The Cruel Years

Here are the no-nonsense words of a young immigrant trying to survive as a sweatshop operator in New York City, a hard working farmer’s wife who has writing ambitions; a black southern sharecropper seeking fulfillment under a new system of slavery; a young Puerto Rican passing the Statue of Liberty and ready for new challenges; a Chinese immigrant, a Mexican immigrant, and a Japanese immigrant struggling to rise from lower rungs on the social and economic ladder; an Irish girl of sixteen deciding to become a political agitator; a black southern woman trying to fend off the hurts of Jim Crow; a coal miner telling of the lethal dangers of his work; and a black cowhand rejoicing in the thrill of the cattle trails.

“Katz and Lehman have not only assembled a powerful teaching tool for the study of the turn of the last century, but they have also reminded us just how easy it is to erase stories of the oppressed and exploited.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of and Race Rebels

William Loren Katz is an award-winning author and historian. He is the author of more than forty titles, including the internationally acclaimed The Black West. Laurie R. Lehman, associate professor of education at Long Island University, has written extensively on culture and disability in U.S. education. [Publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9780807054536 | Beacon Press

The post The Cruel Years: American Voices at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

Papers

The film premiered in 2009 when very few undocumented young people were public about their immigration status. The five young people featured in this film (Monica, Jorge, Juan Carlos, Simone and Yo Sub) risked arrest, detention and deportation simply for telling the truth about their lives. Their families, hometowns and last names are not revealed because of this concern.

The creative and heroic activism of the undocumented immigrant youth movement forced a vote on the DREAM Act in December 2010 where it passed in the House of Representatives but the Senate failed to overcome a filibuster. Intensified undocumented youth activism led to President Obama’s June 15, 2012 Executive Action, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA. The undocumented youth movement continues to advocate for immigration reform with a path to citizenship. Graham Street Productions produced this film in association with El Grupo Juvenil (the “Papers” Youth Crew). These youth producers were actively involved in all aspects of production.

Trailer

Related Book

Papers: Stories by Undocumented Youth

Book – Non-fiction. Edited by José Manuel, Cesar Pineda, Anne Galisky, and Rebecca Shine. Illustrated by Julio Salgado. 2012. 84 pages.
Undocumented youth from around the world tell their stories with simplicity and intimacy in this student-friendly collection.

This volume builds on the excellent 2009 film Papers: Stories of Undocumented Youth. Papers — the book — is a student-friendly collection that continues the conversation begun in the film; undocumented youth from around the world tell their stories with simplicity and intimacy. The passages are short, poignant, evocative, and lend themselves to lots of classroom uses. Julio Salgado’s illustrations — in colors that shout with life and dignity — help make this an inviting book for all. Middle and high school.

ISBN: 9780985748500 • Graham Street Productions

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ISBN: 9780985748500

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Jorge Argueta was among the first wave of Salvadoran refugees, who fled the U.S.-funded war in their country during the early 1980s. After the war ended, the United States deported immigrants and their children accused of joining gangs. The gang violence, combined with the economic crisis in the region, has led to the current wave of refugees. Argueta collected testimonials from young people who came in this second wave. Then he wrote poems based on their stories about the hardship of leaving family behind and the perils of the journey. Also highly recommended for young children on migration from Central America to the United States is Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote by Duncan Tonatiuh. [Review by Rethinking Schools.]

Why are young people leaving their country to walk to the United States to seek a new, safe home? Over 100,000 such children have left Central America. This book of poetry helps us to understand why and what it is like to be them. This powerful book by award-winning Salvadoran poet Jorge Argueta describes the terrible process that leads young people to undertake the extreme hardships and risks involved in the journey to what they hope will be a new life of safety and opportunity. A refugee from El Salvador’s war in the eighties, Argueta was born to explain the tragic choice confronting young Central Americans today who are saying goodbye to everything they know because they fear for their lives. This book brings home their situation and will help young people who are living in safety to understand those who are not.

Compelling, timely and eloquent, this book is beautifully illustrated by master artist Alfonso Ruano who also illustrated The Composition. [Publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9781554988495 | Groundwood Books

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ISBN: 9781419705830  | Abrams Books for Young Readers

The post Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The website features:

• Lessons and teaching activities including:
  • Introduction to Central America
  • Salvadoran Poetry through History
  • Wilfredo: Un Niño de El Salvador
• Recommended children’s books for elementary, middle, high school, and adult
• Biographies of key Central American authors and activists.
• Films and documentaries about Central America
• Selected poems and readings in English and Spanish
• Key resources about current news, activism, and Central American history.

The post Teaching Central America appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

For more than 20 days I fed on wind and tasted waves. . . .

How was I to know that I would become a prisoner/suffering in this wooden building?

ISBN: 9780547903781 | Clarion Books

The post Angel Island: Gateway to Gold Mountain appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The first chapter, which would work for many high school readers, takes on the impact of NAFTA and the role of Smithfield Foods in destroying the Perote Valley in Veracruz. Bacon catches up with members of the community, forced to emigrate and now working at a slaughterhouse in North Carolina. Oral history narratives follow each chapter. [Description by Rethinking Schools.]

ISBN: 9780807001615 | Beacon Press

The post The Right to Stay Home: How U.S. Policy Drives Mexican Migration appeared first on Zinn Education Project.

The Pinkerton men leaving the barges after the surrender. Harper’s Weekly, July 16,1892. Source: WikiCommons.

Students are often skeptical about the possibility of people genuinely working together when at least their short-term interests appear in conflict. The Homestead Strike is a historical test case that may challenge their skepticism. In this widely used role play, students become participants in one of the most famous strikes in U.S. history, the 1892 strike in Homestead, Pennsylvania.

In the Homestead Strike role play, students begin to explore some of the themes that are important in understanding the relationship between workers, owners, and government, after the 19th century: different types of unions; the role of government intervention; new capital formations that stimulated industry-wide organization among workers.

Classroom Stories

Battle of Homestead today- students’ favorite parts seem to be when the tugboat Little Bill pulls the Pinkertons up the river and of course Berkman’s hapless assassination attempt. Such a great activity from @ZinnEdProject pic.twitter.com/QEevNyR8ud

— Amelia E Serafine (@AmeliaESerafine) January 31, 2019

The Homestead Strike is one of the 16 labor history lessons available for free download from The Power In Our Hands.

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Section of Alice Street Mural. Click image to read about it.

On May 6, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was signed which prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States.

This act, signed by President Chester A. Arthur, provided an absolute 10-year (which was extended) moratorium on Chinese labor immigration. A copy of the act can be viewed online at the National Archives Our Documents, which explains:

For the first time, Federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities.

Violence against Chinese Americans increased, as explained on the Remembering 1882 website:

With the federal government renouncing equal protection under the law. . . numerous towns and cities experience groups of whites attempting to eradicate Chinese community members, in violent attacks and expulsions they call “The Driving Out.”

One example of this violence is the Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming in 1885.

Wong Kim Ark fought the Chinese Exclusion Act all the way to the Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Wong Kim.

The act was not fully reversed until 1965 as part of the Civil Rights Movement.

Read more about U.S. v. Wong Kim and other profiles of people and events from Asian American and Pacific Islander people’s history for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month #AAPIHM (May) and all year long.

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