A Different Mirror

Chapter 1: Introduction

Introduction

•  Settlement of Jamestown in 1607

  • Discovered profit of growing tobacco

    • Led to Africans being brought as slave labor

• “Master Narrative”

  • Version of American history

  • “Says that our country was settled by European immigrants, and that Americans are white”

  • Other races have been “pushed to the sidelines”

  • Deeply embedded in culture, writings, way people talk and teach about US history

  • The Uprooted talked about immigration to US, only of white ppl, overlooked Native Americans, Africans, Asians, Latinos, etc.

• Demography: study of population trends

• Focuses on Africans, Asian, Irish, Jewish, Latino, Mexican, Muslim + Native American groups

Ethnic Group Overviews

• African Americans:

  • Central minority throughout country’s history

  • After Civil War, still segregation, lynching, riots

  • Civil Rights Movement of 1960s

• Asians:

  • First Chinese as gold prospectors + railroad workers

    • Later farm and factory workers

  • Not welcomed as permanent settlers

  • During economic depression, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

    • First law that prevented immigrants entering US based on nationality

  • In 1940s, Japanese Americans were sent to camps

  • In 1975, waves of Vietnamese ppl to escape war

  • More from Korea, Philippines, India, Cambodia, Laos

• Irish

  • 19th century wave of Irish immigrants

    • Starvations + homelessness

  • Catholics in a strong Protestant society

    • Victims of hostility and prejudice

  • 1790 Naturalization Act, only white immigrants could apply for citizenship

• Jews

  • From Russia, fleeing pogroms (organized massacres)

  • Settled into Lower East Side of Manhattan, NYC

  • Crowded apartment buildings and garment factories where Jewish women worked

  • During 1930s, met with anti-semitism

• Latinos + Mexicans

  • Closeness to homeland helped maintain language, ethnic identity, trad culture

  • Immigrants from Puerto Rico immigrate to NY, East Coast

    • Jamaica, Cuba, Trinidad, Guadeloupe, DR

• Muslims

  • Coming from war-torn countries

  • Unique difficulties if from Afghanistan around 2001

  • Anti-muslim prejudice + violence

• Native Americans

  • Were there before Europeans

  • Conquered and campaigned against across continent

  • “The man from Europe is still a foreigner and an alien”

Conflicts and Shared Dreams

• Irish/African American Conflict

  • Irish viewed as ignorant/inferior

  • Irish competed with blacks for waiters, laborers, in the South did dangerous jobs

  • Irish complained blacks “didn’t know their place”

  • Blacks complained Irish were taking jobs

  • “Crowding themselves into every place of business and labor”

  • However shared similar dreams of good life in US

• Overarching concept of American dream

  • Irish: “This plentiful country where no man or woman ever hungered”

  • Japanese: “Day of spacious dreams, I sailed for America, overblown with home”

  • Russian Jew: “...There is a land, America, where everyone lives free.”

• Shared Experiences:

  • These groups often exploited  by factory owners/bosses

  • Sometimes united in strikes for better working conditions/pay

  • 1903:In California Mexican and Japanese farm laborers on strike together

    • Same in 1920 Hawaii with Filipino and Japanese

  • Showed racial differences don’t have to keep ppl apart

• America’s Epic Story

  • Emphasizes that stories (especially of minority groups) are important

  • Illustrates hope of majority understanding that ethnic group by writing/telling story accross different minorities and accross times

    • “Realize that Chinese people are human.”

    • “In the hope that future generations would know where they came from to know better who they are.”

  • Incomplete history is like a mirror that doesn’t reflect everything

  • All these people, from native americans, to white people, to enslaved africans, those brought to America for their dreams, those brought to escape from famine and war, is what America multicultural.

Chapter 5: Life in Slavery

Introduction

• Lived among whites, in the South - on plantations. In the North - in ghettos

• African Americans were technically free in the North - but still thought of and treated as inferior

• David Walker

  • born in NC in 1785, slave father and free mother, born free

  • Learned to read and write

  • Believed slavery could only be destroyed through violence

  • Published “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,”

    • Lawmakers in the south prevented from being widely distributed

    • Presented disturbing view of the condition of lacks in America

    • “Slaves in the south and outcasts in the North”

North vs. South

• North

  • Blacks were free, but targets of racism

  • Experienced discrimination and segregation, barred from hotels and restaurants

  • Separate schools, trapped in slums, excluded from good jobs, most working blacks had menial jobs

  • Limited in right to vote

  • A black man was required to own property in order to vote, where white men could own property, pay taxes, serve in militia, work on highways

  • Attacks

    • White mobs invaded black communities, killing people and destroying homes + churches

  • Society views:

    • Blacks were inferior to whites

    • Called lazy, childlike, stupid, criminals

    • Interracial relationships feared as a threat to purity

• Southern Plantations

  • In 1860, 4M African Americans were slaves

  • The majority worked on plantations

  • Working from first to last light, with little to no breaks

  • Most slaveowners used fear to control slaves

    • “We have to rely more and more on the power of fear. We are determined to continue Masters, and to do so we have to draw the rein tighter and tighter day by day.” - Sen. James Hammond of SC

    • Physical punishment was common

  • Brainwashing slaves, making them believe they were racially inferior and justified to be slaves, could not take care of themselves

  • Intentionally kept illiterate

  • Ideas:

    • Slaves were childlike, irresponsible, affectionate, lazy, happy

      • “Sambo” - smiling slave that loved their master

      • “Showing” that their slaves were happy and satisfied, slaves needed protection of master, could defend themselves against those opposed to slavery

    • Blacks were savages, barbarians who could turn violent, scared of revolts/uprisings

    • 1832 VA - Nat Turner’s Rebellion

      • Sparked by religious vision

      • Rise up against enemies with their own weapons

      • Turner would have fit “sambo”

    • Viewing slaves as Sambo comforted worries, but Turner made slaveowners worry

• Southern Cities

  • Urban slaves - working in mills, furnaces, factories. 

  • Hired out by masters to work as wage earners

    • Weakened slave system

      • Slaves no longer under direct supervision of their masters

      • Taking care of themselves, taste of independence

      • Learned what it meant to be free

Frederick Douglass + Civil War

• Slave to reformer

• Born into slavery, biracial

• Given reading lessons from his aunt, but was shortly banned by his uncle

• Urban slavery of Baltimore was not as strict as plantations

  • Douglass saw that not all Blacks were slaves

  • Desire for escape and freedom

• Sent to slave breaker at 16

  • Did not work, remained rebellious and stood up to a freeman in spirit

• Escaped to house of abolitionist in NY, joined cause

• Spokesman against slavery and racism

• Believed Blacks were Americans, predicted they would be mixed into Americans

• Civil War

  • Elite group of planters dominated the politics of the Southern region

  • Planter class refused to give up slavery, seceded from US in 1861

  • War between Northern states and Confederacy

  • African American soldiers were eventually allowed to enlist, and greatly helped win the war for the North

  • Results:

    • Abolished slavery

    • Emancipation Proclamation of 1863

    • 13th amendment made slavery illegal

  • Slaves had deserted masters during fighting, running to Union camps

“New South”

• Freedmen = former slaves

• Wanted schools and right to vote, land so they could support themselves and family

• Blacks had been granted land during the war by General Sherman, set aside sections of GA and SC for black people

  • Wouldn’t be final until Congress approved, but blacks believed they owned the land

  • Johnson pardoned southern planters, who reclaimed former lands and began to force former slaves to work for them.

  • When blacks threatened violence, federal troops seized land, tore up papers and restored land to planters

  • Objective to prevent them from becoming landholders, as nearly in a condition of slavery as possible

• No longer slaves, couldn’t get land of their own

• Wage earners, agricultural laborers who worked land of former owner for part of crop

  • Barely making enough to pay debts, never enough to buy land

• “New South”

  • Cotton →Industrialized

  • New factories and textile mills

  • African Americans worked in sawmills, mining coal, building railroads

• Reconstruction

  • Lost freedoms

  • Discrimination

  • Jim Crow laws supporting segregation

    • Basis of racial segregation

  • Disqualified blacks from voting

  • Violence

• J.W. Loguen

  • Escaped to north at 21

  • Letter exchange between old master where she demanded payment for property - his body

  • Learned to read, opened schools for black children

  • Turned home in NY into Underground Railroad stop

Chapter 13: Blacks in Northern Cities

Introduction

• Early 20th century, southern blacks were moving by the tens of thousands to the NE and Midwest.

  • Some cheerfully, fearfully, eagerly

• From 1910 to 1920; population increases

  • Detroit: 5,700 to 40,800

  • Cleveland: 8,400 to 34,400

  • Chicago: 44,000 to 109,400

  • NY: 91,700 to 152,400

Pushed and Pulled + New Generation

• Southern blacks driven from their homes by economic and social forces

• After slavery abolished, dependent on white landowners and enslaved by debt (sharecropping system)

• WW1 cut off flow of European immigrants to US, creating labor shortages

  • Factories sent labor recruiters to South to hire Black workers

    • Better work and better wages

• Following the jobs

• Habits from slavery dying out (accepting place, etc.)

• Younger African Americans who had never known slavery

  • No lingering power of master-slave relationship

  • Wanted to “see something of the world.”

• Most of the blacks who moved North were young, growing up post-Civil War

• Hoping also to escape racial violence and predjudice of South

  • “Girls SAd and burned at the stake, guy hung to a pole and shot - neither mentions they don’t like the way they’re treated.”

African American Chicago

• Fast growing industries in Midwest

  • Created jobs and invited blacks to fill them

  • Central (IL) railroad connected Chicago to MS, AK, LA

• 1900 to 1920

  • 30k to 109k

  • Most blacks in the South Side neighborhood

  • Sparked huge white resistance

• Resistance

  • Pressuring real estate agents not to sell blacks’ houses

    • White landowners not to sell or rent to blacks

• Conflicts continued in housing throughout early 1900s, as blacks continued to fill jobs

• Workplaces:

  • ½ of all working blacks employed in service jobs (1910)

    • Servants, laundresses, janitors, waiters

  • War created demand for labor and opened more opportunities

  • In 1920, majority of black men working and 15% of black women in factories instead of service

    • First time they were working in industries and making “good” wages

  • Were deliberately hired to undermine white unioned workers

    • Hoping to keep blacks from joining white unions

    • Couldn’t unite

• Racial tensions:

  • Black family homes were bombed in 1917

  • White gangs attacked blacks, murdered

  • Black man drowned when floated into white only section on a public beach

  • Police weren’t doing anything - black attacked whites

    • By end of rioting, 23 blacks and 15 whites dead, 342 black and 178 white injured

  • African Americans in Chicago depended on themselves in response to racism

    • Ministers and leaders called on people to start shops, banks, insurance companies

    • Should rent from blacks and spend $$ on goods made/sold by blacks

Black Pride in Harlem

• “Negro Capital of the World”

• Blacks had lived in Harlem since the 17th century

• In 1790, ⅓ of Harlem’s population was black

• By 1890 Harlem was a wealthy, mostly white neighborhood, then Great Migration changed it again

• Housing boom in Harlem collapsed, leaving lots of apartments empty

  • Black real estate agents leased from white landlords and rented to blacks at a profit

  • Became a black neighborhood again, in spite of racist white landowners (like Chicago)

• During the 1920s Harlem became home to more than ⅔ of all blacks living in Manhattan

  • Became overcrowded

  • Living conditions became worse

    • Broken pipes, leaking roods, rats

  • Couldn’t move elsewhere in NYC because of discrimination

  • Forced to remain in Harlem, rent increasing

• High rent

  • Burden to black tenants because most worked in low paying jobs

  • Common jobs: domestic servants or service jobs

• Pride

  • Inspired to create a community, more than just a place to live

  • Center of the “New Negro Renaissance”

  • Black artists attracted to Harlem

    • Created art that rebelled against mainsream, white, middle class America

  • Community that reflected black pride and creativity

  • Struggle to find identity - belonging to Africa or US cities? 

    • Both African and American

The Great Depression + Marcus Garvey

• Late 1920s, Harlem was a slum

• Harlem Renaissance - cabarets, jazz, literary successes covered the poverty

• Stock market crash of 1929, followed by Great Depression

  • Lingered for most of a decade

  • Shattering of economy revealed reality behind glamous image of Harlem

• African Americans everywhere fell into deeper poverty

• Most American blacks still lived in the South, jobs fell with the stock market

• Blacks looking for jobs in North met with protesters against hiring blacks

• By 1932, over ½ of all blacks in southern cities unemployed - similar to northern cities.

  • First to be fired during rough business

  • Proportion of unemployed blacks 30-60% greater than whites

• Unable to afford apartments or groceries, lived in cellars

• Federal aid

  • White farmers and workers received more support than blacks

• W.E.B. Du Bois, leading historian and scholar, leader in NAACP had pushed for integration

  • During Great Depression he suggested temporary, voluntary segregation to band together and help each other, form a black nation within the US.

  • NAACP criticized this idea, called for a movement that would unite all labor

• Black workers began to be more important

  • Included in unions, uniting workers in time of economic crisis

  • Democratic politicians recognized power and size of black vote

    • Addressed needs of blacks

    • Blacks started to abandon the Republican party (President Lincoln)

• Marcus Garvey

  • Born in Jamaica, unaware of race until 14

  • He traveled to Europe a few years later, developed ideas about Black Nationalism

    • Sense of devotion to black culture, belief that blacks should express unity, pride and power

  • Returned to Jamaica and founded UNIA

    • Univeral Negro Improvement Ass.

      • Promoted black nationalism, uniting black people of the world and creating an African American nation in Africa

  • Black skin is beautiful - Blacks destined to rule Afrca

  • Made Harlem base of movement

    • Parades, publications, establishment of black-owned small businesses, shipping company (Black Star Line)

  • Black Star

    • Big symbol of the UNIA, but badly managed

    • Garvey charged with defrauding investors, but weak gov. Case

  • Sentenced to prison, and deported after 2 years to Jamaica

  • Created dreams and strengthened racial pride in Harlem, changed how ppl saw themselves.

Chapter 15: Calls for Change

Introduction

• US racial, ethnic, and religious minorities had fought in WW2

  • Battled discrimination in US

• Lots of changes following war, for conditions of minorities, moving to social justice

• Randolph met with Truman to create equal rights and opportunities in armed services

Asian + Latino

Japanese

• Oyamas were a Japanese family who lived in internment camps

• Asked CA to overturn Alien Land Law of 1913

  • Prevented them from owning property in their own names, as non white immigrants couldn’t become citizens

  • State had tried to seize property

• 1948 US Supreme Court decided CA had acted illegally

  • Racial discrimination

• In 1952 Congress changed the Naturalization act to allow immigrants of all skin colors to seek citizenship

• By 1965 about 46k Japanese immigrants had taken citizenship oaths

• In 1988, Congress passed a bill apologizing for internments, awarded 20k to each survivor

  • Reagan - “a sad chapter in American history” speaking about internments

Mexicans

• Veterans frustrated by discrimination at home

• Founded GI forum in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1948

  • Civil rights org

  • More than 100 chapters in 23 states within a year

  • Called for end to employment discrimination, bilingual education

• Cesar Chavez

  • Veteran

  • Dedicated himself to farm workers

  • Combat prejudice and win decent wages

• Mendez v Westminister … ruled segregating kids in schools was unconstitutional under 14th amendment

  • Affected Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians

Civil Rights

• Brown v Board of Education in 1954

  • Racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional

  • Integration - mixing of races

  • Remained largely a ruling on paper

• Rosa Parks

  • Montgomery, Alabama 1955

  • Refused to give up bus seat to white man

  • Arrested, triggered bus boycott

  • Boycott organized by MLK Jr

• MLK Jr.

  • Leader in the civil rights movement

  • Minister

• Sitins organized across the South

  • Under leadership of SNCC (Student nonviolent coordinating committee)

• Freedom rides

  • Congress of Racial Equality

  • Blacks and whites rode together into southern bus terminals

  • Met with violence

• Summer of 1963 - march on Washington

  • 200k people gathered in DC to demand equality

  • Massed near Lincoln memorial

  • MLK spoke to marchers, nation + world sharing vision of freedom in US

Blacks and Jews

Economic Inequality

Chapter 7: The War Against Mexico

Introduction + Mexican-American War

• Tejas → Texas

  • Americans began crossing Mexican border to settle there in 1820s

  • Q. Adams tried to buy in 1826, Mexico refused

    • Americans weren’t following laws

  • 1830 Mexican government banned immigration and slavery

    • In 1835 over 5x more Americans than Mexicans in Texas

    • Stephen Austin encouraged followers to Americanize Texas

      • “War is our only recourse”

• War

  • 1836

  • Armed uprising by barricading inside a fort

  • Alamo - town of San Antonio

  • Rebels refused to surrender

  • “Remember the Alamo”

  • Declared Texas an independent country

    • Added to US in 1845

  • Diplomatic relations tense

• Dispute over river boundaries

  • Rio Grande or Nueces River?

• War declared in 1846 by US government

• California

  • Colonized by spain, part of Mexican colony

  • Independence in 1821

  • The US government wanted California, even though it was also a Mexican territory

    • Raw materials, edge of North America, harbors, trade across Pacific

  • Rebels beat Mexicans, independent until claimed by US

• Taking of California mostly nonviolent

• In SW, war now brutal military campaign

  • Violence against mexican civilians

    • Ulysses S. Grant reported violence

    • Right to impose on people of conquered city” how much they seem to enjoy act of violence too”

• War ended early 1848

• Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

  • Accepted Rio Grande as border of Texas

  • Turned SW territories to US for 15mil

  • NM, AZ, NV, parts of CO and UT, CA

Ethnic Conflict

• Americans saw war and conquest as glorious

  • Superior ppl vs inferior

  • “God intended Americans to populate and civilize whole continent”

• Mexicans national border moved, found themselves in United States

  • Could move south or stay in US

  • Would be guaranteed rights of American Citizens

  • Most stayed, not wanting to uproot

  • Felt like strangers, surrounded by ppl who spoke only English

• Mexicans lacked political power

  • In CA, quickly became minority

  • CA Gold Rush caused migration of Anglos

  • Anglos dominated CA legislature, passed laws targeted at Mexicans

    • 1850 tax on foreign miners

  • Ethnicities regarded each other as competition, mobs and gangs

• In Texas:

  • Limited political participation

  • Excluded from primary elections

  • Made it hard to vote, and to protect rights as landowners

• Mexicans couldn’t keep their land, had to appeal to US courts to have land titles confirmed

  • Courts dominated by Anglos

  • Turned down most land appeals

  • Anglos owned ⅘ mexican land

  • Land hadn’t been drawn according to US rules

  • Anglo squatters wouldn’t leave property

• Many Mexican cattle ranchers lost their lands

• Anglos could protect land better, had better access to bank credit

  • After drought, Anglos financially stronger, could buy land from economically weakened Mexicans

Landholders → Laborers

• “Mexicans have sold the great share of their landholdings and some work as day laborers on what once belonged to them”

• Most Mexicans laborers on land they had once owned

• Mexicans used in ranching, agriculture

  • Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) taught Anglo cowboys techniques

  • Railway lines brought end of long cattle drives ←Mexican cowboys began to vanish, turned to fieldwork

• Mexicans became mainstay of agricultural labor

  • Dug ditches

  • Techniques from Spanish, Pueblo Indians

• Railroads

Chapter 12: Up From Mexico

Introduction + Pull of the North

• Extremely easy to enter US early 1900s, could go to office, or just cross Rio Grande

• “El Norte” seen as a land of opportunity

• Mexicans being pushed from their homeland

  • Landowners taking over small farms, uprooting rural families

  • Suffered from periods of unemployment

• Violence during Mexican Revolution (1910 on)

  • Refugees fled north

• Railroad built into Mexico triggered mass migration

• Most immigrants from agricultural labor class

  • Young-middle aged

• Population in SW swelled, most born in Mexico, not US

  • Settled in Texas, Arizona, NM, CA mostly

  • Finding work ← priority

Sprinkling the Fields with Sweat + Mexicans on Strike

• US needed labor, Mexicans worked wide range of jobs

  • Urban industrial (railroad)

    • Mostly kept in low level manual labor jobs

  • Garment factories, canneries, food processing plants

  • Janitors, gardeners

  • Willingness to work for a low wage

  • Most worked in agriculture

    • ⅔ of CA farm laborers 1920s were Mexican

    • 85% of Texas farm laborers

      • Picking cotton

    • Seasonal, migratory ← following the crops

    • Lived in squalid camps

      • Growers felt no responsibility for health of their workers

• Striking

• Took part in labor struggles, during Great Depression

  • Wages were cut in 2

  • Supported strikes by variety of labor unions

  • Challenged stereotype of easygoing and passive

• 1933

  • 12k laborers in San Joaquin Valley

  • To break strike, growers kicked workers out of their camps, dumped possessions, arrested strike leaders

• Women active in striking

  • Picket lines to ask workers to join

• Reached a compromise and received a wage increase

Tortillas and Turbans + Segregation

• Mexicans worked alongside Indian immigrants

• Early 1900s, workers from Punjab started arriving west coast

  • Mostly men, sikhs, wore turbans

  • Had been farmers in the Punjab, gravitated toward farm labor in US

  • Sometimes formed relationships with Mexican women

  • Not considered white by american courts, couldn’t become naturalized citizens

  • If married to a Mexican woman, could buy land

• Culture and tradition blended

  • Tortillas/rotis

  • Jalapenos and chillis

  • Language mixed

  • Children were baptized as catholic, raised under Catholic and spanish culture

• Mexican laborers were kept from becoming full members of society

  • Cold only shop in Anglo parts on Saturday

  • Couldn’t sit in general restaurant (to go or at counter)

  • Segregated neighborhoods - barrios

    • On the other side of the railroad tracks

  • Segregated schools

    • Based on racial inferiority

    • Learned to become obedient workers

    • Reproduced labor force, not trained to become thinkers