Becoming America

Fall Seminar 8 — American Labor, Immigrant Workers, and the Haymarket Affair

   For the final Fall Seminar Prof. James R Green presented on American Labor, Immigrant Workers, and the Haymarket Affair.

His theme:  since Civil War, majority of labor has been immigrants.  To this Green added that, although unions are currently unpopular and under attack, labor history is important to teach for a full understanding of United States history.

The main question Green explored was “Why teach labor history?”  His answer had multiple points:

1) Labor history provides a window into the experience of work

Green argued that work used to be more connected to education and vocational training but now the experience of work fading from public debate.  Discussing labor history provides a more clear pathway for students to see into the life of  earlier eras.  It is useful, though, to discuss “work” as the actual experience of doing that job.  For example,  Lewis Hine photos provide a way to access the experience of work and make it accessible to students.  Try discussing the activity displayed in the photo and the background history.

2) Labor history provides historical understanding about the issues surrounding work.

Green asked us to consider these questions:  “What’s a fair day’s work?  What’s a fair day’s pay?  What’s a minimum wage (living wage)?”  To answer these, students should look at the history of an issue.  For example, the eight-hour day.

Consider “What’s fair treatment?  What kind of respect does someone with no power deserve (i.e., not the boss)?”  Then look at sexual harassment in the workplace.  Work also raises the issues of individual worker decisions:  “What about ‘going it alone’?  Should employees see themselves solely as individuals?  What about group power (collective bargaining)?”  For example, the history of and debate about unions illustrate possible answers to these questions.  Finally, Green asked, “Who can you trust in the workplace?  Where does trust come from?”  Looking at school reform debates, including the issue of tenure, can untangle these issues.

3) Ethical/moral questions consideration flow from a consideration of labor history.

Green argued that labor history discussions raise fundamental questions about working.  Such as, “Who has a ‘right’ to a job?”  Looking at the history of African American workers who entered into northern factory jobs as strikebreakers  show the complexities of two groups justifiably fighting for jobs.  Examining  Booker T. Washington’s thinking on this issue would be another way to help students understand these ethical issues.

4)  The history of labor history itself provides a lens into change over time.

In the 1960s the new social history complicated the history of labor beyond just that of unions and their struggle to exist.

According to Green, there developed two dominant social history perspectives on how to explain the history of work and workers.  One was “The house of labor and how it was built.”  The history of the American Federation of Labor (AFL)  is the example of this view.  But unions in the 1950s represented only 30% of workforce and today only 7%.  So, Green asked, what about the rest of working people?  These would include historical dissenters who challenged the AFL (Debs, Mother Mary Harris Jones and today’s Occupy Wall Street movement.

The other view of labor history Green called “Up by the bootstraps.”  In the 1960s historians made explaining labor history complicated by looking at the difficulties of immigrants who went to America and worked.  Peasant rural people encountering the urban industrial complex in the U.S. experienced culture shock, hard work, and other reactions.  The new social historian Herbert Gutman saw the workplace as more than just economics (a place where people work for money).  As Green quoted an immigrant laborer: “living in the land of dollars is not easy” because in USA work is relentless (“one must do the work of four horses”) even though there is family and relationships and enjoyment of life.  Thus there were complicated responses to the experience of work, especially by these immigrant workers.  30-40% Southern Europeans were return migrants.  Bosses hated these non-WASPS who didn’t stay around to work;  workers resisted the “work ethic” being imposed by taking religious holidays, being drunk, wandering off, not showing up (‘blue Monday”).  Also, bosses had issues with workers not speaking English, not acculturating….  These issues continue today even today in the U.S. — people who come to work but find they aren’t respected.  They also want to keep own culture find themselves, and others, questioning their presence in the labor force.

How to use this history in the classroom?

Green suggested starting with a personal story as a hook into the bigger labor history themes.  One teacher participant shared her own experience coming to the U.S.  She just wanted to fit it and do the job but no one would help her and there was no power in her hands as a worker.    Green drew parallels to this experience to that of workers at Lawrence, MA in 1912 or the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911.  Another way to grab student attention would be showing Riis and Hines photos of children in the work place.  Photos may be especially useful for the younger grades.

Another way would be to connect the labor history to family history.  Examine work papers or history of family members.  Or talk to family members about the age at which people started to work.  It used to be commonplace to have kids working, explained Green.  For example, coal miners in West Va. started when they were 13 as “trapper boys” working 10-12 hour a day, underground (note: 13 yrs old= 7th grade).  Child labor laws came into place in the U.S. in the early 20th century.  The impetus for these laws came from upper class reformers who had a view of the child as “precious” unlike people in other classes or other places, who had different views of children.  The shifting view of children working shows how norms change over time.

Try discussing the universals of the labor experience.   The experience of work in general isn’t about factory work or mining, it’s about the human experience of “being compelled to sell one’s labor for compensation” (i.e., “wage labor”).  Not everyone enjoys being someone who sells their labor for wages, and trying to live on someone else’s terms, asserted Green.  For example, compare the young women in domestic service — Irish, African-American, or other immigrant groups– taking care of other people for money, then and now.

Discuss themes of American history as they relate to labor.    One theme is “freedom.”  The Michael Schwab document written during the Haymarket strike speaks to this theme.   He was a German immigrant.  There were 250,000 Germans in Chicago at the time — more than native-born Americans.  Schwab, a bookbinder looking for work, was curious and a reader; he saw the condition of the “99%” of his time.  The immigrant experience of Schwab was typical – conditions for workers in the land of plenty looked bad to him.  Green says most 8 hr day protestors were peaceful and  churchgoing; the rally at Haymarket was peaceful (Schwab not present).   A bomb was thrown – we don’t know who or why — seven police officers die.  Schwab brought in by police because he wrote about the strike.  The trial of “likely suspects” was held despite no arrests of actual suspects.  The violence was a sticking point for the court and the media.  While there were radicals present but they were not in mainstream and sometimes there was cooperation between labor groups (the AFL’s President Samuel Gompers argued for the Haymarket accused).  The circumstantial evidence at the Haymarket led to death convictions, including Schwab, with three begging for clemency (Schwab included) to Illinois Gov. Altgeld.   Schwab wrote about Haymarket in terms of “freedom” because those in power were using force and the Second Amendment allows people self-defense.  And, as Green pointed out, Haymarket workers became heroes and martyrs around the world.  In the eyes of others they died for the cause of labor freedom.  Haymarket showed how workers displayed disciplined patience and abiding faith in democracy’s ability to get it right and as such provides an example of the second view of labor history.

How does Boston compare to other stories of labor history?

Boston labor movement was mostly peaceful, according to Green.  In the seminar document it was clear how different Boston was from Chicago.  The 8 hr movment founder Ira Steward was from Lawrence.  Boston Central Labor Union represented most of wage labor in Boston.  The 1899 Streetcar Strike in Boston had public support and was peaceful.   The exception was the 1919 Boston Police Strike because while, the police were on strike, others acted, but most of the working class supported the police strikers.  More recently, the Verizon picket line was peaceful (as in, not harming others).  These local events connect  to the themes of labor history.  Boston’s Workers: A Labor History by Green and Donohue is a useful background book.  (And the full text is available through the Internet Archive; click here.)

So, in summary:  “Invincible patience” — this was model of American labor movement.  It meant prevailing despite hardship and obstacles.  This narrative of the American labor movement  is similar to the history black civil rights; the two provide interesting insights.   Labor history itself  is useful for the classroom.  It connects to the big themes of American history.  And it connects to the history of immigrants past and present.

For additional resource links, check out the Becoming America Year 3 Fall Seminar 8 page.  Try also the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection pages at the Chicago Historical Society.

[Our apologies for the delay in posting this summary – technical difficulties stymied even us!]

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,Fall Seminars ,Links ,Topic Ideas  Tagged:  BA Yr3, Booker T. Washington, Boston Central Labor Union, boston police strike, fall seminar, fs8, fs8_11, green, Haymarket, historical resources, james green, labor, labor history, resources, Schwab, social history January 26, 2012

The Immigrant Learning Center

In TRITEC partner-district Malden, MA, near the high school, is the Immigrant Learning Center.

The Immigrant Learning Center is a education and resource center for recent immigrants to the United States. According to co-founder Diane Portnoy on their website, the ILC  addresses “the need for an intensive, English language program for the growing immigrant and refugee population in Massachusetts…to help immigrants learn English so they can become successful workers, parents and community members.”

In 2011, the ILC held New Citizen Swearing-in Ceremony and hosted an Immigrant Entrepenuership Conference Videos from both events are available on the website.

The Immigrant Learning Center website offers a number of resources about current immigration which are of interest to teachers. The ILC offers research reports on the state of immigrants in Massachusetts, DVDs of immigrant theater projects, personal stories by immigrant students themselves, and a Teacher Education Forum.

These resources are useful for anyone wanting to extend their lesson to include recent immigration. Also, it would fit with the topics for BA Year 5.

For more information, check out the ILC website.

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,informational ,Lesson Planning ,research ,Topic Ideas  Tagged:  BA Yr3, BAY3, citizenship, ILC, immigrant, Immigrant Learning Center, immigration, informational, Lesson Planning, Links, malden, primary sources, resources, video January 23, 2012

Lessons DUE for HISTORIAN REVIEW

Reminder — your completed student-side lesson drafts are due on the BA Wiki tomorrow, January 20.

This is so that lessons may be readied for historian review.

The involvement with the historians makes Becoming America pretty nifty.  In the Summer Institute and over the course of the Fall Seminars, participants get to know the historians both as providers of historical content and as individuals.  The personal and professional connections made between project historians and participants help to enrich the learning process.  Our historians are experts in their fields!  To learn more about the Becoming America historians, visit their page on the Project Wiki.

This “personalized expertise” extends to historians reviewing participant’s lesson drafts.  The main goal of this review is to help historical content be accurate and relate to the main themes/goals of the project.

Here’s the form the historians use to review the lesson and give you feedback is at the top of this year’s Teacher Page. Check it out! It might help you rethink that section that is giving you problems….

It’s a privilege and a honor to have our historians read our lessons. So, please make sure your lesson is ready for review.

Any questions?  Ask a Director.  Thanks!

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,Lesson Planning  Tagged:  BA Yr3, historian review, informational, Lesson Planning January 19, 2012

Irish Diaspora NARA Jan 19

 Waltham Wicked Local has posted notice about Thomas O’Grady speaking on Irish immigration at the National Archives in Waltham (NARA Northeast) on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

According to the Wicked Local site:

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,informational  Tagged:  BA Yr3, immigration, informational, irish, NARA, o'donnell, resources January 16, 2012

Bread and Roses Strike Centennial Today

1912 Lawrence Textile Strike (from Wikimedia Commons)

Today, January 12, 2012, marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the Lawrence, MA Bread and Roses Strike.

According to Boston Globe reporter Katie Johnston in her article today “100 years later, Bread and Roses strike still resonates”: “when the state reduced the workweek from 56 to 54 hours, and mill owners responded by speeding up machines and cutting pay accordingly, some 25,000 workers walked off the job on Jan 12. The action, known as the Bread and Roses strike, not only called attention to horrific conditions in the mills, but also to the concentration of wealth and power in the United States, an issue that 100 years later would spur protesters to Occupy Wall Street, Boston, and other cities across the country.”

For more description of the strike and its impact, look at today’s Mass Moments.

Also, see the video “Collective Voices” that the Massachusetts AFL-CIO has posted on its site.

A series of events for the Centennial begins in Lawrence today.  Check out the schedule of events.

Our partner the Lawrence History Center/Immigrant City Archives at Lawrence will be a vital actor in the commemoration.   They now have their gorgeous online Bread and Roses Centennial Exhibit available.  More information about Centennial events also are available at the LHC website.

The Bread and Roses Strike directly connects to Prof. Patricia Reeve’s presentation at the LHC this summer (Summer Institute Day 4).   Also, in BA Year 2, Fall Seminar 7′s presentation by Prof. Reeve about women and labor reviewed the strike.  We did a blog entry on Fall Seminar #7 Resources (Bread and Roses Strike/Uprising of the 20,000) too.   You can find additional entries about “bread and roses strike” and “lawrence” if you search this blog.

Two of our Becoming America participants Robert D’Agostino (Everett Public Schools) and Kathleen O’Donoghue (Medford Public Schools) wrote lessons on the Bread and Roses Strike for Year 2 of the Project as part of the unit  Striking: Labor Unions and Immigrants.   Check out their lessons “Because I was unable to make a living for my family”: The role of women and unions in the Lawrence “Bread and Roses” Textile Mill Strike of 1912  and “We want bread and roses, too:” Children and the Bread and Roses Strike, Lawrence MA 1912.

In this time of economic uncertainty, the lessons of the Bread and Roses Strike do resonate.  A study of history benefits our understanding of the past and the present.  Thank you to all who are participating in the Bread and Roses Centennial and the current commemorations of this significant strike.

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,informational ,Links ,research  Tagged:  "Bread and Roses", BA Yr2, BA Yr3, Boston Globe, Bread and Roses strike of 1912, d'agostino, informational, Lawrence History Center, Lawrence Strike, Links, o'donoghue, patricia reeve, reeve, resources, SI4_11, strike, summer institute day 4, Summer Workshop, women January 12, 2012

Immigration Resource Potpourri

Sometimes we find interesting resources that relate to our overall Becoming America Project mission. Today we’d like to share some with you.

There are collections to check out

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories. This is an online archive. It offers a free trial subscription for 30 days.

The Library of Congress also has a web site called DocsTeach that has ready to use tools for teaching with primary source documents in the classroom. Try looking at the documents and activities for their lesson “Immigration Challenges for New Americans.”

The Learning Page from the Library of Congress also has a number of lessons on “Immigration and Ethnic Heritage.”

The National Archives has lessons related to The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900) and The Emergence of Modern America (1890-1930) …be sure to look at the teaching activities.

The National Humanities Center has a set of primary sources they call “America in Class.”  These are already grouped in sets by era and provide essential questions.  Try  “The Gilded and the Gritty” unit.

There are some interesting primary sources online as well.

Try Yankee Notions vol. 3 (Google Books).

The Dillingham Commission Reports (1911) provide a comprehensive view of immigration in the United States during the Progressive era.  While it is difficult to find the complete set online, various volumes have appeared.   Stanford has digitized the set, but it requires a special reader download to view.  Searching “reports of the immigration commission” on Google Books will yield a number of titles, such as Immigrants in Cities or Immigrants in Industry .  The Statistical Overview of Immigration, 1820-1910 is online at Harvard’s Open Collections.    The full set should be in the government documents set of a research library (all 41 volumes).    Note, however, that Dillingham like many in power was not overfond of immigrants and favored restriction.

Emily Greene Balch’s Our Slavic Fellow Citizens a more positive view of newly-arrived Americans.  Try contrasting Balch with Dillingham.

For secondary sources, there are a number to try.

Immigration Online is a collection of short encyclopedic essays listing secondary sources.

Also consider a number of books in your school or public library. An older source, but still helpful in its general overview, is Thomas Archdeacon’s Becoming American: An Ethnic History.

In addition, Suffolk University and Prof. Patricia Reeve made the following texts available to Becoming America Year 3 participants:

Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882.

Vincent Cannato, American Passage: The History of Ellis Island.

Reed Ueda and Conrad Edick Wright, eds., Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts 1860-2000.

All of these resources should be helpful to you as you plan your lessons.

Enjoy!

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,informational ,Lesson Planning ,Links ,research  Tagged:  BA Yr3, historical resources, immigration, Links, primary sources, reeve, research, resources January 12, 2012

Massachusetts Public Health Museum

For those of you intrigued by Patricia Reeve’s presentation on Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) and public health in Fall Seminar 6, there’s a local museum resource that you should investigate.

The Public Health Museum in Massachusetts is a museum located at the Tewksbury Hospital. Their website explains their mission and history:

The Public Health Museum located in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, is housed in the Old Administration Building of Tewksbury Hospital. Tewksbury Hospital was established in 1852 as a state almshouse to care for the poor which included a growing number of immigrants. In 1900, the Hospital name was changed to Tewksbury State Hospital; Massachusetts State Infirmary in 1908; and, Tewksbury State Hospital and Infirmary in 1938. It is now known as Tewksbury Hospital.

The City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are rich in history, but few know the integral role they played in the development of Public Health. As early as the 1700s, Boston, serving as the first line of defense against smallpox, held ships quarantined in the harbor to protect the general population. In 1796, Boston established the first Board of Health in the nation; its first sitting President was Paul Revere.

The mission of the Public Health Museum is two-fold: to maintain and grow the exhibits, artifacts and historical documents available to the public, and to serve as a resource for researching historical data.

Secondly, our mission is to serve as a resource for current public health issues by providing up-to-date information and promoting public awareness and preparedness.

Check out the The Public Health Museum’s pages on Exhibits, Visitor Guides, and Public Health Today. Useful resources for teaching public health and history are on all of these pages!

Mary Mallon in a 1909 newspaper illustration. From Wikimedia Commons

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,Fall Seminars ,Links ,Topic Ideas  Tagged:  BA Yr3, BAY3, fall seminar, fs6_11, immigrant, informational, Links, patricia reeve, public health, reeve, resources, typhoid mary, women January 9, 2012

Lesson Planning 7 this week!

Lesson Planning 7 is now underway.

Now that you have drafted your Student Side lesson, it’s time to write the Teacher Side.

The key difference between the student and teacher versions of the lesson is that the Student Side is written to the student with directions that they can follow along, while the Teacher Side is written to other teachers and may include additional instructions.   This difference is most visible in the Introduction, Task, Process (Lesson Experiences) and Conclusion sections.

More information and links may be found on the BA Wiki Lesson Planning 7 page.

Looking forward to seeing your lesson draft ready for historian review!

1 comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,Lesson Planning  Tagged:  BA Yr3, BAY3, historian review, Lesson Planning, lp7, lp7_11, teacher page, teacher side, template January 5, 2012

Welcome to 2012!

Welcome back!

Here’s a quick reminder that we will be submitting your lessons for historian review on January 20th.

What does this mean to you?

By that time, you should have completed all sections of the Becoming America Year 3 – American History Lesson Template and added this information to your Teacher Lesson Page on the wiki.

Over this week, we will be completing Lesson Planning 7.

For this meeting, you should have completed at least the following sections of the American History Lesson Template on Lesson Planning 6:

• Introduction
• Tasks
• Process

Drafting as much as you can now, makes completion by the deadline much easier!

Please keep track of your primary and secondary sources and anything else that you may want to use in your lesson.

This information may be added to either your Teacher lesson page, or your primary source page.

We hope you had a great holiday and vacation and we look forward to working with you  in the New Year!

Your Becoming America Project staff

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,Lesson Planning  Tagged:  BA Yr3, BAY3, historian review, Lesson Planning, lp7_11, teacher side January 3, 2012

Immigrants and Food — Holiday Edition

Because it’s the holiday season, we wanted to call your attention to a PBS show that features immigration, food, and holidays.

Lidia Celebrates America broadcasts tomorrow (December 20, 2011) on WGBH Channel 2 at 8:00 pm.  According to WGBH’s program guide, the show “explores the American immigrant experience through holiday traditions.”

Although it’s long since Summer Workshop Day 5 and Kathleen Banks Nutter’s presentation on “Immigrants and Food,”  December brings the interconnections of food and immigration to the forefront.

Below is a description of the program from PBS’s homesite.

And, just in case we don’t say it on the correct day:

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and festive seasonal greetings!

from PBS.org:

“At the heart of Lidia Celebrates America is my own immigrant experience. When I came to this country at the age of 12, I had already spent two years in a political refugee camp. Whenever I meet American families with roots in other countries I know immediately that we have something in common.”
— Lidia Bastianich

An Italian Christmas Eve. A Mexican-American Christmas Day. A Chinese New Year. A Passover Seder. Four holidays, four very different tables and traditions. Join celebrity chef and culinary author Lidia Bastianich as she travels across America in a celebration of culture through food in the new PBS prime-time special, Lidia Celebrates America: Holiday Tables and Traditions, airing Tuesday, December 20, at 8pm on PBS (check local listings).

http://www.pbs.org/food/shows/lidia-celebrates-america/

Add comment Posted in  BA Year 3 ,informational ,Links ,Summer Workshop ,Topic Ideas  Tagged:  BA Yr3, BAY3, food, historical resources, holiday, immigrant, informational, Lidia, Links, resources, SI5_11, Summer Workshop, wgbh December 19, 2011