came to the U.S. On their arrival, they found themselves in the midst of a tremendous wave of new immigrants from all over Europe and Asia. The Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, however, were different in two crucial ways. First, they fled the old country at an astonishing rate; by 1920 more than one-third of the Jewish population of the Russian Empire had emigrated. Perhaps more important, their rate of return migration was close to zero—lower than any other major immigrant group. Many of the other immigrants of the turn of the 20th century came to the U.S. as sojourners, planning to stay for a while, earn a nest egg, and return to their ancestral homeland. The Jews of Eastern Europe had no such intentions; they had abandoned the Old World once and for all. The United States was to become their new homeland. Jewish immigration had been a part of U.S. history since its earliest years. The first Jewish congregation in North America was formed in 1654, and Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal arrived throughout the colonial period. Since the early 19th century, Jewish immigrants from Germany had built a substantial presence up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Still, no one was prepared for the tremendous influx of Jewish immigrants that arrived from Eastern Europe. The social welfare institutions of the German Jewish community, accustomed to dealing with much smaller numbers, struggled to cope with the thousands of needy cases that stepped ashore from Ellis Island each year. Many established Jewish Americans were several generations away from their own immigrant roots and were sometimes shocked by the threadbare, provincial figures who appeared on Rosh Hashanah prayers on the their doorsteps. The Eastern European immigrants quickly established many Williamsburg Bridge of their own support structures, coming together to form aid societies based on the burial societies and congregations of their home villages. Soon, new arrivals had somewhere to turn for advice, modest financial assistance, and aid in finding someplace to settle down. Unlike every other immigrant group, however, the Jewish immigrants of Eastern Europe overwhelmingly chose to remain in New York City. The close ties of shtetl life led many immigrants to stay close to neighbors from their old villages. For many others, the strict religious practices of Orthodox Judaism required that they live near an existing Jewish community. Around the turn of the century, nearly one-half of the Jewish population of the United States lived in New York City. There, they would create a world unlike any other in the annals of American immigration. Hester Street, the Lower East Side, 1902 The Lower East Side The capital of Jewish America at the turn of the century was New York’s Lower East Side. This densely packed district of tenements, factories, and docklands had long been a starting point for recent immigrants, and hundreds of thousands of the new arrivals from Eastern Europe settled there on arrival. By this time, most American cities had sizable Jewish neighborhoods, most notably Chicago’s West Side. But for size, crowds, and overall energy, none could compete with the Lower East Side. Early film of pushcart vendors on the Lower East Side, 1903 When a new Jewish immigrant first set foot on the Lower East Side, he or she stepped into a Jewish world. The earliest Eastern European Jews to settle there had quickly established synagogues, mutual-aid societies, libraries, and stores. Every major institution, from the bank to the grocery store to the social club to the neighborhood bookmaker, was Jewish-owned or Jewish-run, and everyone a Jewish immigrant might speak to in the course of daily business would likely be Jewish. Even the owners of the garment factories and department stores where many immigrants worked were Jewish. For a new Jewish immigrant in a strange country, this immersion in a familiar world, around people who shared a common language, faith, and background, could be profoundly reassuring. For all the comfort that this shared heritage brought, however, the Lower East Side was still a very difficult place to live--and a crowded one. By the year 1900, the district was packed with more than 700 people per acre, making it the most crowded neighborhood on the planet. The reformer Jacob Riis described a visit to a typical tenement building occupied by Eastern European Jewish families: I have found in three rooms father, mother, twelve children, and six boarders. They sleep on the half-made clothing for beds. I found that several people slept in a subcellar four feet by six, on a pile of clothing that was being made. This congestion brought with it many hazards, along with many annoyances. Nearly half of the city’s deaths by fire took place in the Lower East Side. Disease was rampant, clean water was hard to come by, and privacy was unheard of. For many immigrant children, their education in American life was acquired in the city streets, where lovers strolled amid streams of raw sewage, vendors offered almost anything for sale, con artists and petty thieves worked the crowds, and horse carriages burdened with goods clogged the muddy roadways. The Lower East Side could certainly be frightening, dangerous, noisy, and cramped. However, it was still a place of relative safety compared to the virulently anti-Semitic Russian Empire. And, however chaotic it might be, as some observers at the time noted, it was still the greatest concentration of Jewish life in nearly two thousand years. Film of a Lower East Side fish market, 1903 Facing Barriers Most of the new Jewish immigrants faced unique challenges in their search for work. In the Russian Empire, they had been barred by law from a wide range of jobs, including farming, and so brought a more limited set of skills with them than some immigrants did. At the same time, they had to overcome the prejudices of U.S. employers, where “gentlemen’s agreements” and open bigotry prevented them from entering the professions and many heavy industrial jobs. As a result, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe often had to find Jewish family doing piecework in New employment outside of the more established trades, as well as creating York tenement, 1912 opportunities for themselves between the cracks of the American economy. More than one-half of all Eastern European Jewish immigrants worked in manual occupations, predominantly in the garment industry. The Jewish neighborhoods of New York and Chicago were home to countless tiny, airless sweatshop factories, where women, teenagers, and children worked long hours cutting, sewing, and finishing clothing for pennies per piece. In 1892, a reporter for The Century visited some of the garment workers of New York: [They] toil from six in the morning until eleven at night. Fifty cents is not an unusual compensation for these murderous hours. Trousers at 84 cents per dozen, 8 cents for a round coat, and 10 cents for a frock coat, are labor prices that explain the sudden affluence of heartless merchant manufacturers, and the biting poverty of miserable artisans. Sweatshops were not only unpleasant and exploitative—they could also be lethal. In the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911, nearly half of the 146 workers killed were Jewish teenage girls. Another avenue of employment that was open to the new Jewish immigrants was the retail trade. At least one-third of this generation of immigrants worked in retail sales at some point, especially young women and girls. Peddling also appealed to a large number of Jewish immigrants, providing as it did a measure of independence and freedom from workplace discrimination. An estimated 10 percent of the retail workers in the great wave of Jewish immigration found work as peddlers at one time or another. Many of these went on to own their own shops, and a few even launched department stores. A peddler in New York City, ca. 1900 A Cultural Renaissance Even as the new immigrants were struggling to survive in the Lower East Side, the Jewish neighborhoods of New York became the site of a momentous cultural rebirth. Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jewish people of Eastern Europe, had long been suppressed by the Russian imperial government, and was denigrated by more affluent and urbane German Jews. However, as hundreds of thousands of Yiddish speakers settled into the U.S. and realized the extent of their linguistic freedom, a new Yiddish culture came into bloom. The turn of the 20th century saw an explosion of new artistic and literary ventures in Yiddish. The journalist Abraham Cahan, who emigrated from Lithuania in 1882, founded America’s first Yiddish daily newspaper, the Forverts, or Forward, in 1902. The Forward published news from Europe and reported on events around New York, but, like many of the new Yiddish papers, it specialized in advice for new immigrants, serving as a sort of guidebook to life in a strange new land. By the late 1920s, the Forward had a circulation of 20,000 copies per day, more than some English-language dailies, and is still published today, in both Yiddish and English. Thalia Theatre playbill, 1897 Yiddish theater had long survived underground in Europe, but it burst into public view in the U.S. Theater companies sprang up around New York and Chicago and offered a broad selection of fare, from Yiddish adaptations of Shakespeare and Chekov to slapstick comedies and folktales to original new works from the modernist avant-garde. The audience for these plays was diverse and passionately devoted. In 1898 Harper’s magazine surveyed the Yiddish theater scene and reported that: Night after night I have seen the two Yiddish theatres swarmed with men, women, and children largely from the sweat-shops. I referred the question to my friend the cashier. “That is how you all misrepresent us!” he exclaimed. “There are many poor Jewish families that spend sometimes three, four, five dollars a week here at this theatre.” A brief calculation will show that, compared with their earnings, this represents a patronage of art infinitely beyond that of the families uptown who parade their liberality in supporting the Metropolitan Opera House. The surge in newspaper publishing led to a demand for fiction in Yiddish, and countless writers took up the challenge, turning out short stories and novels for serialization. Many of these journeymen, whose names are now lost to history, wrote for speed and published sensational tales of crime, intrigue, and illicit romance under a number of pseudonyms. The reporter for Harper’s noted that: Mary Antin Of the most popular of the novelists, Schorner, it is related that in order to meet the demand he has to keep three or four tales under way at once; and to keep all his printers supplied, he goes almost daily from shop to shop, writing only long enough in each to meet the present demand for copy. A circle of more serious authors also emerged. Their leaders, including, Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, and Mendele Mocher Sforim, blended tales from the shtetls with the concerns of urban immigrants and created a new, distinctively American Yiddish literature. At the same time, a number of the new immigrant authors published their work in English. These writers, including Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, and Israel Zangwill, helped bring the Jewish immigrant experience to the attention of the non-Jewish public and paved the way for the wave of distinguished Jewish American artists and authors who would follow them. As the great Jewish immigrant generation moved further into the 20th century, it also moved farther out into the United States and further into the national consciousness. By the late teens and 1920s, the new Jewish immigrants had moved into careers in established industries, taken a leading role in the labor movement, and even found themselves courted as an audience by publishers and advertisers. Some of the peddlers and fruit vendors of the turn of the century had become retail powerhouses and could be found behind the counters of grocery stores, fabric stores, print shops, religious stores, and fishmongers’ shops. Prominent service in World War I led to a higher national profile, and political representation came at the same time: In 1917 there were six Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives, including Meyer London, who came up from the streets of the Lower East Side. The Jewish Women’s Home One new line of retail business that Eastern Journal, 1922 European Jewish immigrants invested in early was the operation of storefront movie theaters, or nickelodeons. A number of recent immigrants, including Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, and William Fox, soon became involved in movie production as well as distribution and went on to found several of the major Hollywood studios. Jewish immigrants also began to take prominent roles on the Broadway stage and in early movies, and performers who had started out working for immigrant audiences, like the singer Sophie Tucker and the comedian Fanny Brice, became hugely popular nationwide. Anti-Jewish prejudice remained an obstacle, however, and took many forms, from the exclusionary policies that kept Jewish Americans out of Ivy League universities to the violent threats issued by the Ku Klux Klan. When the Red Sophie Tucker sheet music Scare arose in 1919, government officials focused a disproportionate amount of attention on Jewish radicals, and many were deported to the Soviet Union, including the fiery anarchist activist and publisher Emma Goldman. Decades of Disaster In the 1930s and the 1940s, the Jewish population of the U.S. was devastated by the catastrophe that overtook the Jewish communities of Europe—the rise of Nazi power and the nightmare of the Holocaust. As the danger became more and more apparent, and as European refugees fled for their lives, Jewish Americans appealed desperately for help from their government. Their appeals were not always successful; the U.S. refused to relax its immigration restrictions against Eastern Europeans and turned away several boatloads of Jewish refugees. On one refugee ship, the S.S. St. Louis, the desperate passengers launched a mutiny just off the coast of Florida in an attempt to reach American soil, but to no avail. Overall, more than 150,000 refugees did succeed in making their way to safety in America, and some 140,000 more followed after the war. But the Jewish civilization of Eastern Europe, a culture more than a thousand years old, was utterly destroyed, more than 6 million of its people murdered in the Nazi death camps. During the Cold War years of the mid-20th century, when the remaining Jews Poster calling for the liberation of Eastern Europe were caught behind the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain, Jewish of Jews in the Soviet Union Americans agitated for their freedom. Eventually, several thousand Soviet Jews were able to emigrate from the U.S.S.R. Jewish Americans also directed considerable political energies toward the new state of Israel. After it was founded in 1948, many Eastern European Jewish immigrants chose to make one more migration, and traveled from the New World to the land of Hebrew Bible. An Era of Achievement By the middle years of the 20th century, the Jewish American community had fully come into its own. As many of the old anti-Semitic barriers fell away, Eastern European immigrants and their children took prominent places in American culture, across the full spectrum of achievement. The research of scientists such as Jonas Salk and J. Robert Oppenheimer dramatically reshaped the postwar world. The musicians Jascha Heifetz and Artur Rubinstein, along with the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the conductor Leonard Bernstein, brought classical music to new audiences. Leonard Bernstein Radio and television were ruled by the comedians Jack Benny, Milton Berle, George Burns, and Sid Caesar, while jazzmen Benny Goodman and Stan Getz packed the dance floors. The brothers George and Ira Gershwin were bestselling songwriters, and Henry and Joseph Mankiewicz Oscar-winning screenwriters. Saul Bellow and Isaac Bashevis Singer had begun the literary work that would bring each of them a Nobel Prize, both mining the depths of the immigrant experience for new insights into what it meant to be an American in the 20th century. Milton Berle But the comic-book rack might be the best indicator of the extent to which American life has been informed and enriched by the Jewish American experience. The most colorful and most powerful characters of the comics world--Superman, Batman, Captain America--figures that over the decades have come to embody the dreams and aspirations of American life, were all invented by Jewish teenagers--primarily the children of Eastern European immigrants. Movie poster, 1948