Eric Foner Give Me Liberty Chapter 22

Bracero Program (1942-1964)

This World War Two era guest worker program brought more than 4.5 million Mexicans into the U.S. under government labor contracts in order to work, primarily as agricultural workers where there was a labor shortage. The workers were supposed to receive decent housing and wages. But since they could not become citizens and could be deported at any time, they found it almost impossible to form unions or secure better working conditions. Agreed to by the Mexican and American governments, it was Initially designed as a temporary response to the wartime labor shortage, but the program lasted until 1964. It reflected a complete reversal from the "voluntary" repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans during the Great Depression.

Zoot Suit Riots (1943)

Club-wielding sailors and policemen attacked Mexican-American youths wearing flamboyant clothing on the streets of LA.

Japanese-American Internment

Roosevelt signed a document Feb. 19,1942 stating that all people of Japanese ancestry from California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona, needed to be removed. Put them in internment camps because of their fear for another attack by the Japanese.

Korematsu v. United States

1944 Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court upheld the order providing for the relocation of Japanese Americans. Apparently wasn't based on race. It was not until 1988 that Congress formally apologized and agreed to pay $20,000 to each survivor.

Second Great Migration

The movement of black migrants from the rural South to the cities of the North and West, which occurred from 1941 through World War II, that dwarfed the Great Migration of World War I.

Atlantic Charter (1941)

Promised that "the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny" would be followed by open access to markets, the right of "all peoples" to choose their form of government, and a global extension of the New Deal so that people everywhere would enjoy "improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security."