Category: Lessons & Resources

Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association

Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association

Brandon Lopez

Cesar Chavez, a Mexican American, is the president of the National Farm Workers Association, an organization of farm workers fighting for more benefits and equality. Cesar Chavez’s goals for his fellow farm workers were to create a Union, an insurance program for farm workers, higher wages and contracts for farm workers, and equality. Cesar Chavez’s historic strike, the Delano Grape Strike, is one of the many strikes he takes pride in for expressing his unwavering conviction that he is on the right side of history and that the violence and humiliation that the growers are showing towards the workers will only fuel them more with conviction and determination to strike until they receive the benefit they are entitled to because of their hard work. Thousands of supporters helped Cesar Chavez in their fight for unionizing by participating in strikes, boycotting the companies’ products, and much more. This constant fight for equality painted a bad image for the company. The companies were both Schenley Industries and the DiGiorgio Corporation. This nonviolent approach and fight for equality was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who also had peaceful protests. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the many prominent figures throughout Cesar Chavez’s career who supported Cesar Chavez and was able to inspire him to take a peaceful approach in order to achieve his goals for these strikes, which are being able to Unionize insurance programs to better benefits for farm workers.

This research dives into the challenges and struggles Cesar Chavez, and the National Farm Workers Association faced as they tirelessly worked to achieve fundamental rights and improved working conditions for marginalized and exploited farm laborers by shedding light on the strategies used by Cesar Chavez and his National Farm Workers Association in their fight against the obstacles standing in the way of their equality. Cesar Chavez’s legacy as a labor leader and civil rights activist is a testament to how hard he fought in the face of adversity.

Cesar Chavez was influenced by his own experiences in a migrant farm-working family, he then decided to face the injustices prevalent in his community. Working under Fred Ross Jr. Cesar Chavez learned about the rights of Hispanic, specifically Mexican, farmworkers and was empowered by his community and the injustices to fight against discrimination. Cesar Chavez’s journey in building a labor movement, started with grassroots efforts in his community. Challenges such as fear of reprisal and deportation scared and made people reject Cesar Chavez, Cesar Chavez successfully recruited supporters, including religious figures and community organizers. The lack of unity and coordination within the United Farm Workers is also an obstacle the organization had to overcome, as well as the violence and intimidation faced by supporters from anti-union groups. Cesar Chavez’s goals included creating a union, insurance programs, higher wages, and contracts for farmworkers to improve their living conditions. The success of the United Farm Workers is thanks to various strategies, including boycotts, strikes, and protests, which pressured large companies like Di Giorgio to negotiate with Cesar Chavez and the organization. Cesar Chavez’s leadership and organizational skills, played an important role in advancing the cause for farmworker justice.

Through the movement Cesar Chavez was supported by a diverse group of people. It highlights Cesar Chavez’s ability to connect with various groups, such as the Mexican Pentecostal church, religious leaders, college students, and workers from different ethnic backgrounds such as Mexican Americans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans. The Mexican Pentecostal community provided moral and financial support, while college students actively participated in protests, strikes, and fundraising efforts. The teamwork among different ethnic groups in the civil rights movement, notably influenced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., contributed to the movement’s strength. Despite facing hardships and sacrifices, the labor movement achieved its goals, in succeeding in getting contracts with major growing companies and paving the way for the Agricultural Labor Relations Act to govern farm workers’ rights and union activities. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers faced hardships and challenges in their mission to better the rights and working conditions of farm laborers, facing industry resistance, violent opposition, and internal struggles. Despite the obstacles faced, Cesar Chavez’s strategic approach, marked by nonviolent protests, strikes, and boycotts, garnered crucial attention and support for the movement. The community, including Mexican Americans, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, college students, and religious leaders, emerged as a pivotal force in achieving the movement’s goals. Cesar Chavez’s dedication, inspired by personal experiences and the struggles of farm workers, led to the success of the United Farm Workers.

This article provides a summary of Cesar Chavez’s activism, the challenges faced by the National Farm Workers Association, and the broader labor movement in the southwest. Some reasons why Cesar Chavez should be taught in school is because it sheds light on the historical context of the labor movement in the southwest, providing students with insights into the challenges faced by marginalized and exploited farm laborers during that time. Cesar Chavez’s connection with the civil rights movement, particularly his inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., offers an opportunity to explore the different social justice movements during the 20th century. Students can also analyze how Cesar Chavez adapted nonviolent protest strategies from the civil rights movement to advocate for the rights of farm workers. Students can learn about the challenges and criticisms faced by Chavez and analyze how he overcame them to achieve the goals of the United Farm Workers. Highlighting the diverse support of the labor movement, showing the unity between different ethnic groups, religious communities, and college students. Students can explore how diverse communities came together to support a common cause and the role of solidarity in achieving social justice goals. By incorporating this article into the classroom, teachers can help provide a diverse perspective about social justice, labor rights, leadership, and the unity of historical movements. It encourages critical thinking, analysis of historical events, and reflection on the ongoing struggles for equality and justice.

Death Transformed: How the Black Death Impacted the Dying in the 14th Century

Death Transformed: How the Black Death Impacted the Dying in the 14th Century

Tyler Klinsky

            From 1348 to 1350, Europe was consumed by a deadly plague that left one-third to one-half of the population dead. All aspects of society at the time were impacted in some way by a large number of deaths. People lived in fear of this invisible foe, bodies littered the streets, resulting from the overwhelming amount of death all at once. Cemeteries and churches could not continue traditional ways of burying the dead and death was no longer celebrated as a community event with friends and family. Bodies were collected from houses and from the streets and buried in mass graves, with no bells, no singing, and no one to accompany the dead as they were buried in their final resting place. Sometimes bodies remained at the place of death for days until the body collector eventually reached that part of town, the smell of rotting corpses could be smelled across the city. The dying suffered alone, friends, family, and even doctors were too afraid to be in contact with the infected, no priests would visit for last confessions and the infected would die with no one at their side. How did the Black Death impact the practices and experiences surrounding death? This essay will argue the Black Death dehumanized the traditional funerary practices, methods of handling the dead, and the experiences of the dying in society. The Black Death disrupted the normal functions surrounding death by no longer allowing for funerary traditions and as a result, new methods of handling and burying the dead were practiced. The abandonment of friends and family as the dying suffered added to the dehumanization of society’s experience as a whole. The term dehumanizing is used in this context to show how the infected were treated like animals and their bodies were disposed of in inhuman ways that would be considered criminal in the present time.    

Historiography

The Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague, was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. It is estimated that the disease killed one-third to half of the population in Europe during the 14th century (Horrox) from 1348-1350, and its impact on the population and treatment of the dead was significant and important to be researched. The historiography of the Black Death has been shaped by various factors, including the availability of primary sources, and the methodological approaches of historians from secondary sources. Although these sources have various points and information they come together for supporting information. 

The first article that explores the gruesome realities of the Black Death is “The Black Death in English Towns” by author Richard Britnell. This article offers a glimpse into the horrors of the Black Death, from the mass graves that were used to dispose of the bodies of the dead to the role of “body collectors” who were tasked with gathering the corpses and disposing of them. The author explains the dangers the “body collectors” faced and the horrific jobs they were expected to complete. In this article, the methodologies of archeology and social history, are shown from the included examples of how the dead were collected and buried and how society adapted to a large number of dead. In the second source “The Politics of Burial in Late Medieval Hereford” written by Ian Forrest, the author expands on how the social and cultural development of burials was impacted because of the Black Death. The religious practices that impacted how bodies were buried during this time of great death are also included in the article.   The author includes information on how the large number of bodies piled in the cities and families abandoning each other became the new normalcy in cities.

The third secondary source “Plague Violence and Abandonment from the Black Death to the Early Modern Period,” by author Sam Cohen, examines the ways in which the sick and dying were abandoned as the fear of the plague grew and the violence created between family members tore society apart from within. The article also includes social methodology examples, of the violence in society, the refusal by doctors to treat the sick, and the abandonment of loved ones caused no hope of traditional burials and funerary practices. The final article, “The Black Death, 1348”, written by John Carey on Eyewitness to History, provides a variety of information on the topics surrounding the responses to the Plague. Further information on the ways bodies were disposed of and the social responses to the impending danger, inform the readers why there was no concern for the health status of neighbors, friends, and sometimes family members as well. Again like the other articles this one contains archeological and social methodologies are included in this article.

All four secondary sources contribute to the overall thesis of the paper, providing information that the plague impacted the ways in which society dealt with death during the plague and how it affected the many principles that contributed to death. These principles include the new methods of burying the dead, and how the experiences of the dying were no longer peaceful because they were suffering alone and believed to be dying with sin. I agree with the author’s overall thesis and points because it contributes to the thesis of this paper however, the only holes I have found were small the amount of information on the experiences of the dying moments before death and how the stress of giving confession before death was so important to the citizens, along with the hopes of a “good death” not being possible during this time. Although they are secondary sources rather than primary sources it is unrealistic to expect first-hand experiences to be included, however, It would have been helpful to have more general information on how the victims came to terms with the inevitable death and help reinforce the overall thesis. Instead of continuing where they left off, I will fill the holes of important points and information that each article did not include and will reinforce their information with the completed research from the primary sources included in this essay. 

Funerary traditions

The Black Death impacted traditional funerary practices in society, as a result of a large number of people dying, no longer were services held in the households of the dead for people to come to say their final goodbyes. Traditional gifts were not able to be sent because of fear of transmission through the gifts “No one shall dare or presume to give or send any gift to the house of the deceased,” (Chiappelli, P.197).  No longer were family members attending funerals because of the ordinances preventing them, however, they were too afraid to risk attending, one source noted, “It was rare for bodies of the dead to be accompanied by more than 10 or 12 neighbors to church” (Boccaccio, p. 31). As the death toll started to increase the more the traditional funerary activities changed, no longer mourners or criers to honor the dead. No longer could the sounds of bells be heard or prayer groups be seen, the fear of death had traditional practices in a chokehold, as one author describes the experience, “No prayer, trumpet or bell summoned friends or neighbors to the funeral, nor was massed performed” (Boccaccio, P. 23). The fear of death played a great role in disrupting the normal religious and community traditions.

Regardless, if someone was too scared to leave their house no longer was there any notification that a person has passed, without any bells, tolled, invitations sent, posters hung, or chairs set up in the streets there was no way to know when someone had died as one author points out, “mourners should not gather in the houses of the dead, nor should banners or seats be placed in the streets, nor should other customary observances be present,” no longer was there any way of honoring the death of a friend or family member, even the customary religious practices were also provoked, instead “crowds should not be invited, but instead, people should pray for the dead and attend vigil and mass”(Muisis, P. 53). The religious practices surrounding death also broke down as a result and other activities were done by living members of society to fill the time normally spend doing religious works.

 Members of society quarantine themselves and blocked out all the death-related obligations of attending funerals, ringing bells, and partaking in mourning groups that they were previously held. The Black Death was impactful on traditional funerary practices that normally brought friends and family together to honor the dead, instead, the accustomed practices were altered as a result of the epidemic, and these experiences as a whole were dehumanizing to all cities struck by the plague across Europe. 

Impact on Burial Practices

The great plague in Europe during the 14th century resulted in one-third to half the population dead, the traditional methods of burial were unable to keep up with the large number of people dying on a daily basis, and a change in the way of burial was needed. The known tradition of burying loved ones as a family event with friends in attendance was no longer a possibility considering the dangerous circumstances and the great fear of contracting the disease. The conventional way in which bodies were buried was substituted with a more efficient way to account for the dramatically large amount of death. No longer were the dead buried in single graves with other dead family members, instead, mass graves were dug and the bodies of the dead were placed with strangers. Also, as a result, bodies were disposed of in inhumane ways without receiving blessings or last goodbyes from family members. One way of disposal as described by Horrox was, “the townspeople dumped as many of the bodies they could in the sea” (Mussis, P.17). Eventually, of all the people dying the bodies could not be disposed of as quickly because not as many people were working. This caused rotting bodies to be in the streets for days and rather than the corpses of the dead being taken from their houses by a hearse with their families, the bodies were left on the streets until a body collector reached them for pick up. One author explains how the long time between death and burial caused “movement of the bones within the corpse” (Forrest, 1117). This movement was referred to as “Bone Float” and was another side effect of the bodies not being buried in a timely matter.  

Experiencing the large number of bodies in the streets is described by the author Boccaccio, “the bodies of the dead were extracted from their houses and left lying outside their front doors” and “Funeral biers would be sent for and it was by no means rare for one of these biers to be seen with two or three bodies at a time” (Boccaccio, P.32). By the time the body collectors reached the rotting bodies they were not in good shape, Buboes might burst, leaking rancid pus. Flea bites that transmitted the deadly bacteria Yersinia pestis could become infected. The terrible stench of rotting flesh was unable to be blocked out from the nostrils of the collectors. Instead of bodies being buried in caskets like today’s standards, the bodies were exposed to mud and bugs in the soil. One author included, “a third of all burials, whether in one of the trenches or in an ordinary grave was in a coffin”(Britnell, 205). Buried like animals with no “Grave Markers” as the author also mentions, no way of identifying where loved ones were laid to rest. The job was disgusting and dangerous for these body collectors, they knew the risks, however, someone needed to complete the job. Clothing and any belongings from a diseased person could transfer the disease to one of these body collectors, which increased the risk of the job. After the bodies were collected no longer was single graves a possibility because of the sheer amount of bodies needed to be disposed of.

A new way of burying bodies in large trenches rather than singular graves was called “mass graves”. This was described by the chronicler Bocaccio, “when all the graves were full, huge trenches were excavated in the churchyards, new arrivals were placed by the hundreds, each layer of corpses being covered by a thin layer of soil till the trench was filled to the top” (Boccaccio, P. 33). There was also new regulations referred to as ordinances in some cities in Europe, such as Pistoia in 1348. Some of these ordinances were created to affect the way in which people were buried and handled, in Pistoia, “The bodies of the dead should not be removed from the place of death until enclosed in a wooden box” (Chiapelli, P.196). These ordinances were created to stop the stench of the dead to contaminate or infect the person handling them. Other regulations were created in Pistoia regarding the requirements for burials. One requirement created was that “each grave shall be dug two and a half armlengths deep” (Chiapelli, P.196). This was done to stop the stench of the rotting bodies to reach the surface of the ground. The Black Death caused many inhuman ways of transporting and burying bodies to be seen during the 14th-century plague.

Dying alone

The plague during the 14th century caused a wave of fear to encompass all of Europe, the disease was an invisible enemy that could not be seen but, was very much felt. With no one at the bedside of the infected moments before death, the desire for a painless sin-free “good death” was no longer possible for the victims of the Black Death. The hope of the last confession as an attempt to clear the sins of the infected was no longer possible in Europe during the 14th-century Black Death. The fear caused the abandonment of dying friends and family as people search for a safe place to escape the disease. The hope to be cleared of sin was no longer a possibility many of the priests were too afraid to visit the dying, but in some cases, “the priests, panic-stricken, administered the sacraments with fear and trembling” (Mussis, P.22). Not everyone was so lucky, in some parts of Europe many people died without giving a confession, in hopes of having a clean slate while entering the afterlife.

Not only were priests abandoning the sick and their duties, family, and friends no longer cared for their loved ones, “when one person lay sick in a house no one would come near, even dear friends would hide themselves away” and the children’s cries were loud as one author describes, “Oh father, why have you abandoned me? Mother where have you gone? Do you forget I am your child?” (Mussis, P. 22). Instead of people caring for their neighbors like they once did, they avoided them at all cost. Instead of hiding some people, “formed small communities, living entirely separate from everybody else. They shut themselves up in houses where there were no sick, eating the finest food and drinking the best wine very temperately, avoiding all excess, allowing no news or discussion of death and sickness, and passing the time in music and suchlike pleasures” (Carey, 2020). The ways in which society interacted with one another were altered. In some cases people would have survived if they received some type of help or care from another person, whether it be food or water brought to them, the abandonment aided in the cause of death in some cases. The dying suffered alone with no one at their bedside, and the hope of a “good death” was no longer possible, without family members surrounding the dying members to be made comfortable, the sick often were treated terribly by loved ones who at one time promised to always be there for them, one author described the experience, “the sick are treated like dogs by their families-they give them food and drink, then flee the house” (Heyligen, P. 44). It was a dehumanizing experience for those infected. 

The fear caused by The Black Death increased the abandonment of the dying, the social construct continued to collapse and doctors and physicians would no longer visit the infected and let the disease run its course. Author Sam Cohen includes information on the social breakdown of medical care during the plague, “the same connection between ferocious contagion and the social consequences, causing physicians not to visit the stricken” (Cohen, 2017). Living and dying were the same thing during the Black Death, everyone suffered regardless of being infected or not, the fear caused abandonment from loved ones, and the chances of receiving a final confession in hopes of a traditional “good death” was unlikely, the social breakdown of no one caring for other and medical personal abandoning their duties of helping the sick aided in the death toll being so tremendous. The abandonment added to the inhumanity of the experiences caused by The Black Death in all parts of society.

Conclusion

The period of the Black Death in the 14th century was a dehumanizing experience for all members of society. The traditional funerary practices and methods of handling the dead were no longer a possibility. The great number of people sick and dying prevented community get-togethers to honor the lives of those who passed, instead, people were buried without friends or family in attendance. A large number of dying caused “mass graves” to be the new method for burial because it was a faster way of burying a large number of corpses at once and was more space efficient, now three to four bodies could fit the same space of one traditional grave. The fear of the plague caused the abandonment of friends and family in society, the infected died alone without doctors tending to them or priests present to clear their sins before death. The main points contribute to the argument that the Black Death was a dehumanizing experience for those who lived in Europe during the epidemic.   

References

Britnell, R. (1994). The black death in English towns. Urban history, 21(2), 195–210. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44613912

Carey, J. “the black death, 1348.” eyewitness to history. Last modified august 25, 2020.  http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm

Cohn, S. (2017). Plague violence and abandonment from the black death to the early modern period. Annales de démographie historique, 2 (134), 39–61. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26627248

Forrest, I. (2010). The politics of burial in late medieval hereford. The english historical review, 125(516), 1110–1138. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40963124

The Social Cost of Deindustrialization: Postwar Trenton, New Jersey

The Social Cost of Deindustrialization: Postwar Trenton, New Jersey

Patrick Luckie

Studying local history is something that is often overlooked and underestimated in social studies classrooms around the country. Think about it—do you have any memory of learning about your own local community in a coordinated school or social studies effort? Big ideas like imperialism, global culture, and other themes of the past and present usually take precedence over learning about one’s own local history in the high school. As part of my undergraduate senior research project at Rider University, I grappled with this fact and produced a short study of my own local history which I used to inform my instruction in the classroom. This article will present the research I have done and will end with a short analysis of how my research project on local history has affected my instruction in Ewing High School and how it can change the way we think about teaching local history in all American high school social studies classrooms.

 “Trenton’s uniqueness cannot be found anywhere in the world, for the lessons learned cannot be duplicated at any price”[1]

These powerful words were written by Dr. Jack Washington, a teacher of Social Studies in Trenton public schools for over 40 years and author of, The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965 which traces racial struggle and movements for equality over the city’s history. Trenton’s uniqueness as Washington describes, is a product of its deep history, rooted in the American Revolution, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Trenton was once a manufacturing powerhouse, home to multiple industries which forged the urban landscape of the state’s capital and produced thousands of union jobs for its inhabitants. These included the mighty John A. Roebling’s Sons Company, which aided in the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge and whose factory in West Chambersburg served as a symbol of innovation and opportunity for decades. Trenton’s pottery industry was also one of the largest and most successful in the whole nation alongside its iron, steel, rubber, and textile companies. Together, these industries provided enough stable employment and pay to support a rapidly growing population of mostly first and second generation European immigrants from Italy, Ireland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, to name a few. Trenton’s manufacturing prowess was best showcased in 1917 with the first lighting of the famous “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” sign on the Lower Trenton Bridge, a symbol which still stands today in 2023.

 The “golden age” of the city, as historian John T. Cumbler describes it, lasted from around 1850 to 1920 when Trenton established itself as one of the manufacturing capitals of the nation.[2] Almost perfectly situated between two of America’s largest cities in New York and Philadelphia, Trenton industrialists used its strategic geographic location along the Delaware River to tap into large markets and supply the massive manufacturing needs of the east coast. Trenton at this time was truly a symbol of the American dream, and people flocked to the city in search of opportunities. By 1920, the population of the city surpassed 119,000 people and it was amongst the most densely populated places in the state of New Jersey.[3]

The first signs of the city’s decline came with the weakening of its labor movement. By the 1920s, the age of mechanization had begun and the economic shift from factory work to mechanized manufacturing began weakening labor unions overtime. Worker’s unions and cooperation between owners and workers alike had been central to the functioning of the local economy and the glue by which the city binded itself together. Overtime, businesses could no longer maintain the standards of work they had previously upheld and conditions within the city started to slowly deteriorate. From 1910-1920 Trenton underwent its largest leap in population within a decade and shortly thereafter it began experiencing some of its greatest economic struggles. Plants began relocating outside of the city and unionized jobs were becoming more and more difficult to attain. Economic historians have grappled with this shift in the post-war era, claiming “US corporations aggressively sought to break free of expensive union contracts and to seek out ways to pay lower wages and allied social costs in order to increase profits.”[4] This is a persistent trend in this study. With great increases in population and the changing state of the local and national economy, Trenton suffered meaningful losses in employment and manufacturing output.

With the Great Depression beginning in 1929 and the waging of the Second World War in 1939, Trenton retreated back to manufacturing and away from addressing the issues surrounding labor which had marked its initial decline. The waging of the war meant a massive nation-wide mobilization of industry towards fueling the war effort. The war-time economy of Trenton temporarily revitalized the city. Roebling’s Sons employed droves of new workers, opportunities for overtime became more available, unions strengthened, worker’s pay went up, and the largest wave of black migrants in the city’s history began making their way to Trenton beginning in the 1940s.[5] These migrants came to Trenton and other cities in what is known as The Great Migration. That is the movement of millions of African Americans predominantly from the rural southern states to the urban north and midwest between 1910-1970.

This temporary boom did not yield long-term progress for Trenton in the post-war period. During the 1950s, many of the city’s largest industries began relocating outside the city limits and the economy did not adequately support its largest ever population of over 129,000 people.[6] In 1952, Trenton’s most popular employer Roebling’s Sons was sold to Colorado Fuel and Iron Company which over the next decade cut its employment numbers in Trenton and relocated its major manufacturing and business centers outside the city limits. This was the fate for many of the most popular industries within the city which sold their shares to larger corporations after WWII, leaving the fate of the city’s economy in the hands of interests which had little to no connection to it. The rubber, steel, iron, and pottery industries which had defined the city of Trenton and produced its “golden age” became shadows of their former selves and the physical conditions of the city reflected this change. Overtime, thousands of industrial jobs were lost and the population of Trenton dropped 13,382 people from 1950 to 1960 and an additional 9,381 people the following decade.[7] Population decline continued to the year 2000 and stabilized between 80,000 to 90,000 in the 21st century. 

This study seeks to answer two fundamental questions: 1) What were the major effects of deindustrialization on Trenton, NJ in the decades immediately following WWIII? 2) How were these effects felt by the people living within the city at this time? In answering these questions, this study will provide a lens through which race and class come to the forefront of the discussion. Trenton’s decline overlaps with the migration of thousands of African Americans to the city in search of economic opportunities. This demographic shift was the largest in the city’s history and was not met with opportunity but rather inequality and increased racial tension. The major effects of deindustrialization on Trenton, NJ in the post-war period were economic destabilization, movement to the suburbs, and increased racial tensions between white and black Trentonians. Each subsection of this work will dive into these effects individually as well as their overall impact on life in Trenton. It is important to recognize that this movement away from manufacturing and its effects were not phenomena restricted to certain areas or regions. Rather it was a national trend which all rust belt cities like Trenton grappled with in the 21st century. In addition to deindustrialization broadly,  the age of mechanized labor, the shifting of the U.S. economy towards greater support for large corporations, and the social movements of the 1960s all played extremely important roles in shaping American cities in the post-war era.

Historiography

Secondary source literature on the decline of U.S. cities in the post-WWII period falls into the fields of American urban, economic, and social history. One of the most popular works on these subjects is historian Thomas J. Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, which examines the many ways in which American cities began to decline following WWII with specific focus on racial inequality and division. In his work, Sugrue states that Trenton, like Detroit and other rust belt cities of the time, experienced hundreds of thousands of layoffs in manufacturing jobs nationwide due to the changing state of the U.S. economy and the lack of government spending allocated towards Northern cities.[8] These conditions radically transformed urban environments into almost unrecognizable versions of their industrial heights. Sugrue explores the connections between suburbanization, demographic change, and the racial attitudes of northern whites to produce an all-encompassing case study of the decline of Detroit. At the heart of his argument is that racial segregation and inadequate political responses to signs of crisis determined the fate of the city. The importance of this historical research cannot be overstated. Before this book was originally published in 1996, the stories of Detroit and other American cities who suffered from the consequences of deindustrialization and racial division in the post-war period were largely untold. The Origins of Urban Crisis continues to be one of the most influential modern studies of American urban history and is without doubt one of the most cited pieces of literature in the field.

Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, who together produced Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization,built on the historical research of Sugrue by studying the impact of post-war deindustrialization across the nation. This book seeks to progress the conversation of historic decline to modern solutions for urban decay and economic instability. In doing so, it compiles a collection of essays from historians and other professionals to further explore deindustrialization and its impact on American cities.[9] From this perspective, the authors identify a complexity of causes and effects of urban decline which vary from city to city but share many similarities nationally. The value of this work is in its wide-scope. By compiling essays from multiple professionals in a variety of related disciplines, the image of declining cities in the U.S. following WWII becomes more clear than ever.

The most recognized work on post-war deindustrialization in specifically Trenton, New Jersey lies within historian John T. Cumbler’s A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton. This book outlines a long trajectory of economic conditions in Trenton beginning in the 1920s with focus on the Great Depression and researches the changing nature of the city up until the book’s publishing in 1989. One of Cumbler’s main arguments includes the notion that America experienced a gradual economic shift from civic to national capitalism following the Great Depression which empowered large corporations while simultaneously destroying the small businesses which held many industrial cities together.[10] He also explores the rich history of the city’s most impactful industries, politicians, union leaders, and manufacturing workers to provide a comprehensive view of Trenton’s economic and social decline. This work provides the foundation of historical knowledge on Trenton required to produce further research on this topic. However, Cumbler’s history of Trenton does not extend as far into the social consequences and effects of deindustrialization as one might expect. Nevertheless, virtually any modern historical literature on the city of Trenton cites this work. This points to the undying credibility of Cumbler as a historian and shows the importance and relevance of his arguments to the continued study of the city’s history.

More recent historical literature on related topics has largely focused on national trends of suburbanization and racial conflict. One such journal article titled “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Suburban Progress” by University of Waterloo professor Stacy Denton studies the shift towards suburbanization following WWII. The author highlights the transformation of previously rural spaces to suburban landscapes and the implications of such transformations on national attitudes and beliefs towards race, culture, and class.[11] In a similar light, economic historian Leah Platt Bouston’s 2007 work “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets” studies the effects of The Great Migration on northern cities and their economies. She also dives into the racist attitudes of northern whites which manifested themselves in movements out of increasingly diversifying cities and into the surrounding suburbs as part of a process termed “white flight.”[12] Both these works of history are incredibly valuable to this study of post-war Trenton for the topics and findings of their research are amongst the greatest effects of deindustrialization on the city.

The research done in this paper will synthesize the secondary source material on the decline of U.S. cities and apply their findings to a specific case study of Trenton, New Jersey. In doing so, it will paint a clearer picture of the more immediate social and economic effects of deindustrialization on the city in the decades following WWII. This will add to the historiography of urban history and Trenton historical study by compiling primary and secondary source documents to more deeply understand the major effects of deindustrialization and economic transformation on the city.  These major effects include economic destabilization, massive suburbanization, and increased racial tension. These symptoms of deindustrialization were felt most harshly by the city’s poor ethnic-white and growing black population. More specifically, economic decline in Trenton coincided with the arrival of black migrants which compounded racist attitudes and practices within the city. This is most clear in workplace and housing segregation which new migrants had to face upon their arrival.

Economic instability

Industry leaving Trenton following WWII radically changed the city’s local economy. Unionized factory jobs became harder to attain, poor residents were left with fewer options, and Trenton’s growing black community was segregated in their employment. Long-time union workers like those who worked in the pottery and steel plants found themselves in an unfamiliar situation. As Cumbler explained, “Those workers thrown out of work by plant closings had the hardest time finding work and represented the largest number of Trenton’s unemployed.”[13]

The selling of corporations like Roebling’s Sons produced a much weaker focus on the city’s manufacturing growth and output and instead, large corporations sought for the relocation of facilities and workers to outside the city. This left the existing workforce in the city out to dry and decreased options for employment, especially among the lower-income white and minority black populations.

 One action taken by the state and local government to fill this gap created by fleeing industry was growth in the employment of state workers and other public jobs. New Jersey state workers were in the 1950s and 60s, as they still are in the present day, centralized in the capital city of Trenton. Cumbler described this shift from manufacturing to public work as, “Blue Collar to White Collar and White Smock.”[14] This provided some relief to the city’s unemployment problem which exceeded the national average through the 1950s and 60s but it did not come close to meeting the pay and benefit standards that manufacturing jobs had produced just a decade prior. Additionally, the large majority of state workers employed at this time were disproportionately white men. Despite these changes, public and state employment was not enough to lift the city out of its economic slump nor its inherent issues with workplace discrimination.

A large part of the story of economic destabilization in Trenton as a product of deindustrialization was the negative consequences on its black community. Former Trentonian and author Helen Lee Jackson published her autobiography in 1978 charting her experience with racial discrimination as a black woman seeking meaningful employment in the city. Her description of Trenton reads as follows:

In 1940, Trenton was an industrial city with many potteries. Steel mills, factories, and a large auto plant, but the production lines were almost solidly white. Black men swept the floors, moved heavy equipment and shipping crates, and performed other burdensome tasks. In the business sections, they were almost invisible except as window cleaners, janitors, or elevator operators. There were no black salespeople in the stores, banks, or business offices. They were hired as maids, package wrappers, or seamstress. Even the five-and-ten-cent stores refused to hire blacks, except to sweep, dust, or move stock.[15]

Jackson’s firsthand experience with racial segregation and inequality in the city in the 1940s is a reflection of the racial attitudes and prejudices in Trenton and other northern cities earlier in the 20th century. Racist attitudes towards black migrants who largely came from the south was a characteristic of many industrial cities in the U.S. at this time as is highlighted in Sugrue’s work on Detroit and other rust belt cities. With greater numbers of black migrants entering northern cities, the problem of racial discrimination and inequality intensified and the competition for jobs in short supply fuel racist attitudes. According to Sugrue, a combination of factors including employer bias, the structure of the industrial work place, and the overarching ideologies and beliefs of racism and black inferiority contributed to this workplace segregation.[16] For Trenton, these differences in employment were visible to the observer and significantly impacted the lives of those seeking stable income. With the collapse of industry happening simultaneously with a dramatic increase in the city’s black population, this problem compounded. Black residents were not only excluded from whatever factory jobs were left on the basis of their race but they were also labeled as the source of the city’s problems altogether.

In a 1953 study of community services in Trenton, researchers found that the average black resident experienced twice as much unemployment and earned on average 30% less total income than the average white person at this time despite only a one year difference in their average acquired education.[17] These statistics are proof of income inequality and workplace discrimination and provide insight into the lived experiences of black people in Trenton at this time. Furthermore, research from The Journal of Economic History, suggests “black workers were channeled into negro jobs and faced limited opportunities for promotion.”[18] Access to financial resources and meaningful employment were among the largest reasons for black migration to Trenton and other northern cities. Upon their arrival however, they were met with egregious workplace discrimination and were given very little opportunities to climb the economic ladder. Black women specifically made up, “The least utilized pool of potential industrial labor power having much less than proportionate representation with her white counterpart” according to a 1950s study titled, The Negro in the Trenton Labor Market.[19] Many black women, including Helen Lee Jackson, struggled even more so than black men to find employment within the city. These conditions forced economically disadvantaged men and women alike to scramble for jobs and income in order to support themselves and their families.

Changes to the manufacturing economy and workplace discrimination created great instability in Trenton during the 1950s and 60s. Old union workers were suddenly left jobless and the fruits of their loyal labor to the city’s largest industries were now gone. Attempts to revitalize the economy largely failed and economic decline impacted the poor and minority black population of the city more harshly than anyone else in the form of unequal pay and limited job opportunities. With this knowledge, it becomes clear that deindustrialization and the exodus of industry destroyed the economy of Trenton that was historically forged by large-scale manufacturing and robust labor unions and disproportionately affected the new and growing black community.

Suburbanization

Another major consequence of postwar deindustrialization on America’s rustbelt cities was the creation of and migration to the suburbs. Suburbs are the areas where urban centers like Trenton, NJ extend into previously rural environments where new housing developments, industries, and townships began to populate with greater and greater numbers of prior city-dwelling individuals. Historian Kenneth T. Jackson’s work on suburbanization titled,

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States,  provides the best historical analysis of this phenomenon which swept the nation in the 20th century. Among many important factors, he claims that the roots of suburbanization can be traced to the boom of the automobile industry in the 1920s which enabled those who could afford it to move further and further away from the cities in which they worked. Jackson states, “Indeed the automobile had a greater spatial and social impact on cities than any technological innovation since the development of the wheel” He goes further to explain, “After 1920 suburbanization began to acquire a new character as residential developments multiplied, as cities expanded far beyond their old boundaries, and as the old distinctions between city and country began to erode.”[20]

For Trenton NJ, this shift towards the suburbs was gradual beginning in the 1920s and peaking during the 1950s. It is important to note that suburbanization in Trenton and in cities across the nation happened gradually into the late 20th century. This coincided with a decline in major industries and jobs. Historical research on suburbanization has also revealed that many of these white suburbanites moved to the suburbs to create a physical barrier between them and their racial counterparts.[21] As a result of these factors, thousands of residents with the financial freedom to do so began expanding into the towns on the periphery like Hamilton, Ewing, and Lawrence. Many of whom continued to work as state workers or in other capacities inside Trenton while living outside the city. These towns saw unprecedented growth in the post-WWII years in housing developments thanks to VA and FHA loans which were granted to veterans of the war as part of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Reforms.[22] It is important to note that these New Deal programs were especially beneficial to white service members and much historical literature has been written about the exclusionary practices associated with housing loans in relation to African Americans. This is relevant because during and shortly after WWII, the largest wave of black migrants traveled from predominantly southern states to Trenton and other northern cities in search of employment opportunities associated with the mobilization of industry towards the war effort. This search for opportunity overlapped with the decay of Trenton’s largest industries, leaving many black migrants below the poverty line, working menial jobs as opposed to fruitful unionized jobs, and in some cases, out of work completely. Compounding these issues was the inaccessibility of reasonable home loans for members of the black community.

The effects of suburbanization on the local economy of Trenton and its inhabitants can be seen through analysis of the popular media. Pride Magazine was a Trenton-based publication which centered its content around black businesses and black business owners. This specific magazine concerned itself with the failure of local politicians to enact positive change in the form of urban renewal plans which were targeted at improving the infrastructure, housing, and employment opportunities within the city. In March of 1972, Pride Magazine issued a publication titled, “Black Businesses Need Your Help!” which featured a section written by the magazine’s publisher Vance Phillips, who received his college education in Trenton. He wrote, “What are we doing to fill the vacuum of the cities which was created by relocation of the established business” He then goes on to say, “After spending 5 years of planning and developing new programs for structural and economic changes, Trenton Model Cities program has failed to meet the potential growth of new and old businesses in our community.”[23] Phillips like many black Americans living in Trenton during the 1970s saw visible signs of the city’s decline through the failure of local businesses. He believed what was needed to fix this problem was a stronger government response along with increased civic action from specifically the black community.[24]

 In this same publication, Phillips expressed his belief that, “a person who lives within the city should have preference over persons living outside of the cities in terms of employment.”[25] Here the author is addressing those who live in the surrounding suburbs but continue to fill job positions within the city limits. This would have been a popular message to Trenton’s black business owning population due to the negative effects that rapid suburbanization had on small businesses within the city.  In this magazine article, Phillips touches on an number of topics which are extremely relevant to this study. For one, the instability of small businesses in the wake of mass-suburbanization which he observed was largely due to the relocation of both industry and people to outside the city. Mostly ethnically-white Trentonians were leaving the city for the suburbs and taking with them their spending power. With population decline being spearheaded by movements to the suburbs, there simply was not enough money being circulated throughout the city to adequately support the small businesses which propped up its local economy.

Another popular message within this passage highlights that with most of Trenton’s workforce shifting into the surrounding suburbs, so too did its voting power.[26] This left black communities who resided within the urban centers even more powerless as a minority to change their own political environment. Suburbanization brought with it a massive decrease to the city’s population and tax-base. The previously 100,000+ populated city now had just around 80,000 inhabitants by 1970.[27] This rapid population decrease meant that the tax revenue generated was not enough to effectively grapple with the issues facing the economy and the evolving workforce.

Furthermore, local culture within the city which had been forged by America’s largest waves of European immigration in the 19th and early 20th century suffered as a result of deindustrialization and suburbanization. Many of the small businesses and social institutions which had historically characterized the city of Trenton were established by first and second generation Italian, Irish, Polish, and Hungarian immigrants. Many of whom traveled from the larger cities of New York and Philadelphia to find industrial jobs in Trenton. Dennis J. Starr’s book, The Italians of New Jersey, outlines the effects of suburbanization on the “old immigrants” of New Jersey, stating:

The movement to the suburbs and smaller urban places paralleled a major transformation of the state’s urban political economy. Following the war, the state’s largest cities did not participate in the postwar prosperity and economic development. Instead, their industrial bases eroded, their mercantile bases moved to suburban shopping malls and their overall, especially affluent white, populations shrank.[28]

The effect of suburbanization on the local culture of Trenton’s longest serving residents is a source of some historical debate. Cumbler notes that, “Despite suburbanization of the more successful Italians and Slavs, many of Trenton’s ethnic neighborhoods seemed as entrenched as ever in the 1950s.”[29] However, the following decades of the 1950s would see even more of Trenton’s staple “old immigrant” communities relocating to the suburbs and with them their cultural values and traditions. That being said, the cultural diversity of Trenton, New Jersey created by its ethnic melting pot of a history can still be felt today in 2023. Walking the streets of some of its most popular neighborhoods like Chambersburg, one can still see and feel the Italian influence of churches, social clubs, and bar-restaurants in the area. The main point here is that culture did suffer as a result of suburbanization and population decline, but it did not die, it rather faded into a less obvious and less present version of its former self.

            Looking at suburbanization as a major effect of postwar de-industrialization on the city of Trenton provides valuable insight into the cities rise and decline as a manufacturing powerhouse. Like many other rust belt cities of this time period, the trend of suburbanization caused unprecedented changes to the city’s local economy and demographics. The loss of unionized industry jobs encouraged many Trentonians to relocate to the surrounding towns which had recently seen great increases in housing development. In the process, those who left the city unintendedly left Trenton out to dry. Money from the pockets of those who moved to the suburbs was desperately needed to support small businesses in the city and their tax dollars could have been used to make meaningful change to the city’s failing infrastructure. As previously discussed, the local culture of the city also suffered as a result of these consequences which only compounded with each decade of further suburbanization and relocation away from the city. With a decreasing population, aging workforce, and a new wave of migrants without sufficient employment opportunities, the city began to decline into an unrecognizable version of its “Golden Age” of the 1920s.

Racial tension

Trenton’s deindustrialization and its history of racism and inequality are inextricably linked. In 1986, Historian Dennis J. Starr published, History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey: 1900 – 1960, which acts as one of the foremost important pieces of historical literature on Trenton race-relations. This research clearly establishes a link between deindustrialization and increased racial tensions by claiming:

As industries closed down or reduced their work force it became harder for Afro-American migrants to get a toe hold on the traditional ladder of social mobility–a factory job. Meanwhile the city’s sizable Italian, Polish and Hungarian communities became fearful lest their jobs be eliminated, their neighborhoods integrated. A siege mentality developed in light of the population shifts and exodus of industries, commercial businesses, colleges and government offices.[30]

This “siege mentality” was amplified overtime with the overcrowding of black communities in Trenton and the extension of black-owned or rented residences into shrinking ethnically white neighborhoods.

Between 1950 and 1960, Trenton’s black population rose to 22.8 percent of the total population. As discussed earlier, Trenton was a historically segregated city but in the 1950s and 60s this racial division took on a whole new light given the increases in population and decreases in economic opportunities and industry.[31] Trenton historian Jack Washington described Trenton following WWII stating, “That the 1950s was a period of benign neglect for the Black community is an understatement, for Black people were forgotten while their economic and political troubles continued to mount.”[32] These economic troubles can be seen most clearly through examination of housing segregation in the city and its continued influence on the lives of Trentonians. Along with housing and workplace discrimination, ethnically white residents used black migrants as scapegoats for their city’s economic misfortunes and decline.

            Housing in Trenton, NJ after the postwar years can be characterized as both segregated and worse for wear. Following the largest influx of black immigrants to the city in the late 1940s and early 50s, this new population was largely forced to live in the Coalport and Five Points areas of the city on its interior.[33] Housing opportunities for black residents were few and far between and were in most cases aged and deteriorated. Starr shed light on this inequality revealing, “By 1957 over 80 per cent of the city’s housing was over 50 years old and 20 percent of all housing units were dilapidated or had deficient plumbing.”[34] This was a problem for all city-dwellers and stood as a marker of the city’s decline following deindustrialization. For the black community, this problem was especially real given that the neighborhoods with the worst physical damage and infrastructure were those areas in which they settled. A 1950s survey of the city titled, Negro Housing in Trenton found, “the percentage of substandard housing among the Negro population is four times higher than that for the general population.”[35] Not only were black Trentonians limited in their occupation but also in the location and quality of their housing. This same study of housing in Trenton concluded that 1,200 new residential spaces would have to be erected in order to meet the needs and standards of the city. These spaces were not created and public housing efforts did not meet the requirements of the new growing population.[36]

With little options for housing, a lack of policy action to create new housing, and increases to the population, black migrants had no choice but to expand into Trenton’s old ethnically-white neighborhoods. In the eyes of many in the white majority, black migrants were the corrupting force which acted to take down their beloved city. Declining social and economic conditions in the city paired with old racist tendencies to produce conflict between ethnic groups. Cumbler eloquently explains this clash stating:

The decline of their industrial base narrowed the boundaries of choice for both white and black Trentonians, and in doing so it intensified conflict between them. Increasingly, Trenton’s problems became defined by the city’s white residents in terms of growth of its black population. Actually, its problems had other sources: the loss of its tax base with the closing down of factories, dilapidation of the existing housing stock, and the declining income of its citizens of whatever color.[37]

This excerpt captures the situation in Trenton during the 1950s and 60s in terms of race relations and the overall decline of the city. Racist attitudes were not a new trend in Trenton but were compounded with the arrival of large populations of black migrants. From the white perspective, black migrants were aiding in the destruction of the city. From the black perspective, Trenton did not provide the necessary resources for which they traveled north in search of in the first place.

The 1960s and the Civil Rights era was the historical boiling point for racial tensions and division in Trenton. The influence of the NAACP and other organizations for the advancement of racial equality along with intense riots brought race and class to the forefront of Trenton’s post-industrial issues. Most impactful, Trenton race riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. exploded in early April of 1968. These riots lasted for multiple days and resulted in fires erupting around the city as well as over 7 million dollars in damage to over 200 different businesses in Trenton at the time. During the chaos, around 300 mostly young black men were arrested by Trenton Police. The devastating damage to the downtown section of the city caused many to flee and abandon it altogether in the years that followed.[38] It would be unfair to say that these riots were a direct result of deindustrialization in postwar Trenton. However, the city’s history of racial inequality and the compounding forces of racial tension as a result of deindustrialization point to the creation of fertile ground for public outrage. Of course, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. served as the catalyst for race riots in the city but the broader history of discrimination and inequality in Trenton suggests an intense decades-long build up to the events that unfolded in April of 1968.

Conclusion

Trenton’s rise and fall as an American industrial city is truly a fascinating case study of the post-war era in U.S. history. What was once a manufacturing powerhouse along the Delaware River strategically placed between the two large cities of New York and Philadelphia was reduced to a shadow of its former glory by the 1950s and 60s. The causes of this decline can be found in the removal of industry away from the city following the war effort and signs of economic decline can be traced as far back as the 1920s. The effects of this shift however, remain the most significant in the broader history of the city. Rapid deindustrialization meant that wages and opportunities were significantly limited for all Trentonians but especially for its segregated black community. Many of those who could afford it elected to move to the surrounding suburbs, bringing with them their tax dollars, their votes, and their culture. Lastly, deindustrialization and the consequences of a radically transformed Trenton increased racial tensions in the form of housing and workplace discrimination.

These effects offer new insights into the Trenton of today. Trenton now has a black majority and interestingly, those same areas which housed black migrants in the 1950s on the city’s interior are still today in 2023 the site of high unemployment and low opportunities. Walking the streets of Trenton, one is quickly reminded of its rich history with many of its houses and abandoned factories still standing today as a reminder of the city’s complicated history. A hopeful message could be that a greater understanding of Trenton’s post-war history could provide the necessary insight to create better living conditions and opportunities for all its residents. However, today Trenton remains a city in an intense state of recovery from its industrial past. Historical research has been done to show that urban renewal plans have largely failed to revitalize the city’s economy in the 20th and 21st centuries and issues such as crime, poverty, drug abuse, poor infrastructure, among others continue to loom over the once prosperous city.

            Today, the “Trenton Makes, The World Takes” sign on the Lower Trenton Bridge still stands bright but its meaning has drastically changed since the last century. What was once a beacon of promise and stability is now a constant reminder of how far the city has fallen from its industrial and manufacturing heights.

Findings and value to teaching

Upon completing this research paper on Trenton, I gave a lesson to high school world history students at Ewing High school as part of my undergraduate co-teaching field work. Ewing is one of the border towns to the city of Trenton and was one of the most popular destinations for suburbanites who left the city in the 20th century at least in part because of deindustrialization and the city’s overall decline. The proximity of the topic and the familiarity students  had with popular street names, businesses, and buildings in the city created a feeling of relevance that sparked engagement. Students were surprised to be learning about a topic so close to home and they responded with passionate discussion and the creation of meaningful connections which were sparked through a mix of group and whole class discussions.

For social studies teachers, this successful shift from world history topics to a more grass roots approach to teaching local history can be used as a template for future lessons. Topics frequently come up during different units throughout the school year which deeply relate to the local history of wherever kids go to school. For Ewing students, Trenton’s decline as an industrial city directly related to their lived experiences. Many of my students had lived in or around Trenton for most of their lives. This practice of teaching local history to students is not overwhelming nor is it undoable. The same amount of effort it takes to create a lesson in a world history or AP class can be channeled into research dealing with one’s own local environment and history.

This template for teaching local history can be used to generate engagement in the classroom which is unique to any other topic. Once students are given the opportunity to learn and ask questions about their own town, city, home, etc. they begin to view the world through a more historical lens which is the goal of many if not all high school social studies teachers. Overall, my experience with this approach was overwhelmingly positive and I encourage any and all educators to shift their focus for at least one day of the year towards exploring their own local history and connecting it to larger themes within our discipline.

References

Primary Sources

Black Businesses Need Your Help!. Pride Magazine. Trenton Public Library. March 1972. https://www.trentonlib.org/trentoniana/microfilm-newspapers/

Dwyer, William. This Is The Task. Findings of the Trenton, New Jersey Human Relations Self-Survey (Nashville: Fisk University, 1955).

Lee, Helen J. Nigger in the Window. Library of Congress, Internet Archive 1978.

Negro Housing in Trenton: The Housing Committee of the Self Survey. Trenton Public Library. Trentoniana Collection. Ca 1950.

“Negro in the Trenton Labor Market,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library.

“Study of Community Services in Trenton,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library.

Trenton Council of Social Agencies, Study of Northeast Trenton: Population, Housing, Economic, Social and Physical Aspects of the Area. Folder: Study of Northeast Trenton. Box 1: African American Experience. Trentoniana Collection. Trenton Public Library. 1958.

Secondary Sources

Boustan, Leah Platt. “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.” The Journal of Economic History 67, no. 2 (2007): 484–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4501161.

Cowie, J. & Heathcott, J. Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization. Cornell University Press, 2003.

Cumbler, John T. A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989).

Denton, Stacy. “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Sub/Urban Progress.” American Studies 53, no. 2 (2014): 119–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24589591.

Division of Labor Market and Demographic Research. New Jersey Population Trends 1790 to 2000 (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Data Center, August 2001).

Gibson, Campbell. U.S. Bureau of the Census: Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 – 1990, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998).

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press, 1985.

Leynes, Jennifer B. “Three Centuries of African-American History in Trenton.” Trentoniana Collection. Trenton Historical Society. 2011.

Starr, Dennis J. “History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey, 1900-1960,” Trentoniana Collection. 1986.

Starr, Dennis J. The Italians of New Jersey: A Historical Introduction and Bibliography. New Jersey Historical Society. Newark, NJ. 1985.

Strangleman, Tim, James Rhodes, and Sherry Linkon. “Introduction to Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 84 (2013): 7–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43302724.

Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. (Revised Ed.). Princeton University Press, 2005. Originally published 1996.

Washington, Jack. The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965. Africa World Press. 1993.

[1] Jack Washington, The Quest for Equality: Trenton’s Black Community 1890-1965, Africa World Press, 1993, 56.

[2] John T. Cumbler, A Social History of Economic Decline: Business, Politics, and Work in Trenton, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 9.

[3] Division of Labor Market and Demographic Research, New Jersey Population Trends 1790 to 2000 (Trenton, NJ: New Jersey State Data Center, August 2001), 23.

[4] Tim Strangleman, James Rhodes, and Sherry Linkon, “Introduction to Crumbling Cultures: Deindustrialization, Class, and Memory.” International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 84 (2013), 19.

[5] Cumbler, A Social History, 132-133.

[6] Campbell Gibson, U.S. Bureau of the Census: Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States: 1790 – 1990, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998)

[7] Division of Labor, New Jersey Population Trends, 26.

[8] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, (Revised Ed.), Princeton University Press, 2005, Originally published 1996, 128.

[9] Jefferson, Cowie & Joseph Heathcott, Beyond the Ruins: The Meaning of Deindustrialization, Cornell University Press, 2003. 1-3.

[10] Cumbler, A Social History, 93-95.

[11]Stacy Denton, “The Rural Past-in-Present and Postwar Sub/Urban Progress,” American Studies 53, no. 2 (2014): 119.

[12]Leah P. Boustan, “Black Migration, White Flight: The Effect of Black Migration on Northern Cities and Labor Markets.” The Journal of Economic History 67, no. 2 (2007): 484-485.

[13] Cumbler, A Social History, 147-148.

[14] Cumbler, A Social History, 145.

[15] Helen J. Lee, N—-r in the Window, Library of Congress, Internet Archive 1978, 131.

[16] Sugrue, Urban Crisis, 93-94.

[17] “Study of Community Services in Trenton,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 8.

[18] Leah P. Boustan, “Black Migration, White Flight” 485-486.

[19] “Negro in the Trenton Labor Market,” Folder: Community Services in Trenton, Box: Trenton Council on Human Relations, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 33-34.

[20] Kenneth T. Jackson. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Oxford University Press, 1985, 188.

[21] Stacy Denton, “The Rural Past-in-Present,” 119.

[22] Cumbler, A Social History, 139.

[23] Black Businesses Need Your Help!. Pride Magazine. Trenton Public Library. March 1972, 5

[24] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6

[25] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6-7

[26] Black Businesses, Pride Magazine, 6-7.

[27] Gibson, U.S. Bureau of the Census, 43.

[28] Dennis J. Starr, The Italians of New Jersey: A Historical Introduction and Bibliography, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, NJ 1985, 54.

[29] Cumbler, A Social History, 148-150.

[30] Dennis J. Starr, “History of Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, New Jersey, 1900-1960,” Trentoniana Collection, 1986, 16-17.

[31] Cumbler, A Social History, 153.

[32] Washington, The Quest for Equality, 136.

[33] Trenton Council of Social Agencies, Study of Northeast Trenton: Population, Housing, Economic, Social and Physical Aspects of the Area, Folder: Study of Northeast Trenton, Box 1: African American Experience, Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Public Library, 1958, 53-54.

[34] Starr, Ethnic and Racial Groups in Trenton, 15.

[35] Negro Housing in Trenton: The Housing Committee of the Self Survey, Trenton Public Library, Trentoniana Collection, ca 1950s , 63.

[36] Negro Housing, Housing Committee, 67.

[37] Cumbler, A Social History, 156.

[38] Jennifer B. Leynes, “Three Centuries of African-American History in Trenton,” Trentoniana Collection, Trenton Historical Society. 2011, 3-4.

New York’s Education Wars a Century Ago Show How Content Restrictions Can Backfire

New York’s Education Wars a Century Ago Show How Content Restrictions Can Backfire

Bill Greer

 Reprinted with permission from https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/185878

Matthew Hawn, a high school teacher for sixteen years in conservative Sullivan County, Tennessee, opened the 2020-21 year in his Contemporary Issues class with a discussion of police shootings.  White privilege is a fact, he told the students.  He had a history of challenging his classes, which led to lively discussions among those who agreed and disagreed with his views.  But this day’s discussion got back to a parent who objected.  Hawn apologized – but didn’t relent.  Months later, with more parents complaining, school officials reprimanded him for assigning “The First White President,” an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which argues that white supremacy was the basis for Donald Trump’s presidency.  After another incident in April, school officials fired him for insubordination and unprofessional behavior.

Days later, Tennessee outlawed his teaching statewide, placing restrictions on what could be taught about race and sex.  Students should learn “the exceptionalism of our nation,” not “things that inherently divide or pit either Americans against Americans or people groups against people groups,” Governor Bill Lee announced.  The new laws also required advance notice to parents of instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, and contraception, with an option to withdraw their children.

Over the past three years, at least 18 states have enacted laws governing what is and is not taught in schools. Restricted topics mirror Tennessee’s, focusing on race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  In some cases, legislation bans the more general category of “divisive concepts,” a term coined in a 2020 executive order issued by the Trump administration and now promoted by conservative advocates.  In recent months, Florida has been at the forefront of extending such laws to cover political ideology, mandating lessons that communism could lead to the overthrow of the US government.  Even the teaching of mathematics has not escaped Florida politics, with 44 books banned for infractions like using race-based examples in word problems.

In a sense the country is stepping back a century to when a similar hysteria invaded New York’s schools during the “Red Scare” at the end of World War I, when fear of socialism and Bolshevism spread throughout the US.  New York City launched its reaction in 1918 when Mayor John Francis Hylan banned public display of the red flag.  He considered the Socialist Party’s banner “an insignia for law hating and anarchy . . .  repulsive to ideals of civilization and the principles upon which our Government is founded.”

In the schools, Benjamin Glassberg, a teacher at Commercial High School in Brooklyn, was cast in Matthew Hawn’s role.  On January 14, 1919, his history class discussed Bolshevism.  The next day, twelve students, about one-third, signed a statement that their teacher had portrayed Bolshevism as a form of political expression not nearly so black as people painted it.  The students cited specifics Glassberg gave them – that the State Department forbade publishing the truth about Bolshevism; that Red Cross staff with first-hand knowledge were prevented from talking about conditions in Russia; that Lenin and Trotsky had undermined rather than supported Germany and helped end the war.  The school’s principal forwarded the statement to Dr. John L. Tildsley, Associate Superintendent of Schools, who suspended Glassberg, pending a trial by the Board of Education.

Glassberg’s trial played out through May.  Several students repeated the charges in their statement, while others testified their teacher had said nothing disrespectful to the US government.  Over that period, the sentiments of school officials became clear.  Dr. Tildsley proclaimed that no person adhering to the Marxian program should become a teacher in the public schools, and if discovered should be forced to resign.  He would be sending to everyone in the school system a circular making clear that “Americanism is to be put above everything else in classroom study.”  He directed teachers to correct students’ opinions contrary to fundamental American ideas. The Board of Education empowered City Superintendent William Ettinger to undertake an “exhaustive examination into the life, affiliations, opinions, and loyalty of every member” of the teachers union.  Organizations like the National Security League and the American Defense Society pushed the fight against Bolshevism across the country.

After the Board declared Glassberg guilty, the pace picked up.  In June, the city’s high school students took a test entitled  Examination For High Schools on the Great War.  The title was misleading.  The first question was designed to assess students’ knowledge of and attitude toward Bolshevism.  The instructions to principals said this question was of greatest interest and teachers should highlight any students who displayed an especially intimate knowledge of that subject.  The results pleased school officials when only 1 in 300 students showed any significant knowledge of or leaning toward Bolshevism.  The “self-confessed radicals” would be given a six-month course on the “economic and social system recognized in America.”  Only if they failed that course would their diplomas be denied.

In September, the state got involved.  New York Attorney General Charles D. Newton called for “Americanization,” describing it as “intensive instruction in our schools in the ideals and traditions of America.”  Also serving as counsel to the New York State Legislative Committee to Investigate Bolshevism, commonly known as the Lusk Committee after its chairman, Newton was in a position to make it happen.  In January 1920, Lusk began hearings on education.  Tildsly, Ettinger, and Board of Education President Anning S. Prawl all testified in favor of an Americanization plan.

In April, the New York Senate and Assembly passed three anti-Socialist “Lusk bills.”  The “Teachers’ Loyalty” bill required public school teachers to obtain from the Board of Regents a Certificate of Loyalty to the State and Federal Constitutions and the country’s laws and institutions.  “Sorely needed,” praised the New York Times, a long-time advocate for Americanization in the schools.  But any celebration was premature.  Governor Alfred E. Smith had his objections.  Stating that the Teacher Loyalty Bill “permits one man to place upon any teacher the stigma of disloyalty, and this even without hearing or trial,” he vetoed it along with the others.  Lusk and his backers would have to wait until the governor’s election in November when Nathan L. Miller beat Smith in a squeaker.  After Miller’s inauguration, the Legislature passed the bills again.  Miller signed them in May despite substantial opposition from prominent New Yorkers.

Over the next two years, the opposition grew.  Even the New York Times backed off its unrelenting anti-Socialist stance.  With the governor’s term lasting only two years, opponents got another chance in November, 1922, in a Smith-Miller rematch.  Making the Lusk laws a major issue, Smith won in a landslide.  He announced his intention to repeal the laws days after his inauguration.  Lusk and his backers fought viciously but the Legislature finally passed repeal in April.  Calling the teacher loyalty law (and a second Lusk law on private school licensing) “repugnant to the fundamentals of American democracy,” Smith signed their repeal.

More than any other factor, the experience of the teachers fueled the growing opposition to the Teachers’ Loyalty bill.  After its enactment, state authorities administered two oaths to teachers statewide.  That effort didn’t satisfy Dr. Frank P. Graves, State Commissioner of Education.  In April 1922, he established the Advisory Council on Qualifications of Teachers of the State of New York to hear cases of teachers charged with disloyalty.  He appointed Archibald Stevenson, counsel to the Lusk committee and arch-proponent of rooting out disloyalty in the schools, as one member.  By summer the Council had earned a reputation as a witch hunt.  Its activities drew headlines such as Teachers Secretly Quizzed on Loyalty and Teachers Defy Loyalty Court.  Teachers and principals called before it refused to attend.  Its reputation grew so bad that New York’s Board of Education asked for its abolishment and the President of the Board told teachers that they need not appear if summoned.

A lesson perhaps lies in that experience for proponents of restrictions on what can be taught today.  Already teachers, principals, and superintendents risk fines and termination from violating laws ambiguous on what is and is not allowed.  The result has been a chilling environment where educators simply avoid controversial issues altogether.  Punishing long-time and respected teachers – like Matthew Hawn, whom dozens of his former students defend – will put faces on the fallout from the laws being passed.  How long before a backlash rears up, as it did in New York over Teachers’ Loyalty?

“Just a Few Thousand” – the Moral Questions Facing New Teachers

“Just a Few Thousand”—the Moral Questions Facing New Teachers

Mark Pearcy

I taught for nineteen years in public schools before joining higher education, and I can honestly say that I was never more shocked than I was in my second year, during a class in U.S. history. That year, I had a student named Chris. Likable, athletic (a pitcher on the baseball team), Chris wasn’t particularly gifted or hardworking, content with regular C’s and the occasional B. He didn’t talk much in class, except to girls; rarely participating in class discussions. This changed when we started our unit on the Holocaust.

            All the students knew the basic history of the topic, some more informed than others—but all students were thoroughly engaged when we talked about the death camps, the experiments, and the usual round of questions: “Why didn’t more fight back?” “Did they ever catch the ones who did it?” “How many died?”

            It was the last question that brought Chris into the discussion. A student had called out the question, and another had spontaneously answered: “Millions.” Chris raised his hand; surprised, I called on him.

            “Actually, I heard it was different than that,” he said.

            “Well, that’s true,” I responded. Privately, I was delighted he was taking part—while the Holocaust is a grim subject, it usually serves the pedagogical purpose of getting quiet students off the sideline and into the argument. “The total number killed in the Holocaust was around eleven million. Jewish victims made up six million of those.”

“No, actually I heard it was less.”

            “Really?”

            “Yeah, I heard it was just a few thousand.” He nodded in response to my surprised look. “I heard they got the number ‘six million’ by adding up all the generations of kids that would have been born to the actual victims.”

I was stunned. This was not only patently, demonstrably absurd—it was also directly from the rhetoric of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Trying hard to maintain composure, I asked him: “Where did you hear that?”

            He shrugged again.  “My father.”

The question facing a new teacher like me was difficult—should I have corrected Chris? Should I have told him his father was flatly wrong? Or worse, should I have told him that his father was repeating nauseating rhetoric that had been zoned off for the worst, vilest purveyors of bigotry? Incidentally, to make matters more complicated, I knew Chris’ father—like his son, an amiable, likeable man, who certainly didn’t seem to me the type of person who would repeat wildly inaccurate beliefs about the Holocaust. But what should be done?

I corrected Chris. Quickly, and bluntly, in front of the class. “That’s wrong,” I told him, and proceeded to drill him with the facts and evidence in my corner. I’m certain there are many teachers that would dispute my decision, and say that dealing with Chris’ error in that manner was too direct; or, even more likely, that dealing with it at all, especially in the second year of my career, was skirting the possibility of professional suicide, especially today, when the pressure and scrutiny aimed at teachers is worse than ever before.

All this would be reasonable criticism. Certainly, I make no grand claims to courage, seeing as I how I was teaching in an era of educator independence which, nowadays, we can seemingly only remember through the misty lens of nostalgia. My reaction was instantaneous precisely because I didn’t think about professional consequences. In fact, I had only one thought about Chris at the moment—“I can’t let him go on believing that.”

The lesson of Chris, and “just a few thousand,” is one of which new teachers are aware. There is a moral component to what we do in the classroom, one that applies to all subject areas. When we teach, we not only want to foster academic skills and achievement, we want to help children develop into good people. This is a concept of which many teachers are leery, and it’s hard to blame them—since for many, both in the classroom and out, it can sound quite a lot like indoctrination. But when we, through our schools, produce adults who are incapable of critically analyzing the issues of the world and their own lives—that would be the product of indoctrination. Instead, our goal, as Nel Noddings puts it, is invested in “a commitment to building a world in which it is both possible and desirable for children to be good—a world in which children are happy” (Noddings, 2003, p. 2).

Certainly, helping students find a worthwhile and lucrative career is important, as is helping them to acquire the habits of mind that accompany any field of study. But all teachers, in all disciplines, will sooner or later face situations where students believe an idea, or adopt a behavior, which endangers the successful achievement of the goal we seek, a world in which children can be “good.”

But how do we know what that means, to be “good?” Isn’t this is a matter of debate, and isn’t it dangerous for teachers to put themselves in the midst of such debate?

Of course. But that’s part of the job, as much as helping students learn to multiply and divide, or write clear sentences, or construct a logical argument. As teachers, we are representatives of a broader culture, one committed to a series of values that, as a community, we’ve deemed worth promoting and defending. Yes, there are gray areas, but far more often, the answers we have are clearer than we might want to accept.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio, offered a succinct definition of obscenity—“I know it when I see it.” When confronting with morally impermissible views, teachers are a bulwark of civilization and morality—and though very often there may be debate about whether or not we should intervene, often (perhaps too often) there is no debate at all. We know it when we see it, and we should have the courage of our own convictions, and faith in the goals of our profession, to act.

References

Noddings, N. (2003). Happiness and education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. United States Supreme Court. (1964). Jacobellis v. Ohio. Retrieved from http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0378_0184_ZC1.html

New Jersey’s Slavery Past

New Jersey’s Slavery Past

Deborah P. Carter

The Howe House on Claremont Avenue in Montclair

Reprinted with permission from New Jersey Monthly, “Montclair’s Howe House a Testament to NJ’s Uncomfortable and Dark Past,” https://njmonthly.com/articles/towns-schools/history/montclair-howe-house/

In 1831, James Howe was deeded 6 acres and a small house on Claremont Avenue in Montclair. That house still stands. For many years, the worn clapboard house was known locally as the slave house. James Howe was owned by Nathaniel Crane. A member of one of the town’s founding families, Crane left the property to Howe (rumored to be his son) upon his death.

American slavery began in 1619 and eventually spread to all 13 colonies. By the late 1700s, Garden State neighbors like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, followed 20 years later by New York, began adopting policies to abolish legal human bondage. New Jersey, however, was slow to outlaw the practice and adopted brutal laws restricting rights, including reading, writing, and ownership of firearms and property, for the nearly 12,000 enslaved Africans who lived here at the turn of the 19th century. After 185 years of slavery in New Jersey, in 1804 the state passed the Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. The mandate required enslaved men born after July 4, 1804, to serve 25 years, and enslaved women, 20 years before manumission. By the start of the Civil War in 1861, records indicate slavery in New Jersey had dwindled, but remained legal. In 1866, the state ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, making it the last Northern state to end slavery.

Today, historically significant properties like the Howe House bear witness to New Jersey’s past. The nonprofit Friends of Howe House (FHH) are seeking historic landmark status and recently rallied support to purchase the building. “We are forming a steering committee and seeking community input to determine the next steps for Howe House,” says committee member Kimberly Latortue, adding turning it into a house museum is an option. The town “prides itself on being the epitome of diversity,” says Aminah Toler, a Montclair native and founding member of FHH. “We want to ensure that the Howe House remains to tell the story of the African American history that shaped this town and this country.”

History of America’s Immigration: The Background to Today’s Border and Asylum Crises

History of America’s Immigration: The Background to Today’s Border and Asylum Crises

Dr. Harry Stein, City University of New York

Harry.stein@manhattan.edu

Defining American: The Bureau of Naturalization’s Attempt to Standardize Citizenship Education and Inculcate ‘the Soul of America’ in Immigrants during World War 1

Barred Zones, Rising Tides, and Radical Struggles: The Antiradical and Anti-Asian Dimensions of the 1917 Immigration Act

In this wood engraving caricaturing the Chinese Exclusion Act, a well-dress Chinese man embodying “Order” and “Industry” sits outside the Golden Gate of Liberty. The sign to his right declares “Communists, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum Welcome but no Admittance to Chinamen.”  Below the title, the text reads: “Enlightened American Statesman – “We must draw the line somewhere, you know.” Reprinted from Frank Leslie’s illustrated Newspaper, April 1, 1882. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-11861.

U.S. Immigration History – There are 4 eras

Following is a description with vocabulary for each era.  Following the four eras mis a collection of data that students can use to learn more about each time period.  In each era examine who came to the USA, why, and how did government policy favored or discouraged immigration.

Era #1: Populating the Continent-Colonial to 1875

Authority was with individual states, not the Federal Government.  States used what was then called “state police power” to set and enforce rules.  States set rules stopping the admission of convicts, free Blacks, paupers, diseased, sick or disabled persons or passengers on ships who tried to enter without the captain posting a bond on their behalf.  No free person whether black, mulatto, or colored from a Caribbean country, especially Haiti, could enter some states.  Haitian seamen on a ship entering Charleston, S.C., could not leave the ship.  These powers were confirmed by a Supreme Court decision (Miln Decision, 1837) and the Passenger Cases decision (1849) approve state laws on bonding and taxing incoming passengers.  The 1830 Indian Removal Act was another example of state police power.  The movement of free Blacks within Missouri and Ohio was also regulated.

There were also federal laws in 1793, 1842 (Prigg decision), and 1850 concerning the return of runaway slaves to their owners.  Legislation in 1809 prevented the importing of additional slaves from west Africa.  In 1817 the Liberia colony was established and federally funded for free Black who wished to return to Africa. 13,000 did.

Federal laws permitting or excluding contract labor from China and Europe were enacted.  In 1862 the Coolie importation from China was stopped under the logic that since slavery was illegal in northern states and Coolies were slaves therefore, they could not get into the USA.  In 1867 contract labor was permitted from Europe.  In conclusion, high, consistent demand for labor led to favorable State and federal immigration policies.

Critical terms: Era #1

1790 Naturalization Act

Know Nothing Party

Dred Scott Decision

Burlingame Treaty

Northern European Migration from Ireland, UK, Germany, Netherlands

Era #2: The Opening and Closing the Immigration Doors, 1875 – 1924

During this era, power to legislate and enforce laws came totally to the national government. Immigration power resided in the Federal government’s ability to control commerce, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) and the theory of national sovereignty critical for national security through border control.  Between 1871 and 1914, 23.5 million Europeans entered.  Eastern and southern Europeans joined those from Ireland, the U.K. and northern Europe. 1.7 million entered in 1907.

The country was industrializing and urbanizing.  Labor demand was high.  But gradually laws were established excluding some and regulating the entry of others.  Many Americans wanted more immigration.  Other Americans were critical of who were admitted.  By 1924 the doors were almost closed to many Jews, Catholics, Hindus, and Chinese. See the Page Act (1875) and Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). Research the Foran Act (1885) and the Dillingham Commission (1911).

1917 –  Law aimed at South Asians, Indians, who settled in California and Washington and spoke out against British control of their homeland.  This was part of a wider American nativist movement merging with white supremacy ideology, anti-communism and earlier opposition to immigrants with physical or mental disabilities.  A literacy test was passed.  A “barred” zone was created stopping all Asian entry except from the Philippines and Japan, already excluded by an informal 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement”, Mexicans were turned into temporary labor migrants.  There was also the fear that if the US entered the League of Nations this could endanger national security.  In 1920, 16% of the US population was foreign born.  Bad foreigners = crime, immorality, and labor conflict.

1921 – First law closing loopholes in the 1917 law and establishing first national origin quotas. This law fused beliefs about eugenics, racial bigotry, anti-disabilities prejudice, mixed racial marriages into a category of undesirable immigrant groups.  The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) created quotas by ethnic origin.  The Border Patrol created an illegal entry called a misdemeanor and felony (1929) if done twice.

Critical Terms: Era #2

Harry Laughlin

Madison Grant

Prescott Hall

Bracero

Thind Supreme Court Case, 1923

Wong Kim Ark Supreme Court Case, 1898

Jones/Shafroth Act, 1917

Ellis Island,

Castle Garden

Era #3: The Closed Door, 1925-1965  

The Johnson-Reed Act (1924) confined immigration to mainly northern Europe.  National quotas were based on ethnic origins of the 1890 census.  Through the Depression of the 1930s and World War II, immigration was severely curtailed.  Following World War II, the law remained intact and parallel laws dealing with World War II refugees were created that bypassed but did not displace the 1925 Law.

In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act permitting European refugees to enter.  In 1948 the law was amended permitting refugees from camps in west Germany who could not return to former homes in Poland and the USSR to enter the USA.  332,000 arrived including 141,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors between June 1948 and December 1951.

Critical Terms: Era #3

Xenophobia

The 1938 Voyage of the St. Louis

Project Paperclip

Chinese Citizen Act of 1943

Mariel Boat Lift, 1960

Era #4: The Door Opens to the World, 1965 – Present

The 1925 law was replaced by the Hart/Cellar Act of 1965.  Racial and ethnic quotas were eliminated.  Numerical quotas were retained.  Entrance was open to people from anywhere.  The law favored family unification, preference for certain occupations, and a new side variety of visas.  In 1950, the USA was 90% white with a European origin. By 2000, 50% of new immigrants were from Latin America and 27% from Asia.  In 2020, the USA population was 69% European white.

This law changed the racial composition and, some say, the national identity of the USA.  The acrid, hot odor of 1924 bigotry and nativism returned magnified and channeled through social media.  By 2020, some Americans were talking of white racial suicide and replacement theory.  Politicians pointed to the loss of border control.  The 9/11 Attack on America led to Islamophobia and Muslin immigration bans.

Many Americans supported legal immigration and the use of work visas for both unskilled and professional work.  Most wanted to stop migration but the government system to judge asylum claims became broken.  Since May 2022, 1.85 million border crosses have been permitted to remain in the country following a favorable “credible fear” claim.  By September 2022, 86,815 immigrants were deported and 1.7 million were approved to stay.  200,149 immigrants came to New York City.

More Data:

  1. From February 2021 to September 2023, Border Patrol arrested 6 million migrants who crossed the border illegally.
  2. 1.7 million immigrants were released to stay in the USA.
  3. There were about 1,500 immigration judges and asylum offices available to decide these immigrant cases.
  4. People apply for asylum at the border or if they are caught illegally in the country or overstay a visa.  They have up to one year to apply.  800,000 applied in 2022.
  5. It could cost $2 billion to hire more staff to eliminate the 2 million backlog of cases.
  6. In some cities, it will take up to ten years to hear a case.
  7. 1.3 million have been told they must leave the USA.  They have 90 days to do so.
  8. Many do not leave and they disappear.  There is no national ID in the USA to identify them.
  9. Some marry Americans and become parents of children who are natural born citizens.

All of this data is used by politicians running for federal office. Some promise to clear them ‘out.’  How they will do this is not clear.

Many local officials run to Washington, D.V., seeking money to care for migrants in their cities.  There is a deadlock in Washington, D.C.  Many do not want to tax the many to pay for the foreign immigrants.  The memory of 1924 is in the air and a chaotic border has become a drug channel.

Critical Terms: Era #4

Pyler Supreme Court Case, 1982

Temporary Protective Status

Humanitarian parole

Refugee Act, 1980

DACA

Visa Lottery System

John Tanton

Naturalization

Our laws were not designed to deal with BOTH old and new reasons for migrations.  The new reasons are climate change, corruption in many countries, the I-phone which immediately connected migrants with friends already in the USA who send money to assist migrants in their journey.  Migration used to be single men seeking jobs who would then return home.  Now, it is entire families seeking a new life in the USA.  Many Americans do not know what to make of it and they will vote their hopes and fears.

The Usage of Film in Teaching History through the Lens of the Civil Rights Movement

The Usage of Film in Teaching History through the Lens of the Civil Rights Movement

Elizabeth Sullivan

Film, in the wake of the 21st Century, has become a highly popular type of media to portray historical events. Society has evolved to a point in which it is a visual culture. No longer are we represented by oral and written means; visual communication is much more popular. Traditional school experiences juxtapose this idea. Students are still bound by books and written texts in order to receive information. Educators need to be willing to continue to learn how to introduce new modes of expression in their classroom.

Topics like the Civil Rights Movement are often whitewashed in educational texts. Because most films are produced outside of K-12 schooling environments, producers are able to recreate controversial situations, relationships, and people. This paper will provide summaries and analyses of three modern films depicting different aspects of the American Civil Rights movement. It will then discuss why showing these films in classrooms are worthwhile.

Introducing the films

Historical film projects have created controversial figures and taken controversial figures and turned them into likable characters. The Civil Rights movement has been portrayed in film time and time again, each with a slightly different take. The Help tells the story of a White woman in Jackson recording the stories of Black maids, and ultimately publishes them. This film creates white saviors, a specific character type in media, often seen in pieces that discuss issues pertaining to people of color. One Night in Miami focuses on four prominent Black men in the 1960s; Malcolm X takes the main stage. The film wrestles with Malcolm’s stiff exterior and anxious personal life. Selma tells the story of the Selma Marches in 1964. The film highlights Martin Luther King’s actions and how they led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Each protagonist in these three films is understood by audiences differently. How a Civil Rights activist is appreciated in film greatly depends on the general public’s pre-existing opinion of the character. Regardless of a production team’s goals, an activist’s infamy or other characteristics influence the audience.

The Help

The Help was directed by Taylor Tate and released in 2011, grossing $216 million worldwide and receiving positive reviews from critics.[1] The movie takes place in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s.[2] Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a new college graduate, wants to become a writer. She is given the chance to have a book published, but the story hinges on Black maids being willing to speak to her about their experiences working for White families. The issue lies in finding Black help that was willing to risk their livelihoods for Skeeter’s writing.[3] Minny Jackson begins to work for Celia Foote after being fired by a different White woman.[4] After gathering enough stories, Skeeter publishes her book, which is a massive hit. Skeeter chooses to stay in Jackson instead of moving to New York City with the promise of a job in a publishing agency.[5]

Hollywood has a tendency to find a newsworthy topic and exploit it; despite the Civil Rights Movement being a “hot” topic in America for decades, it was mostly left out of the film industry.[6] However, in recent years, stories about the era of civil rights have graced screens. The development of white savior stories has become prevalent in American films. These stories amplify (or overamplify) a white character’s influence regarding issues faced by people of color.[7] The white character rescues non-white characters, often learning more about the problem than they originally knew and evaluating how they contributed to the problem. It makes the white character appear as the hero of the story, despite the size of their role, or the danger the characters of color face fighting issues.

The Help created two white savior characters: Skeeter and Celia. The women become white saviors through different experiences. Skeeter is meant to be portrayed as a young woman who does a great service by exposing the nature of treatment White employers subjected their Black help to. She does this without realizing the importance of what she is doing. The film also emphasizes how she will be viewed in the White community, breezing past the reality Black women will face if the location of the book is revealed. Skeeter’s risks are overplayed (especially because she is promised a job if the book sells well) while the maid’s risks are underplayed, painting Skeeter ultimately as the hero of the film. This imagery is only furthered as Skeeter chooses not to accept her dream job working in a New York publishing firm to stay in Jackson and help the women who gave her stories for her book.

Celia is slightly different. She hires Minny after being unable to find help for her house. She wants to impress her husband and the women of Jackson. She treats Minny with kindness and does not seem to grasp certain societal expectations, like the help and employers eating at different tables and the help and employers not being “friends.” During one specific scene, Celia takes Minny by the arm, walks her into the house, and offers her a coke.[8] In another scene, Celia and her husband offer Minny a meal (prepared by Celia) at their dining room table.[9] The film alludes to the idea that because of Celia’s kindness, Minny’s problems are lessened or completely gone. This then creates the idea that a white woman’s kindness solves issues that are systemic racial issues, when in reality, Minny and the rest of the Black community face issues that could only be corrected through legislative changes.

However, different from most narratives, both of these characters are women. By regendering the white savior, two things occur. The first is the idea that they may not be able to be saviors because they also come from oppressed communities. Because they are not men, it is assumed they do not have the power to overcome societal beliefs regarding their own womanhood, let alone fight against anti-Blackness. The second is that they become harder to identify because of tropes surrounding what a woman is supposed to be and how she is supposed to act.[10] Both of these women hold stereotypical traits, such as kindness and empathy. Celia also yearns to be a mother, another trait that has been associated with femininity. Because they have “female” characteristics, audiences need to decipher what aspects are stereotypes and which are aspects of the white savior trope.

Despite having stereotypical personality traits, the women defy traditional womanhood in different ways, making it easy to see how they fill their white-savior roles. Skeeter is considered a tom-boy; she is a college graduate who does not plan to marry until she has established her career. She grew up in Jackson and, after graduating from college, returned, continuing to be well-liked until she gave a voice to Black maids.[11] Celia moved to Jackson and married her husband because of an unplanned pregnancy. She is also one of the loudest women in the movie, trying to push herself into Jackson’s social circle. Until hiring Minny, she did not have help in her house. Because of this, she is regarded as an outsider by most White women but yearns to be accepted.[12]

Ultimately, the regendering of the white savior in The Help created a character that was not as easily identified as in other films, such as Green Book and Hidden Figures. The two women appear as outcasts who do not fully understand societal roles, instead of two women extending a hand to the Black community in Jackson. The audience feels its heartstrings being tugged at as Celia is outcasted by other women in Jackson, both because of her own identity and because she hired Minny.[13] Skeeter is threatened by another White woman after realizing that the book featured her home.[14] If Skeeter and Celia had been written as male characters, it is much more likely that this character trope would be more apparent. As a result, Skeeter and Celia become characters that are endearing to the audience; the two women are effective in their roles of “hero.”

One Night in Miami

Starkly different from the two White women of The Help are the four men of Regina King’s One Night in Miami. More specifically, the four Black men in the film. Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Cassius Clay (more famously known as Muhammad Ali) are the focus of this 2020 film. It was released directly to Amazon Prime Video streaming, receiving glowing reviews from critics and the general audience.[15]

The four men unite in Miami, Florida in 1964 to watch Cassius Clay box in the championship round.[16] After Clay wins, the men return to X’s motel room to celebrate. Instead of celebrating, the men have a serious night. Coming from different backgrounds (one activist, one football player, one singer, and one boxer) the men have curt conversations about the Civil Rights Movement and Black support of the movement. Paranoia, racism, and Islamophobia are all commented on in the film, as Malcolm criticizes his friends but also speaks to them about his decision to leave the Nation of Islam.[17]

Going into production, director Regina King had a unique problem. How does one create a positive protagonist out of a man disliked or misunderstood by many Americans? Malcolm X’s legacy is often misinterpreted or never properly learned. Media pushes X’s original ideas, many of which the Nation of Islam was responsible for propagating. The figure seen in much of American media is a representation of Malcolm X prior to his revelation about black and white segregation, “white devils,” and many of his polarizing ideas.[18] King directed a film that humanized X, showing anxiety, paranoia, and friendship as a way to create a likable (or at least neutral) film character.

Casual Islamophobia arises throughout the film as X’s friends Cooke and Brown try to discourage Clay from converting to Islam; Muslims do not drink, smoke, or “have fun.”[19] If a friend does not accept you for something as personal as religion, it makes an onlooker feel sorry. This usage of stereotyping lends itself to the audience feeling empathetic toward Malcolm X.

One Night in Miami was a refreshing media perspective of Malcolm X. The film shows how Malcolm was a polarizing figure but did not villainize him, which is an overarching theme across Hollywood film. The activist has been painted as one who advocated for violence, black-and-white separation, and the Nation of Islam. Time and time again, the media forgets that X gave up those ideas after his journey to Mecca to complete Hajj, an important Muslim pilgrimage. He gave a voice to “the subterranean fury, [gave] it a voice, not a gun… and [staved] off the rising violence with which he and every human being must struggle when men are brutalized by men.”[20] However, it is important to keep in mind that many audience members may not have this complex understanding of X and how his ideas evolved before his assassination. The movie ultimately portrays this; Malcolm Xnever advocates for the men to pick up arms and storm cities, he implores his friends to use their fame and resources as a voice for the voiceless.[21]

One Night in Miami also does an excellent job of portraying Malcolm X as the man most people know. Known for being strong-headed throughout his life, Malcolm X is presented as a man firm in his stances and was not afraid to tell someone if they did not align with what he thought was right. Because of this, he was often seen as judgmental towards his friends and American society.[22] He and Sam Cooke butt heads several times as Malcolm chastises him for not doing enough for the Black community and Civil Rights Movement. “…He longed for peace and believed it could only come when men were honest with each other.”[23]

This chastisement could turn audiences against Malcolm X, or there could be a moment of realization that he was not the man that the media at the time painted him as. Shortly after his assassination, James Loomis wrote to the editor of the New York Times explaining that Malcolm X was not the violent figure that White media made him out to be during his life. Loomis did admit that the activist was set in his ways; he set the way for future Civil Rights activists “much as the Old Testament laid the foundation for the New Testament.”[24] If a film viewer was somewhat familiar with X after his Hajj, they would understand, much as Loomis did, that X’s original separatist ideas were not the ideas that he died with. One Night in Miami portrays Malcolm X in a light that allows the audience to better understand his purpose, looking past the “harsh” exterior of his words.

Selma

Selma was directed by Ava DuVernay and released in 2014. It was popular with critics and well-liked by general audiences, grossing more than $66 million worldwide.[25] The film opens in 1963 with four girls running down a stairway. A bomb is set off, killing all four girls; the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing sets the emotional tone for the remaining film.[26] It then moves to 1965 in Selma, Alabama, where Black Americans are being turned away from voting. Martin Luther King Jr. was called down to help advocate for voting rights legislation that would protect Black Americans from poll taxes and tests.[27] After arriving in Selma, he quickly butts heads with local activist groups. There are several scenes in which King meets with President Lyndon B. Johnson to pressure him to pass voting rights legislation.[28] Eventually, King and other activists plan to walk from Selma to the state capitol, Montgomery. During the first attempt, protestors are brutally beaten by police officers and rush back to Selma to escape said violence.[29] During the second march, King decides to turn the group around to avoid traps set by police or White aggressors along the way.[30] Finally, backed by the state, King and thousands of protestors completed the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.[31] The movie closes with the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and King’s speech in Montgomery.[32]

King had relationships with powerful White individuals, such as President Johnson. Often, an activist who has this kind of support will be much more successful in their cause because it seems reasonable. Selma highlighted these relations, showing the president and his advisors in several scenes.[33] This association implies backing from the federal government. It creates a positive air around King, something that the audience can recognize and absorb.

Martin Luther King gathered more support than other activists during the Civil Rights Movement. As seen in Selma, King directs a group and few and far in between are the decisions made by the other members. Even fewer are activists not in King’s posse. Malcolm X, for example, was mentioned but never seen. [34] President Johnson makes a negative comment about X, saying King is better suited for the American people because he is not as radical.[35] The audience can speculate who Johnson means when he says “American people,” but if the president sees King as a more palatable Black activist, it can be assumed that America is synonymous with White and not all Americans. Little else is said about X; his ideas, policies, speeches, and actions are not mentioned. If an audience member has little knowledge about the other activist, it is likely that they would have a much more positive thought process about King and his actions from there on.

Selma, much like the other two films, casts its main protagonist in a neutral, if not positive light. However, part of this positive atmosphere around King may have been from the lack of other important stars in the Selma March. The film never refers to the other celebrities that came down to Alabama, many of whom were actors. The decision to not feature more of Hollywood in Selma enlarges the light shown on King.[36] This issue continues throughout the film; DuVernay wanted to create a “‘demonstration of our moral certainty’ – sacred art,” so, while she wanted to produce a history piece, she had other motives.[37]

By creating a piece about King and the people of Selma, the director chose to eliminate other aspects of the historical narrative.[38]  DuVernay does not change King’s actions, making him a historically accurate figure in the film, but she does omit aspects of events that bolster King’s role, which ultimately pushes him to the front of the film and enlarges his moral character.[39] Historians took issue with this because it “egregiously distorts a significant element of that history,” changing the emphasis each individual carried within the Civil Rights Movement.[40]

What does this all mean?

The film industry, after long avoiding The Civil Rights movement, has begun to produce film after film about it. The Help focuses on Skeeter, with Black maids as supporting characters despite their stories being the reason for her success. This paints Skeeter as the hero of the movie, emphasizing her role as a White savior. Minny is influenced by a second White savior, Celia, as the woman’s kindness seems to alleviate Minny of all problems. The two White women sneak under the radar as saviors because their gender makes their powerlessness evident. One Night in Miami attempts to show Malcolm X in a more humane light, in an attempt to make audiences more willing to understand him and his goals as an activist. The United States has a perverse idea of X; Regina King’s film attempts to display how X’s frustration and curt way of speaking was only because of his passion and desire to find equality and Black rights in America. Selma creates a reverent picture of Martin Luther King by maximizing his role in the Selma Marches in 1964. Differently from X, King already has a respected and positive legacy, making the production much more palatable to many more people. The four protagonists in these three films produce different reactions from an audience. The way a Civil Rights activist is able to be understood and appreciated in film greatly depends on the general public’s pre-existing opinion of the character of character-type.

Applying these films to teaching

            Film differs from written sources because it has the ability to bring people, places, and events to life. Too often educators rely on students being able to read well to understand the deeper nuances and feeling of the writer or the details being described. Choosing to present information through visual sources evens the playing field for many students because they do not need to rely on their reading skills. Using film provides a new way to learn; it provides auditory and visual learners a positive experience. Captions can provide students who are hard of hearing or in need of written reinforcement to read what is being said. Film has the ability to serve as a platform that benefits many types of learning.

            As mentioned in the previous section, the film industry has recently started to embrace the production of film that focuses on the United States Civil Rights movement and the treatment of People of Color in American history. Due to this, there has been an uptick in historically accurate films that celebrate influential members of the Black American community. Often, film directors have much more freedom than textbook creators do. Films are able to incorporate aspects of history that have been whitewashed or completely removed from educational sources. The United States has a heavy history of whitewashing curriculum related to the Civil Rights Movement. The three films described in the first section are films that I have deemed as accessible and useful to teaching. Each film provides viewers with a different understanding and line of inquiry regarding civil rights and the role in which people played in the movement.

             The Help conveys an important message about the white savior complex. Despite financially providing for the Black women who shared their stories with her, Skeeter would never have suffered the same backlash and potential violence that these women would have if it became apparent that these stories were from Jackson. Skeeter’s race keeps her away from loss of employment, finances, and the potential for violent retaliation. Class lectures or discussions about how history has shown that identities dramatically shape a person’s quality of life can be related to the way Black women were forced to work in harsh conditions and Skeeter was able to write about these experiences and create a best-seller. In addition to this, class discourse after viewing could include a conversation about the introduction of White characters in Black stories and the space they then take away from Black individuals. The Help serves as an introduction to race and the way it shapes experiences.

            One Night in Miami retells the story of Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke, and Muhammad Ali reuniting in Miami for the boxing match. However, the film does something that most media does not. Malcolm X has been villainized throughout American media. This film allows Malcolm to be seen as a person with emotions, fears, and friendships. This humanizing aspect disrupts the narrative that most textbooks create. Very rarely does media, especially literature, acknowledge Malcolm’s humanity. They paint him as a hard radical. This film could also be used as a segue into Malcolm X’s life and ideas after his hajj, a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.

            Selma takes place in Alabama before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. It focuses on Martin Luther King Jr., but also incorporates activists that are taught about less often such as John Lewis. Showing this film allows students to understand that MLK did not act alone and was often called to areas to act as the face of a movement. The film also illustrates the violence against Black Americans and Americans that supported integration and equal rights. It does so in a matter that makes viewers understand the severity, but it does so with becoming too explicit. For instance, the film opens with the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing. It shows the four young girls that would be killed but the bombing does not show the individuals.

            As discussed, the usage of film can be an effective use of media in the classroom. It is used far too often; written sources are no longer reflective of today’s society. With the recent boom of media representing the Civil Rights Movement or racial inequality, it seems clear that film needs to be present in classrooms while teaching these events and concepts.

References

DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma. Pathé, Plan B Entertainment, Harpo Productions, Ingenious Media, Celador, Cloud Eight Films, 2014. 2 hr., 33 min. https://www.showtime.com/movie/3505943

“The Help.” IMDb. IMDb.com, August 10, 2011. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0. 

Horne, Gerald. “‘Myth’ and the Making of ‘Malcolm X.” The American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): 440–50. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/98.2.440. 

Housley, Jason. “Hollywood and The Civil Rights Movement.” Black Camera 19, no. 1 (2004): 7–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27761632.

King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami. Amazon Studios, 2020. 1 hr., 55 min. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.e8badd0e-9d87-114a-934b-54a31210c34f?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

Knapp, Jeffrey. “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films.” Representations 142, no. 1 (2018): 91–123. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2018.142.1.91. 

Loomis, James. “New York Times,” February 27, 1965.

“One Night in Miami…” IMDb. IMDb.com, January 8, 2021. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/. 

Reed, Adolph. “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act.” New Labor Forum 24, no. 2 (2015): 32–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796015579201. 

Seekford, Brett. “To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, and the Regendering of the White Savior.” James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal 4, no. 1 (2016): 6–12. https://doi.org/https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol4/iss1/1/. 

“Selma.” IMDb. IMDb.com, January 9, 2015. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/. 

Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. DreamWork Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Vintage, StudioCanal UK, 2011. 1 hr., 35 min. https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYe7uAgqQlZyQwgEAAAAf:type:feature?source=googleHBOMAX&action=play

[1] “The Help,” IMDb (IMDb.com, August 10, 2011), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1454029/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0. 

[2] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help. DreamWork Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Vintage, StudioCanal UK, 2011. 1 hr., 35 min. https://play.hbomax.com/page/urn:hbo:page:GYe7uAgqQlZyQwgEAAAAf:type:feature?source=googleHBOMAX&action=play

[3] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[4] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[5] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[6] Housley, Jason. “Hollywood and The Civil Rights Movement.” Black Camera 19, no. 1 (2004): 7.

[7] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[8] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[9] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[10] Brett Seekford, “To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, and the Regendering of the White Savior,” James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal 4, no. 1 (2016): pp. 6-12, https://doi.org/https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/jmurj/vol4/iss1/1/. 

[11] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[12] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[13] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[14] Taylor, Tate, director. The Help.

[15] “One Night in Miami…,” IMDb (IMDb.com, January 8, 2021), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10612922/.

[16] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami. Amazon Studios, 2020. 1 hr., 55 min. https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.e8badd0e-9d87-114a-934b-54a31210c34f?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb 

[17] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[18]  Gerald Horne, “‘Myth’ and the Making of ‘Malcolm X,” The American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): pp. 442-444.

[19] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[20] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[21] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[22] King, Regina, director. One Night in Miami.

[23] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[24] James Loomis, “Letter to the Editor – Death of Malcolm X,” n.d.

[25] “Selma,” IMDb (IMDb.com, January 9, 2015), https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020072/.

[26] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma. Pathé, Plan B Entertainment, Harpo Productions, Ingenious Media, Celador, Cloud Eight Films, 2014. 2 hr., 33 min. https://www.showtime.com/movie/3505943

[27] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[28] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[29] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[30] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[31] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[32] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[33] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[34] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[35] DuVernay, Ava, director. Selma.

[36] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,” Representations 142, no. 1 (2018): pp. 113.

[37] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,”114.

[38] Adolph Reed, “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act,” New Labor Forum 24, no. 2 (August 2015): pp. 33.

[39] Jeffrey Knapp, “Selma and the Place of Fiction in Historical Films,” 92-94.

[40] Adolph Reed, “The Strange Career of the Voting Rights Act,” 34.

British Exacerbation of the Great Hunger 1845-1852

British Exacerbation of the Great Hunger 1845-1852

Brian Sugrue

An Gorta Mór is the Irish word for Great Hunger, but most people know this event as the Irish Potato Famine. The Great Hunger began in 1845 when a disease in plants, that was caused by mold and fungus, spread among the crops. This plant disease is called Phytophthora infestans and it spread swiftly across the island nation. Potato crops were ruined for the next several years and this was especially devastating considering the main source of food for the Irish were potatoes. At the time Ireland was a colony that was controlled by Great Britain and due to this they were forced to be subject to the rules implemented by the British. Great Britain, being Ireland’s colonizer, took it upon themselves to send soldiers over to Ireland and implement new laws in order to help the issue from getting more out of hand. The rules subjected upon the Irish by the British hurt the country of Ireland and its people at a time when they needed as much help as possible. Life in Ireland had become so unbearable that many looked to leave the country, but unfortunately emigration was not accessible to all people. By the end of the Great Hunger there were approximately one million Irish people who had died during the famine years and another one million who were forced to seek refuge in other countries.

The Great Hunger in Ireland occurred in 1845 and lasted until 1852. Throughout the seven years things didn’t seem to get any better, but the British government insisted they were doing what needed to be done to fight this mass hunger. During this famine, if people were supplied with food and the proper resources, there would not have been widespread death across the country. The help England was claiming to give actually had the opposite effect and made problems in Ireland worse. Workhouses provided jobs that paid less than the cost of food, and landlords were being given the incentive to evict poor tenants. On top of this, Britain had not stopped exporting mass amounts of food from Ireland back to England. So when the British are claiming they are helping the issue, why are they making decisions that have the opposite effect?

The actions of the British government tell a bit of a different story to this ‘famine’.What were these decisions being made by the British government that were continually harming the already struggling Irish people? Weren’t the British supposed to be the ones helping Ireland through this dreadful period of history? By looking at the history of the Great Hunger, authors – Cormac O’Grada, Christine Kinealy, Jill Sherman, Peter Gray, Edna Delaney, Peter Solar, Tom Yager, and Mark McGowan – all give crucial details into the problems going on during the famine and what made it worse. These historians paint a picture of how a beautiful country like Ireland turned into a place of death and poverty. The heavy impact the new laws and relief measures had on the people as well as lack of care for Irish citizens’ welfare on the part of the British government is also discussed. I will also be using my sources to describe the first hand accounts of the Irish who struggled during this time. The authors actively contest the whitewashed stories behind the Great Hunger and use first hand accounts as well as written evidence to show British culpability. The argument states that the actions taken by the British government show that they knew what they were doing. Some of the authors go in depth about how the British government ended up seeing this as a solution for population control, because if people died then less would need to be fed and taken care of.

In this writing I use scholarly sources to reshape people’s thinking on the Great Hunger. Drawing from a few sources, I will use firsthand accounts of people who survived the Great Hunger, published books on the Great Hunger’s history, journals about laws enacted in Ireland, and articles about how the laws impacted Irish citizens to show how England exacerbated this famine. Ireland has dealt with a few famines throughout its history but nothing compared to the Great Hunger of 1845. Ireland had experience in how to help make the famine more manageable, but there were other factors at play that continuously made the issue worse. If Ireland had been properly supplied this famine would have ended in much less death. Other nations/groups of people saw the struggle not getting better and donated to the cause, such as the Choctaw Native Americans. In contrast the British Crown went out of their way to not help the Irish get donations. When the Ottoman Sultan offered to send money for famine relief, the representatives of the Queen rejected them, stating that they couldn’t donate that much due to the fact that it was much higher than the amount the Queen donated. This would be seen as an insult to donate more than the Queen. The actions of the British were the reason the death toll went up as high as it did and they continued to act in their best interest. This has been viewed for years as a tragedy that couldn’t be avoided, but diving deeper into this topic allows readers to see the man made factors that helped exacerbate this problem.

By looking at the significance of the laws put in place by the British government and the food being transported from Ireland to England, it is clear that this famine was very much exacerbated by the British. In general people believe this was a famine caused by a disease in the potatoes, but the lengths the British went to in order to ‘help’ Ireland actually ended up making everything worse and leading to more death. By looking at scholarly sources the reader can see that the British didn’t act in the best interest of the Irish and instead ignored the problem at hand. British bias towards the Irish drove the government to pass the Poor Relief Act, The Temporary Relief Act, or the Poor Law Extension Act which were said to be effective measures in fighting the famine but they were all ineffective. The treatment of the Irish people by Britain will always be remembered by those who survived those traumatic years, but in order to learn from history the story must be true and unbiased. In order to understand the trauma and hardships caused by the British government, one must look into the actions that harmed the Irish and how the people were affected by them. By looking at the living conditions brought upon the Irish by Britain’s relief and the laws enacted by the government it is clear that this famine was amplified by England.

Exacerbating the Famine

Ireland is no stranger to food shortages, as the Irish have experienced sixteen different food shortages from the year 1800 to 1845. But when the blight arrived in Ireland in 1845, this happened to be the first food shortage that affected the entire country of Ireland. “By late 1845 Ireland had lost about half of its potato crop to the blight. The English still believed the food shortage would not last. They thought that if the Irish people needed more help, Ireland should use its own tax revenue”( Sherman, 2017, p.18). In the beginning of the famine, government officials in England did not believe that the blight was as bad as people were saying and they thought this whole thing is an Irish problem. This was initially seen by the British government as an Irish issue that required action from no one but the Irish. What was going on in Ireland was being overlooked by those in England. It was assumed that if the British were to help the Irish by giving them government assistance, the Irish would rely too heavily on handouts and things would never get better in the country.

Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel had a harsh view of the Irish people and felt they were exaggerating when talking about how bad the blight was. When scientists told him that this should not to be taken lightly and that they weren’t overreacting, he chose to believe that they were still overreacting and that this wasn’t a big deal. When the Irish did look to see what the British were doing they were shocked and horrified to see them making things worse:

“In the midst of all this suffering, the Irish began to examine the actions of the British government. Food continued to be exported out of Ireland. British owners of Irish land were still entitled to the crops grown on that land. Their businesses relied on these crops. And British policy did not prevent the export. Starving Irish people became furious as they watched boatloads of grain depart from their docks for England. Food riots erupted at ports such as Youghal and Dungaran in southeast Ireland”(Sherman, 2017, p.22).

Ireland was growing enough food to feed its people but they had to watch this food get shipped out of the country.The fact that Britain wasn’t taking this issue seriously was clear when seeing that they continued to transport food from Ireland back to England. During a famine the goal is to get enough food to feed the entire country, but if the English government decided to keep that food they were exporting in Ireland, then the majority of people would have been fed.

Allowing Britain to export food out of Ireland hurt the poor in the country for years and allowed many people to starve to death. The exportation of food out of Ireland, made this whole issue of not having enough food worse. Importing food would help this mass hunger, but taking food away from the starving people when they could be surviving off that food is helping nobody. In the beginning it was the blight that caused Ireland’s food shortage, but as time went on it was the policies that were implemented by Britain that made the issue worse. It was said that the weak policies “did not help much” and that “stronger action by the British government could have prevented some suffering”( Sherman, 2017, p.34). The British government made efforts to start soup kitchens and public works projects to provide food and work to those who were affected the most in Ireland. The problem with these public works was they weren’t well funded and they weren’t long term solutions. Members of Parliament in England blasted the politicians who were going out of their way to do less to help the suffering Irish because it was inhumane and England would be looked down on if the problem got more out of hand. Christine Kinealy in her works “The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology, and Rebellion” points out: “The decision to make public works unproductive divided members of the Whig Party and caused a rift between the Irish Executive and the Treasury, a division that developed as the Famine progressed” (Kinealy, 2002, p.38).

There were certain members of parliament who were doing what they could to not help this famine die down. Decisions like this enraged the Irish people because they were expecting help from the country that has power over them. Instead Whig policy was focused on getting poor people off the land “and if it took mass death to achieve that directive, so be it”(McGowan, 2017, p.87). The intentions of the British government, led by the Whig party, were not that of wanting to give much help to the Irish. By overlooking mass death, the British were willing to undersupply the Irish and do less to help them. Since these were not citizens of England they were very comfortable with death amongst the Irish.

One man testified that when his grandfather talked about the public relief efforts, he would say “that there were so many making for the poorhouses that there wasn’t accommodation for half of them”(Ó Gráda, 2001, p.134). The decision to make these relief efforts not well funded or well organized hurt many Irish who were struggling. Many Irish looked to these different relief efforts put in place by the British but when people saw how little supply there was, some turned on each other to survive. Decisions like these came about due to a new thought amongst some British, which stated how this famine was an opportunity to bring about a regeneration of Ireland. The issue was that this was based on British views and was built around getting rid of religion and culture in Ireland.

Throughout the famine years politicians would expect lots of crops to be grown during the farming seasons. In Ireland they were producing enough food to feed the majority of the country but many people were still starving and unable to get access to food. Britain showed how seriously they took this problem:

“In autumn 1846, the Treasury decided that a portion of the modest amount of grain imported by the government should be sent in the first place to Scotland, despite the greater destitution in Ireland. This action caused considerable alarm amongst relief officials in Ireland. It was also an early example of decisions being made in London which ignored advice from relief officials on the ground”( Kinealy, 39).

This was a huge indicator to the Irish that they were not being taken seriously. People were starving and struggling to survive, but the British government continued to claim that this was not a big deal and that if the Irish needed help they should help themselves. Since this issue wasn’t taken seriously, people assumed that this was an Irish problem which required solutions made by the Irish government.

After debates about what to do, in the Autumn of 1845 Prime Minister Robert Peel decided to implement a Temporary Relief Committee with the goal of feeding the poor. He also shipped in 100,000 pounds of Indian Corn into Ireland with the thought that this food will replace potatoes in Ireland. These relief efforts were not put into place immediately because Prime Minister Peel felt that there was enough time to wait before the impacts of the shortages were to be felt in the following Spring and Summer. He expected the cheap Indian corn to take the place of the potato on the Irish palate. The relief efforts were better than nothing, but this was also seen as temporary relief. The British government expected this to get Ireland back up on its feet, but that was not the case. Prime Minister Peel was replaced in 1846 by Prime Minister John Russell. This then led to new relief efforts under the Russell administration.

When Prime Minister Russell came into power he introduced new relief efforts that were vastly different from the measures in which Peel put into place. Robert Peel’s measures were already not much help for the poor Irish, but when Russell’s relief efforts replaced the old ones it was clear that this would hurt the Irish. Russell’s measures meant much less food being provided for them and access to places to stay and eat were going to be more restrictive than they were before. These new measures also made Public Works the centerpiece of the help offered, but the measures were made to be unproductive. The most important part of the relief systems that was changed after the transition of leadership, the government still did not import food into Ireland.

During a famine, importing food would have been one of the best things they could have done. The only reason Peel’s relief efforts were more successful than Russell’s was because the new administration was clearly trying to make relief efforts in Ireland as unproductive as possible.

The Whig government had made the Public Works much harsher than it was before. Some big issues with the Public Works were that there were delays in people getting paid, people got paid low wages that did nothing against inflation, and changes in working hours to 6am to 6pm with a pay cut penalty for being late.“Despite daily reports to Trevelyan recounting instances of death from starvation of people dependent on the relief works, the Treasury insisted that the wages paid were adequate. The lowness of the wages contrasted with the high level of administrative expenses for the public works”( Kinealy, 40). The Irish thought that Public Works should be properly funded and the workers should be paid enough to survive during the famine. The pay was less than the cost of food for poor people and the jobs didn’t make much sense in terms of economic relief or famine relief. The thought process of adding jobs was also ineffective because the British would have Irish workers build things such as roads but these roads wouldn’t go anywhere. The jobs were not meant to help boost job growth or the economy, they were instead put there to provide some type of work for the Irish. The British government used the excuse that they were spending a lot of money on these relief systems but they should be using some of that money to properly pay the poor, hard working people. When the British realized the public works were failing they decided that:

“At the beginning of 1847, in recognition of the failure of the public works, the government decided to abandon them and replace them with a new relief measure based on the provision of free food in a number of specially established soup kitchens. The legislation, known as the Temporary Relief Act or ‘Soup Kitchen Act’, opposed current orthodoxy which viewed the provision of gratuitous relief as both ideologically flawed and expensive”( Kinealy, 41).

This is another example of the British doing something nice but it is not getting a lot of applause because members of the Whig party thought this would cost Britain too much money. They also had their own biases, in which they believed that the thought of generously helping the Irish was erroneous. Even though the British government was actively talking about helping the Irish, there were members of the government who allowed their biases to get in the way of providing relief to people who were struggling.

In the year 1847, when looking at the crops across the country, there was very little blight to be found, but the potato and there wasn’t as much corn being grown. The new policies instituted by the British marked a turning point because in their minds this was where responsibility shifted from Britain to Ireland. This led the British to feel that the Irish would finance relief efforts on their own from now on. As time went on more evictions occurred and more people were in poverty each day. During the Great Hunger land prices started to drop which allowed wealthy businessmen from Britain to seize this golden opportunity. As they started to buy up all the land, the landowners immediately either evicted the tenants or raised rent so they would have to move out. If families couldn’t afford these high prices then they would be left homeless and their homes would be knocked down so the land could be used. By increasing rent on farmers there was a now homelessness problem which made the poverty/death rate rise. By evicting families from their home or land, they were effectively giving them a death sentence because being evicted meant they lost everything. Experts claimed that “ultimately, there is history to blame: the creation of the landlord class”( Solar, 2015, p.73). Without the land they couldn’t support their family in any way, because that land gave them a home and a source of income. By putting responsibility of the poor on landlords they created a divide amongst those trying to survive in Ireland.

The further incentive for landlords to evict, was a raucous product of the new Poor Law Relief. From when this started in 1847 to the peak in 1850, there were 100,000 Irish men, women, and children stranded without a home. The evictions didn’t stop in 1850 either, “many more were illegally evicted or voluntarily surrendered their holdings in an effort to become eligible for relief, forced to do so by the harsh regulations of the new Quarter-Acre Clause which deemed that anybody occupying more than this quantity of land was not eligible to receive relief. Homelessness and social dislocation, therefore, became a major source of distress and death in the latter years of famine”(Kinealy, 44-45). Families who didn’t leave their homes or land suffered consequences. Many families had the roofs burned off their homes because the soldiers knew that a home without a roof wouldn’t help a family during the brutal Irish winter. At this point thousands have died or are in poverty, but the British still felt it was right to continue shipping food out of the country. Shipping food out of Ireland made the hunger worse, but when Irish families were being kicked off their land things were thrown more into turmoil.

The brutal winter that came also interfered with importation of foods from the United States to Ireland, which led England to look to other European countries for help. Unfortunately due to other European countries also being hit with blight the English couldn’t look to them for Irish aid. The Irish were struggling during the winter because there wasn’t more help on the way but evictions also started to rise leaving more people homeless. Scholars said that “evictions reached massive proportions during the winter which is commonly regarded as the Famine’s worst”( Yager, 1996, p.30). During the worst time of the year people are being kicked out of their homes and left homeless. People who refused to leave had the roof burned off or were forcefully removed. Many had no choice but to give up their homes because when they were formally evicted, landlord’s hired men to burn roofs or destroy the affected dwellings there. They would then, as soon as the tenants’ effects had been removed, have soldiers or police who were likely to quell any thought of resistance. During this brutal winter, many soldiers burned the roofs off people’s homes in order to ensure people don’t stay on the land. The winters in Ireland had been ruthless, so not having a roof over their homes would ensure they would freeze to death if they stayed. Tenants were evicted in the dead of winter and ended up losing their lives due to the unbearable conditions. But even through all of that, British Home Secretary Sir George Grey communicated that landlords were not going to get into any trouble with the government for destroying people’s homes.

Landlords were able to brutally evict people without having to fear for any consequences from the government. But landlords were acting in response to the Irish Poor Law, which put the government’s responsibilities of famine relief on landlords. Local newspapers stated that the good landlords were turning into not so good ones because they used cruel and heartless methods of removal. Landlords were put in a situation where they were responsible for stuff the government should have taken care of. When these landlords’ livelihoods were turned upside down, they decided to help themselves, but not all turned to burning roofs or having soldiers remove the tenants. Some landlords went to efforts to pay for their tenants to emigrate instead of forcefully evicting them. Many weren’t lucky enough to have someone pay for them to emigrate, but even those who were lucky enough experienced the brutal times at sea on ‘coffin ships’.

Mass immigration caused by England

The Great Hunger in Ireland started a mass exodus from the country starting in 1845. It’s estimated that more than one million people emigrated from Ireland due to the horrible living conditions. The cost of leaving the country was often too great to help entire families, so oftentimes only one person was given the money to leave. But there were many who continued to live a life of horrors even after getting onto the boat:

“The horrors of famine did not end on leaving Ireland as disease and mortality were rampant on board the ships, especially during the long journeys to America or Australia. Moreover, on arrival, the survivors were frequently subjected to degrading periods of quarantine or anti-irish prejudice. Because the demand to leave Ireland was so high, vessels which had previously been considered unseaworthy were utilized, leading to the sobriquet ‘coffin ships”(Kinealy, 58-59).

There were so many people trying to leave Ireland that ships were overcrowded and unsanitary.

They were called coffin ships because this was essentially a coffin for the Irish who rode in it. These ships were not well supplied with food or water and often were riddled with disease so many people died at sea. The use of unseaworthy boats were only just the start to the fright at sea. Many Irish were treated like cargo and this resulted in examples of Irish people suffocating on boats exiting Ireland. Emigration to North America was a lifeline for so many Irish people and unfortunately many didn’t get the opportunity to leave famine-stricken Ireland.

When emigrating out of Ireland, the treatment of the Irish was horrendous and they were often judged based on their appearance. If they appeared to look poor, hungry, or in any sign of poverty they were looked down upon, almost as if they were sick. The health officers at ports would inspect the Irish to determine if they have ‘Irish fever’ but would run into trouble with the emigrants because they tended to hide themselves on instinct. It is also very important to note that those who were emigrating had basically nothing with them most of the time so they were not prepared for setbacks or delays on departures. People would come to the port expecting the ship to depart but oftentimes would have to scramble to find somewhere to stay when the departure is delayed. These desperate emigrants were also often victims of devious practices. These practices were commonly used on the Irish, because they were very vulnerable due to desperation from their recent living conditions and many weren’t educated enough to understand otherwise. Many of the thieves practiced stealing the Irish people’s baggage and made them pay for its return. Half-fare children’s tickets were often sold to illiterate adults who would be turned away when trying to get on the boat. Frauds also sold worthless out-of-date tickets that were altered to the gullible or desperate. These little immoral practices piled on to the hard time the Irish already were enduring. People saw an opportunity to pick on the Irish who were already poor and suffering. Many people lost their possessions while traveling to new places because their bags would get stolen and they wouldn’t have the money to get it back. A lot of people didn’t have more money to use after paying for the boat out of the country. It was very common for families to use their savings to get however many of their children out of the country. It was seen as the only way to give their kids a good future, but what they didn’t know about was the conditions on board the boats.

The conditions on the ships were unsanitary and caused a lot of deaths. These ships were often not supplied well and provided horrible living conditions of passengers on board. Depending on where these boats were going, Irish emigrants had to endure long journeys through rough seas with little supplies:

“The food, de Vere continued, was seldom sufficiently cooked because there were not enough cooking places. The supply of water was hardly enough for drinking and cooking-washing was impossible; and in many ships the filthy beds were never brought up on deck and aired, nor was the narrow space between the sleeping-berths washed or scraped until arrival at quarantine. Provisions, doled out by ounces, consisted of meals of the worst quality and salt meat; water was so short that the passengers threw their salt provisions overboard – they could not eat them and satisfy their raging thirst afterwards. People lay for days on end in their dark dose berths, because by that method they suffered less from hunger”(Kinealy, 85).

In the eyes of Prime Minister Peel emigration was seen as the most humane method for helping the country, which he believed to be overpopulated. He thought it was wrong to evict the people, but believed that having them emigrate was the only solution. This was also seen as the cheapest solution for England because employing them in a workhouse cost a lot more over time. The British and sometimes landlords often paid for Irish to leave the country because it was half the cost of what it would be to provide famine relief for them. Authors christine Kinealy and Gerard Moran discuss why the British believed encouraging emigration to the Irish was the best solution:

“But how different from such an Ireland with which we have to deal – bare, naked, and unimproved! – no capital in the hands of its people – its population unskilled – its natural advantages unemployed – such an Ireland is incapable of supporting its present population”(Kinealy, 2018, p. 347).

By the time this was decided within the government, they were tempted to ship people off in order to save their money. This again showed the English government looking to help in a way that will cost them the least amount of time and money. The British government thought getting the population to decrease would be the easiest and cheapest way to end this issue. On top of encouraging emigration from the country, members of the House of Lords named Mr. Murray, Mr. Shafto Adair, and Colonel Torrens used pamphlets to get people to consider leaving the country. These pamphlets that they handed out “urged strongly in the pamphlet titles… the necessity of encouraging emigration[1] ”(Kinealy, 346). The British politicians went out of their way to encourage emigration because it was beneficial to the English. By encouraging emigration the British would only have to pay half the cost to ship them than it would to provide them famine relief. But what these politicians didn’t consider were the horrendous conditions at sea. By not taking this into consideration, they allowed other countries to see how inhumane these people were treated. This often sparked concern in other countries when boats would show up with half naked Irish men, women, and children.

There was often outrage at ports when seeing men, women, or children naked or barely clothed on these crowded ships. On top of that they were also very sick and all stuck in a small space where this illness was able to spread among the passengers. This made people who already looked and were very ill from the conditions in Ireland even worse than before. There had sometimes been women who were fully naked when the boats docked and they would wrap her in a sheet before they brought her ashore. The conditions were inhumane and many lost their lives in the pursuit to save their own.

 

Firsthand accounts

Those who felt the effects of this hunger the most were those of the lower classes. The people who were part of that quarter lost were farmers, farm laborers, elderly people, and those who depended on smaller farms. “However, the famine’s impact was uneven; poverty and death were closely correlated, both at local level and in cross section”(Ó Gráda, 123). This was a tragedy that unfortunately impacted mainly lower-class people and for years things kept getting worse. Since things continuously got worse, people were always on the move in order to find food, money, or anything to help their families. Some were on the move because they didn’t have a home meanwhile others would have one family member go out to get resources while the others hide in the home. Many died on the roadside while out looking for food, and others died while waiting for their family member to return. One man described the conditions of the bodies found on his journey as “emaciated corpses, partly green from eating docks (weeds) and nettles and partly blue from the cholera and dysentery”(Kinealy, 76). The bodies were all sorts of different colors due to the conditions from weather, quality of food, and the lack of food intake. Many wouldn’t be buried out of fear that those who would be around the body would get sick. It also was physically too much for some people to do proper burials for their family members. Many of the people were very sick and had little strength to do anything due to lack of food and water. “The people had neither the material nor the strength to make coffins nor dig graves. When a person died they got a plank and tied the feet of the corpse to one end of it and the head to the other end, and the hands together, then two men took hold of it at each end and carried it to a bog nearby where the water was deep and threw it in”(Kinealy, 78). These burials were unfortunate for family members who couldn’t give their loved ones a proper burial. The death count got so high that graveyards didn’t have enough plots to bury people. Trenches were dug in graveyards to fill the demand needed for deaths. They would fill every inch of the trench with bodies then fill it in with dirt. The living conditions England brought upon the Irish prevented them from being able to bury their dead.

Some Irish who journeyed through the country searching for help of any kind stumbled across terrifying scenes when looking at huts or other homes. One man described his experience looking into what seemed to be an abandoned home:

“A cabin was seen closed one day a little out of town, when a man had the curiosity to open it, and in a dark corner he found a family of the father, mother, and two children, lying in close compact. The father was considerably decomposed; the mother, it appeared, had died last, and probably fastened the door, which was always the custom when all hope was extinguished, to get into the darkest corner and die, where passers-by could not see them. Such family scenes were quite common, and the cabin was generally pulled down upon them for a grave”(Kinealy, 76).

Many didn’t have the strength to venture for help and unfortunately died in their huts. It was custom for the last person alive to shut the door so people walking by couldn’t see the dead bodies. An occurrence like this also provided a place for the family members to be buried at a time when people were afraid to go near the dead. The scenes in this cabin were horrendous, but it describes how a lot of families were found and the conditions in which people died.

One man who worked for the relief committee in Killane described the reactions of some poor when they noticed favoritism among who was given help and who was not:

“A man half starved, and considerably more than half naked, bare head, bare legs, and arms, nothing to cover him but the skeletons of an old pair of breeches and waistcoat…[who] seized me by my coat with the grasp of death” (Delaney, 2012, p.108). There were examples of Irish men and women who would go to famine relief institutions and would either get nothing or would see workers giving some people more resources than others. Actions like this caused a lot of commotion because everyone was desperate and starving yet some people would get special treatment.

Another story describes a man’s experience meeting a traveler looking to get help: “Going out one cold day in a bleak waste on the coast, I met a pitiful old man in hunger and tatters, with a child on his back, almost entirely naked, and to appearance in the last stages of starvation; whether his naked legs had been scratched, or whether the cold had affected them I knew not, but the blood was in small streams in different places, and the sight was a horrid one. The old man said he lived seven miles off, and was afraid the child would die in the cabin, with the two little children he had left starving, and he had come to get the bit of meal, as it was the day he heard food relief was being given out. The officer told him he had no time to enter his name in the book, and he was sent away in that condition. A penny or two was given to him, for which he expressed the greatest gratitude”(Kinealy, 76).

Parents had to walk several miles with very little energy in hopes of getting something that would help the family. This man was lucky enough to get at least some money, but many often had to make the journey with nothing to show for it. It is very important to note that without much food or water it is very hard for people to gain the energy to do things, so walking for many miles is a sign of desperation on the part of the Irish. The living conditions were made so poor that people did anything they needed to survive. They even took risks when going on these journeys for example, in the last quote the man had to leave two of his kids at home, and he had fears that they wouldn’t be alive by the time he got back.

This same old man was seen again by the same person but this time his journey had not gotten him anything. This is an example of when some Irish started to understand that with barely any help there was little to no hope. “The next Saturday we saw the old man creeping slowly in a bending posture upon the road. The old man looked up and recognized me. On inquiring where the child was, he said the three were left in the cabin, and had not taken a ‘sup or a bit’ since yesterday morning, and he was afraid some of them would be dead upon the hearth when he returned. He was so weak that he could not carry the child and had crept seven miles to get the meal. He was sent away again with a promise to wait till next Tuesday, and come and have his name on the books. This poor man had not a penny nor a mouthful of food, and he said tremulously, ‘I must go home and die on the hearth with the hungry ones” (Kinealy, 76). People like him sacrificed and gave a lot just to be rejected multiple times by British soldiers. This shows how bad the relief system was in Ireland because people were being denied relief multiple days in a row. People went there because they had nothing, but they were often disappointed to find the only source of help couldn’t do anything. If people have no water or food and the relief system has barely enough to help them then can they be expected to survive? Another man by the name of Denis M’Kennedy, who worked for the Board of Works, dropped dead and was later spotted on the roadside. After the body was recovered a doctor performed a post-mortem examination on him and was shocked because “he had never seen a body so attenuated from lack of food”(Delaney, 100). The conditions of the bodies were mortifying to the doctors who had to examine them. When examining the bodies doctors could see how the Great Hunger impacted their bodies.

Another story from the Great Hunger tells of people who were so starved that eating food could kill them. Some people had been starved for so long that their bodies couldn’t handle certain amounts of food. The bodies of the Irish often struggled to absorb nutrients in foods and their hearts weren’t able to keep up with the body’s increased metabolic rate. The story went:

‘Carthy swallowed a little warm milk and died’ was the simple statement of one man’s death from starvation in Skibbereen. One man connected with the Quaker Society of Friends said, ‘If they get a full meal it kills them immediately.’ When the Indian meal came out, some of them were so desperate from starvation that they didn’t wait for it to be cooked properly, they ate it almost raw and that brought on intestinal troubles that killed a lot of them that otherwise might have survived”(Kinealy, 77).

The conditions of life brought upon the Irish were unlivable. People were so starved that eating killed them and their desperation drove them to often eat uncooked food. Other times they drank or ate anything they could because there was not food and water always readily available. There were often times where those who did have more access to resources tried to be generous but experienced frightening encounters. This story is about a woman whose family left out soup for poor people that were traveling to find food:

“The house was near the road and a pot of stirabout was kept for any starving person who passed the way. My mother Mary was a young girl at the time and alone in the house one day when a big giant of a fellow staggered in. He wolfed his share of stirabout and made for the door, but there was a tub of chopped raw cabbage and porridge for the pigs. He fell on his knees by the tub and devoured the stuff till she was in a fright, then he reeled out to the road and was found dead there a short time after”(Kinealy, 77).

This is another example of someone being so starved and desperate for food that he died due to scarfing down the first bit of food he saw. The people who survived the Great Hunger saw a whole different side of their countrymen because of how the laws and lack of help from Britain affected them. By removing mass quantities of food and not helping those struggling in the country, Britain made living conditions in Ireland unbearable for the Irish. There were families who had to “[survive] on a single meal of cabbage, supplemented by seaweed”(Delaney, 100).

Families had to be fed portions meant to serve one person and had to survive off meals like that. Meals like this led to starvation among many and made people very desperate. These first hand accounts show how the conditions of life brought on by the British were detrimental to the Irish people’s physical, mental, and overall health as well as a first hand view of the impact Britain had in exacerbating this famine.

The year 1852 marked the end of the Great Hunger in Ireland, but life did not go back to normal very quickly. The mass amounts of death and emigration meant there were less people to feed and the harvests were starting to be enough to feed people. But the biggest reason the famine came to an end was when England finally stopped exporting food out of Ireland. Throughout the next several years there would be rebellions against the British until they gained their independence in 1922. However, the history of the Great Hunger has been formed through British interpretations and has ignored the evidence suggesting that Britain is responsible for making the Great Hunger much worse than it should have been.

Conclusion

The eventual end to the Great Hunger came due to food not being exported out of Ireland, the recovery of the new harvest, and there were now less mouths to feed across the country. But this dark period didn’t end simultaneously across the country. Some counties suffered longer than others and some recovered quicker. The British could have played a different role in history, but instead worried more about themselves and let prejudice get in the way of doing what was right. They did make efforts to help the Irish but they were poor attempts at help that only did more harm than good. Choctaw Native Americans did what they could to help, but they could only donate so much meanwhile, some had their help rejected by the British government. The rejection of help was very telling of a country that didn’t want to help another in need. Famine relief was put in place as a placeholder until they could pass off the responsibility of relief onto the Irish. Rejecting help from another country and not making famine relief that is beneficial showed the intentions of the British government. The forced exportation of abundances of food that were produced in Ireland was adequate enough to prevent a famine threatened by potato failure.

These actions by the British illuminate the actual problems that exacerbated this famine. The Great Hunger could have resulted in much less death if the British had not stolen mass quantities of food from Ireland. But this also adds to our understanding of why this problem went on for years and only seemed to get worse. Generally it is thought that the British helped the Irish and that the problem in Ireland had to do with the potatoes. Though scholarly sources and first hand tellings of the Great Hunger paint a different picture of a country begging for help from a country that was not looking to get involved. England initially took a more hands off approach to famine relief but only changed course when there was pressure put on the government. They also did not do anything to make sure these famine relief efforts were long term and effective. This is shown through scholarly sources that show statements made by government officials and through multiple authors’ writings of the impact Britain’s laws had on the issue at hand. Through this research it becomes clear that this issue got worse over the years because England’s sad excuse for help actually made life worse for those already suffering. Britain deserves more blame for the famine getting out of control than they do credit for providing any sort of relief. The Great Hunger in Ireland was not a story of not being able to grow enough food, but instead is a story of British exacerbation of a famine.

A topic such as the Great Hunger would be a great topic to teach when learning about genocide. In school the only genocide students learn is about the holocaust and sometimes Native Americans which leaves many students not knowing that there were many more genocides that occurred in history. The fact that there have been so many in history is horrific so if we show our students more examples then we can start to teach the next generations of students about being good citizens and preventing tragedies like that from happening. As the old saying goes those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it and if schools don’t teach about more genocides then students will grow up not knowing much about genocides or how impactful they have been on so many lives. Coming out of high school I didn’t think there were many genocides besides the Holocaust and Native American removal because we weren’t taught about any others in school. Genocides also give students a deeper look into extremism and the forms of government that allows this kind of tragedy to happen. That being said this can also be used to show different forms of abuse of power by governments when teaching about different forms and levels of government.

Topics such as this can lead to conversations about discrimination and oppression and how governments have used their law making powers to push those discriminatory or oppressive laws. In the example of the Great Hunger the British Parliament made laws they knew would make the effects of the famine worse which can be compared to laws made in other countries including the U.S. that were harmful towards a specific group of people. The British government treated the Irish as if they were an inferior race which is a similar school of thought used against people of color that has been seen for years in American society.

Another interesting topic a teacher could teach the Great hunger with would be British Colonialism and how it’s impacted other nations/groups of people. The British have settled all over the world and have had impacts on the histories of many different countries. When teaching about the Great Hunger the teacher could have the class examine the effects of British Colonialism across the globe. Colonialism shapes people’s ideas of race, class, gender, and sexuality and all of these ideas are relevant in modern society. These are all topics that have some sort of controversy surrounding them in today’s society, so teaching students about the origins of the schools of thought would help them understand the world they live in. The topics of race, class, gender, and sexuality are all impacting our government today because laws are being made to protect the rights of those who are of different races, classes, genders and sexualities. By looking at British colonialism students can examine how those of different races, classes, genders, and sexualities were treated by governments in the past. There are a plethora of different topics that can be taught using the Great Hunger and it can open doors to really interesting and informative discussions which will only benefit the students.

References

Delaney, Enda. The Great Irish Famine – A History in Four Lives Personal Accounts of the Great Irish Potato Famine. Dublin: Gill Books, 2012. https://b-ok.cc/ireader/11743229.

Gráda, Cormac Ó. The Great Irish Famine. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995.

Gráda, Cormac Ó. “Famine, Trauma and Memory.” Béaloideas 69 (2001): 121. https://doi.org/10.2307/20520760.

Gray, Peter. “Was the Great Irish Famine a Colonial Famine?” East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies 8, no. 1 (2021): 159–72. https://doi.org/10.21226/ewjus643.

Kinealy, Christine. The Great Irish Famine: Impact, Ideology and Rebellion. Basingstoke:Palgrave, 2002.

Kinealy, Christine, Jason King, and Gerard Moran, eds. History of the Irish Famine. Routledge, 2018.

McGowan, Mark G. “The Famine Plot Revisited: A Reassessment of the Great Irish Famine as Genocide.” Genocide Studies International 11, no. 1 (2017): 87–104. https://doi.org/10.3138/gsi.11.1.04.

Sherman, Jill. The Irish Potato Famine: A Cause-and-Effect Investigation. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 2017.

Solar, Peter. “Why Ireland Starved and the Big Issues in Pre-Famine Irish Economic History.” Irish Economic and Social History 42, no. 1 (2015): 62–75. https://doi.org/10.7227/iesh.42.1.4.

Yager, Tom. “Mass Eviction in the Mullet Peninsula during and after the Great Famine.” Irish Economic and Social History 23, no. 1 (1996): 24–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/033248939602300103.