Tag: equality

Unseen Fences: How Chicago Built Barriers Inside its Schools

Unseen Fences: How Chicago Built Barriers Inside its Schools

Emily Nicholson

Northern public schools are rarely ever centered in national narratives of segregation. Yet as Thomas Sugrue observes, “even in the absence of officially separate schools, northern public schools were nearly as segregated as those in the south.”[1] Chicago Illustrates this, despite the Jim Crow laws, the city developed a racially organized educational system that produced outcome identical to those segregated in southern districts.  The city’s officials celebrated equality while focusing on practices that isolated black students in overcrowded schools. The north was legally desegregated and was not pervasive but put into policies and structures of urban governance.

This paper argues that Chicago school segregation was intentional. It resulted from a coordinated system that connected housing discrimination, political resistance to integration, and targeted policies crafted to preserve racial separation in public schools. While Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation by law, Chicago political leaders, school administration, and networks maintained it through zoning, redlining, and administrative manipulation. Using both primary source, newspapers NAACP records, and a great use of historical scholarship, this paper shows how segregation in Chicago was enforced, defended, challenged, and exposed by the communities that it harmed.

Historiography

The historical context outlined above leads to several central research questions that guide this paper. First, how did local governments and school boards respond to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, and how did their policies influence the persistence of segregation in Chicago? Second, how did housing patterns and redlining contribute to the continued segregation of schools? Third, how did the racial dynamics of Chicago compare to those in other northern cities during the same period?

These questions have been explored by a range of scholars. Thomas Surgue’s Sweet Land of Liberty provides the framework for understanding northern segregation as a system put in the local government rather than state law. Sugrue argues that racism in the north was “structural, institutional, and spatial rather than legal, shaped through housing markets, zoning decisions, and administrative policy. His work shows that northern cities constructed segregation through networks of bureaucratic authority that were hard to challenge. Sugrue’s analysis supports the papers argument by demonstrating that segregation in Chicago was not accidental but maintained through everyday decisions.

Philip T.K. Daniel’s scholarship deepens this analysis of Chicago by showing how school officials resisted desegregation both before and after Brown v. Board. In his work A History of the Segregation-Discrimination Dilemma: The Chicago Experience, Daniel shows that Chicago public school leaders manipulated attendance boundaries, ignored overcrowding schools, and defended “neighborhood schools” as the way to preserve racial separation. Daniel highlights that “in the years since 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, research have repeatedly noted that all black schools are regarded inferior.”[2] Underscoring the continuing of inequality despite federal mandates. Daniel’s findings reinforce these papers claim that Chicago’s system was made intentional, and the local officials played a high role in maintaining segregation.

Dionne Danns offers a different perspective by examining how students, parents, and community activists responded to the Chicago public school’s discriminatory practices. In Crossing Segregated Boundaries, her study of Chicago’s High School Students Movement, Danns argues that local activism was essential to expose segregation that officials tied to hide. She shows that black youth did not just fix inequalities of their schools but also developed campaigns, boycotts, sit-ins, which challenged Chicago Public School officials and reshaped the politics of education. Danns’ work supports the middle portion of this paper, it analyzes how community resistance forced Chicago’s segregation practices in a public view.

Paul Dimond’s Beyond Busing highlights how the court system struggled to confront segregation in northern cities because it did not connect with the law. Dimond argues that Chicago officials used zoning, optional areas, intact busing, and boundaries to maintain separation while avoiding the law. He highlights that, “the constant thread in the boards school operation was segregation, not neighborhood,”[3] showing that geographic justification was often a barrier for racial intent. Dimond’s analysis strengthens the argument that Chicago’s system was coordinated and on purpose, built through “normal” administrative decisions.

Jim Carl expands the scholarship into the time of Harold Washington, showing how political leadership shaped the educational reform. Carl argues that Washington believed in improving black schools not through desegregation but through resource equity and economic opportunities for black students. This perspective highlights how entrenched the early segregation policies were, reformers like Washington built a system that was made to disadvantage black communities. While Carl’s focus is later in the Papers period, his work provides the importance of how political structure preserved segregation for decades.

Regional and National Context

Chicago’s experience with segregation was both typical and different among the northern cities. Cities like Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York faced similar challenges. Chicago’s political machine created these challenges. As Danns explains in “Northern Desegregation: A Tale of Two Cities”, “Chicago was the earliest northern city to face Title VI complaint. Handling the complaint, and the political fallout that followed, left the HEW in a precarious situation. The Chicago debacle both showed HEW enforcement in the North and West and the HEW investigating smaller northern districts.”[4]  This shows how much political interest molded the cities’ approach to desegregation, and how federal authorities had a hard time holding the local systems responsible. The issue between the local power and federal power highlighted a broader national struggle for civil rights in the north, and a reminder that racial inequality was not only in one region but in the entire country. Chicago’s challenge highlights the issues of producing desegregation in areas where segregation was less by the law, and more by policies and politics.

Local policy and zoning decisions made segregation rise even more. In Beyond Busing, Paul R. Dimond says, “To relieve overcrowding in a recently annexed area with a racially mixed school to the northeast, the Board first built a school in a white part and then rejected the superintendent’s integrated zoning proposal to open new schools…. the constant thread in the Board’s school operations was segregation, not neighborhood.”3 These decisions show policy manipulation, rather than the illegal measures that maintained separation.

Dimond further emphasizes the pattern: “throughout the entire history of the school system, the proof revealed numerous manipulations and deviations from ‘normal’ geographic zoning criteria in residential ‘fringes’ and ‘pockets,’ including optional zones, discontinuous attendance areas, intact busing, other gerrymandering and school capacity targeted to house only one race; this proof raised the inference that the board chose ‘normal’ geographic zoning criteria in the large one-race areas of the city to reach the same segregated result.”3  These adjustments were hard but effective in strengthening segregation by making sure even when schools were open, the location, and resource issuing meant that black students and white students would have different education environments. The school board’s actions show a bigger strategy for protecting the status quo under the “neighborhood” schools and making it understandable that segregation was not an accident but a policy.

On the other hand, Carl highlights the policy solutions that are considered for promoting integration, other programs which attract a multiracial, mixed-income student body. Redraw district lines and place new schools to maximize integration… busing does not seem to be an issue in Chicago…it should be obviously metro wide, because the school system is 75 percent minority.” [5]. This approach shows the importance of system solutions that go beyond busing, and integration requires addressing the issue of racial segregation in schools. Carl’s argument suggests that busing itself created a lasting change. By changing district lines, it is not just about moving the children around, but to change the issues that reinforce segregation.

Understanding Chicago’s segregation requires comparing northern and southern practices. Unlike the south, where segregation was organized in law, northern segregation was de facto maintained through residential patterns, local policies, and bureaucratic practices. Sugrue explains, “in the south, racial segregation before Brown was not fundamentally intertwined with residential segregation.”1. This shows how urban geography and housing discrimination shaped educational inequality in northern cities. In Chicago, racial restrictive, reddling, confined black families to specific neighborhoods, and that decided which school the children could attend. This allowed northern officials to say that segregation was needed more than as a policy.

Southern districts did not rely on geographic attendance zones to enforce separation; “southern districts did not use geographic attendance zones to separate black and whites.”1. In contrast, northern cities like Chicago used zones and local governance to achieve smaller results. Danns notes, “while legal restrictions in the south led to complete segregation of races in schools, in many instances the north represented de facto segregation, which was carried out as a result of practice often leading to similar results”4. This highlights the different methods by segregation across regions, even after the legal mandates for integration. In the south, segregation was enforced by the law, making the racial boundaries clear and intentional.

Still, advocacy groups were aware of the nationwide nature of this struggle. In a newspaper called “Key West Citizen” it says, “a stepped-up drive for greater racial integration in public schools, North and South is being prepared by “negro” groups in cities throughout the country.”  Resistance for integration could take extreme measures, including black children to travel long distances to go to segregated schools, while allowing white children to avoid those schools. In the newspaper “Robin Eagle” it notes, “colored children forced from the school they had previously attended and required to travel two miles to a segregated school…white children permitted to avoid attendance at the colored school on the premise that they have never been enrolled there.” [6] These examples show how resistance to integration represents a national pattern of inequality. Even though activist and civil rights groups fought for the educational justice, the local officials and white communities found ways to keep racial segregation. For black families, this meant their children were affected by physical and emotional burdens of segregation like, long commutes, bad facilities, and reminder of discrimination. On the other hand, white students received help from more funding and better-found schools. These differences show how racial inequality was within American education, as both northern and southern cities and their systems worked in several ways.

Understanding Chicago’s segregation requires comparing northern and southern practices. Unlike the south, where segregation was organized in law, northern segregation was de facto maintained through residential patterns, local policies, and bureaucratic practices. Sugrue explains, “in the South, racial segregation before Brown was not fundamentally intertwined with residential segregation.”1. This shows how urban geography and housing discrimination shaped educational inequality in northern cities. In Chicago, racial restrictive, reddling, confined black families to specific neighborhoods, and that decided which school the children could attend. This allowed northern officials to say that segregation was needed more than as a policy.

Southern districts did not rely on geographic attendance zones to enforce separation; “southern districts did not use geographic attendance zones to separate black and whites.”1 In contrast, northern cities like Chicago used zone and local governance to achieve smaller results. Danns notes, “while legal restrictions in the south led to complete segregation of races in schools, in many instances the north represented de facto segregation, which was carries out as a result of practice often leading to similar results”.4 This highlights the different methods by segregation across regions, even after the legal mandates for integration. In the South, segregation was enforced by the law, making the racial boundaries clear and intentional.

Yet the advocacy groups were aware of the nationwide nature of this struggle. In a newspaper called “Key West Citizen” it says, “a stepped-up drive for greater racial integration in public schools, North and South is being prepared by “negro” groups in cities throughout the country.” Resistance for integration could take extreme measure, including black children to travel long distances to go to segregated schools, while allowing white children to avoid those schools. These examples show how resistance to integration represents a national pattern of inequality. Even though activist and civil rights groups fought for educational justice, the local officials and white communities found ways to keep racial segregation. For black families, this meant their children were affected by physical and emotion burdens of segregation like, long commutes, bad facilities, and reminder of discrimination. On the other hand, white students received help from more funding and better-found schools. These differences show how racial inequality was within American education, as both northern and southern cities and their systems worked in several ways.

The policies that shaped Chicago schools in the 1950’s and 1960’s cannot be understood without looking at key figures such as Benjamin Willis and Harold Washington. Benjamin Willis, who was a superintendent of Chicago Public Schools from 1953 to 1966 and became known for his resistance to integration efforts. Willis’ administration relied on the construction of mobile classrooms, also known as “Willis wagons,” to deal with the overcrowding of Black schools. Other than reassigning students to nearby under-enrolled schools, Willis placed these classrooms in the yards of segregated schools. As Danns explains, Willis was seen by Chicagoans as the symbol of segregation as he gerrymandered school boundaries and used mobile classrooms (labeled Willis Wagons) to avoid desegregation.”4  . His refusal to implement desegregation measures made him a target of protest, including boycotts led by families and students.

On the other hand, Harold Washington, who would become Chicago’s first black mayor, represented a shift towards community-based reform and equality-based policies. Washington believed that equality in education required more than racial integration, but it needed structural investment in Black schools and economic opportunities for Black students. Jim Carl writes, Washington’s approach, “Washington would develop over the next thirty-three years, one that insisted on adequate resources for Black schools and economic opportunities for Black students rather than viewing school desegregation as the primary vehicle for educational improvement.”5 His leadership came from the earlier civil rights struggles of the 1950’s and 1960’s with the justice movements that came in the post-civil rights era.

How Chicago Built Segregation

Chicago’s experience in the mid-twentieth century provides an example of how racial segregation was maintained through policy then law.  In the postwar era, there was an increase in Chicago’s population. Daniel writes, “this increased the black school population in that period by 196 percent.”4. By the 1950’s, the Second Great Migration influenced these trends, with thousands of Black families arriving from the south every year. As Sugrue notes, “Blacks who migrated Northern held high expectations about education.” 1.   There was hope the northern schools would offer opportunities unavailable in the South. Chicago’s public schools soon became the site of racial conflict as overcrowding; limited resources, and administrative discrimination showed the limits of those expectations.

One of the features of Chicago’s educational system is the era of the “neighborhood schools” policy. On paper, this policy allowed students to attend schools near their homes, influencing the community. In practice, it was a powerful policy for preserving racial segregation. Sugrue explains, “in densely populated cities, schools often within a few blocks of one another, meaning that several schools might serve as “neighborhood”.”1. Because housing in Chicago was strictly segregated through redlining, racially restrictive areas, and de facto residential exclusion, neighborhood-based zoning meant that Black and white students were put into separate schools. This system allowed city officials to claim that segregation reflected residential patterns rather than intentional and avoiding the violation of Brown. A 1960 New York Times article called, “Fight on Floor now ruled out” by Anthony Lewis, revealed how Chicago officials publicly dismissed accusations of segregation while internally sustaining the practice. The article reported that school leaders insisted that racial imbalance merely reflected “neighborhood conditions” and that CPS policies were “not designed to separate the races,” even as Black schools operated far beyond capacity.”[7] This federal-level visibility shows that Chicago’s segregation was deliberate: officials framed their decisions as demographic realities, even though they consistently rejected integration measures that would have eased overcrowding in Black schools.

The consequences of these policies became visible by the 1960’s. Schools in Black neighorhoods were overcrowded, operating on double shifts or in temporary facilities. As Dionne Danns describes in Northern Desegregation: A Tale of Two Cities, she says, “before school desegregation, residential segregation, along with Chicago Public School (CPS) leaders’ administrative decisions to maintain neighbor-hood schools and avoid desegregation, led to segregated schools. Many Black segregated schools were historically under-resourced and overcrowded and had higher teacher turnover rates.”[8] The nearby white schools had empty classrooms and more modern facilities. This inequality sparked widespread community outrage, setting up the part for the educational protest that would define Chicago’s civil rights movement.

The roots of Chicago’s school segregation related to its housing policies. Redlining, the practice by which federal agencies and banks denied loans to Black homebuyers and systematically combined Black families to certain areas of the city’s south and west sides. These neighborhoods were often shown by housing stock, limited public investment, and overcrowding. Due to this policy, school attendance zones were aligned with neighborhood boundaries, these patterns of residential segregation were mirrored with the city’s schools. As historian Matthew Delmont explains in his book, Why Busing Failed, this dynamic drew the attention of federal authorities: “On July 4, 1965, after months of school protest and boycotts,  civil rights groups advocated in Chicago by filing a complaint with the U.S. Office of Education charging that Chicago’s Board of Education violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”[9] This reflected how much intertwined housing and education policies were factors of racial segregation. The connection between where families could live and where their children could attend school showed how racial inequality was brought through everyday administrative decisions, and molding opportunities for generations of black Chicagoans.

These systems, housing, zoning, and education helped maintain a racial hierarchy under local control. Even after federal courts and civil rights organizations pushed for compliance with Brown, Chicago’s officials argued that their schools reflect demographic reality rather than discriminatory intent. This argument shows how city planners, developers, and school administrators collaborated. School segregation was not a shift from southern style Jim Crow, but a defining feature of North governance.

Resistance and Exposure

Chicago’s struggle with school segregation was not submissive. Legal challenges and community activism were tools in confronting inequalities. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund filed many lawsuits to challenge these policies and targeted the districts that violated the state’s education law. Parents and students organized boycotts and protests and wanted to draw attention to the injustices. Sugrue notes, “the stories of northern school boycotts are largely forgotten. Grassroots boycotts, led largely by mothers, inspired activists around the country to demand equal education”1.  The boycotts were not symbolic but strategic; community driven actions targeted at the system’s resistance to change. These movements represented an assertion of power from communities that had to be quiet by discriminatory policies. Parents, especially black mothers, soon became figures in these campaigns, using their voices, and organizing ways to demand responsibility from school boards and city officials. Their actions represented the change that would not come straight from the courtrooms, but from the people affected by injustice. The boycotts interrupted the normal school system and forced officials to listen to the demands for equal education. 

Danns emphasizes the range of activism during this period, writing in Chicago High School Students’ Movement for Quality Public Education: “in the early 1960’s, local and prominent civil rights organizations led a series of protests for school desegregation. These efforts included failed court cases, school boycotts, and sit-ins during superintendent Benjamin Willis administration, all which led to negligible school desegregation”[10]. Despite the limited success of these efforts, the activism of the 1960’s was important for exposing the morals of northern liberalism, and the continuing of racial inequalities outside the South. Student-led protests and communities organizing, not only challenged the policies of the Chicago Board of Education but also influenced the new generation for young people to see education as a main factor in the struggle for civil rights.

Legal tactics were critical in enforcing agreements. An article from the NAACP Evening Star writes, “on the basis of an Illinois statute which states that state-aid funds may be withheld from any school district that segregated based on race or color.” [11]The withholding of state funds applied pressure on resistant boards, showing that legal leverage could have consequences. When the board attempted to deny black students’ admission, the NAACP intervened.  In the newspaper “Evening Star”, They reported, “Although the board verbally refused to admit negro students and actually refused to do so when Illinois students applied for admission, when the board realized that the NAACP was going to file suit to withhold state-aid funds, word was sent to each student who had applied that they should report to morning classes.” [12]This shows how legal and financial pressure became one of the effective ways for enforcing desegregation. The threat of losing funds forced the school boards to work with the integration orders, highlighting the appeals were inadequate to undo the system of discrimination. The NAACP’s strategy displayed the importance of defense with legal enforcement, using the courts and states’ statutes to hold them accountable. This illustrated that the fight for educational equality required not only the protest, but also the legal base to secure that justice was to happen. This collaboration of legal action and grassroots mobilization reflects the strategy that raised both formal institutions and community power, showing the northern resistance to desegregation was far from being unchanged.

Long-Term Consequences

Chicago’s segregated schools had long-lasting effects on Black students, particularly through inequalities in the education system. Schools in Black neighborhoods were often overcrowded, underfunded, and provided fewer academic resources than their white counterparts. These disparities limited educational opportunities and shaped students’ futures. The lack of funding meant that schools could no longer afford placement courses, extracurricular programs, or even resources for classrooms, this shaped a gap in the quality of education between and black and white students. Black students in these kinds of environments were faced with educational disadvantages, but also less hope on their future.

Desegregation advocates sought to address both inequality and social integration. Danns explains, “Advocates of school desegregation looked to create integration by putting students of different races into the same schools. The larger goal was an end to inequality, but a by-product was that students would overcome their stereotypical ideas of one another, learn to see each other beyond race, and even create interracial friendships”4. While the ideal of desegregation included fostering social understanding, the reality of segregated neighborhoods and schools often hindered these outcomes. Even when legal policies aimed to desegregate schools, social and economic blockades continued to bring separation. Many white families moved to suburban districts to avoid integration. This created more classrooms to be racially diverse and left many of the urban schools attended by students of color.

The larger society influenced students’ experiences inside schools, despite efforts to create inclusive educational spaces. Danns explains, “In many ways, these schools were affected by the larger society; and tried as they might. Students often found it difficult to leave their individual, parental, or community views outside the school doors”9 Even when students developed friendships across racial and ethnic lines, segregated boundaries persisted: “Segregated boundaries remained in place even if individuals had made friends with people of other racial and ethnic groups”4. The ongoing influence of social norms and expectations meant that schools were not blinded by the racial tensions that existed outside their walls. While the teachers and administration may have tried to bring a more integrated environment, the racial hierarchies and prejudices in the community often influenced the students’ interactions. These hurdles were not always visible, but they shaped the actions within the school in fine ways. Despite the efforts at inclusion, the societal context of segregation remained challenging, and limited the integration and equality of education.

Beyond the social barriers, the practical issue of overcrowding continued to affect education. Carl highlights this concern, quoting Washington: “In interest, Washington stated that the issue ‘is not “busing,” it is freedom of choice. Parents must be allowed to move their children from overcrowded classrooms. The real issue is quality education for all’5. The focus on “freedom of choice” underscores that structural inequities, rather than simple policy failures, were central to the ongoing disparities in Chicago’s schools.

Overcrowding in urban schools was a deeper root to inequality. Black neighborhoods were often left with underfunded and overcrowded schools, while the white schools had smaller classes, and more resources. The expression of “freedom of choice” was meant to show that parents in marginalized communities should all have the same educational opportunity as the wealthier neighborhoods. However, this freedom was limited by residential segregation, unequal funding, and barriers that restricted many within the public school system.

The long-term impact of segregation extended beyond academics into the social and psychological lives of Black students. Segregation reinforced systemic racism and social divisions, contributing to limited upward mobility, economic inequality, and mistrust of institutions. Beyond the classroom, these affects shaped how the black students viewed themselves and where they stand in society. Psychologically, this often resulted in lower self-esteem and no academic motivation. Socially, segregation limited interactions between the different racial groups, and formed stereotypes. Overtime, these experiences came from a cycle in the issue of educational and government institutions, as black communities struggled with inequalities continuously.

  Black students were unprepared for the realities beyond their segregated neighborhoods, “Some Black participants faced a rude awakening about the world outside their high schools. Their false sense of security was quickly disrupted in the isolated college towns they moved to, where they met students who had never had access to the diversity they took for granted”9. This contrast between the relative diversity within segregated urban schools and the other environments illustrates how deeply segregation shaped expectations, socialization, and identity formation.

Even after desegregation policies were implemented, disparities persisted in access to quality education. Danns observes that, decades later, access to elite schools remained unequal: “After desegregation ended, the media paid attention to the decreasing spots available at the city’s top schools for Black and Latino students. In 2018, though Whites were only 10 percent of the Chicago Public Schools population, they had acquired 23 percent of the premium spots at the top city schools”7. This statistic underscores the enduring structural and systemic inequalities in the educational system. These inequalities show how racial privilege and access to resources favored by certain groups and disadvantaged others. Segregation has taken new ways, through economic and residential patterns rather than laws. This highlights the policy limitations, and brings out the need for more social, economic, and institutional change to achieve the goal of educational equality.

Segregation not only restricted access to academic resources but also had broader psychological consequences. By systematically limiting opportunities and reinforcing racial hierarchies, segregated schooling contributed to feelings of marginalization and diminished trust in public institutions. The experience of navigating a segregated school system often left Black students negotiating between a sense of pride in their communities and the constraints imposed by discriminatory policies. The lasting effects of these psychological scars were there long after segregation ended. The pain from decades of separation made it hard for many black families to believe in change that brought equality. Segregation was not an organized injustice, but also an emotional one; shaping how generations of students understood their worth, and connection to a system that let them down before.

The structural and social consequences of segregation were deeply intertwined. Overcrowded and underfunded schools have diminished educational outcomes, which in turn limit economic and social mobility. Social and psychological barriers reinforced these disparities, creating a cycle that affected multiple generations. Yet the activism, legal challenges, and community efforts described earlier demonstrate that Black families actively resisted these constraints, fighting for opportunities and equality. Their fight not only challenged the system’s injustice, but also laid a foundation for more civil rights reforms, and influencing future movements.

By examining Chicago’s segregation in the context of broader northern and national trends, it becomes clear that local policies and governance played an outsized role in shaping Black students’ experiences. While southern segregation was often codified in law, northern segregation relied on policy, zoning, and administrative practices to achieve similar results. The long-term impact on Chicago’s Black communities reflects the consequences of these forms of institutionalized racism, emphasizing the importance of both historical understanding and ongoing policy reform.

Conclusion

Chicago’s school segregation was not accidental or demographic, it was a product of housing, political and administrative decisions designed to preserve racial separation. The city’s leaders made a system that mirrored the thinking behind Jim Crow Laws and its legal framework, making northern segregation more challenging to see. Through policies made in bureaucratic language, Chicago Public Schools and city officials made sure that children got unequal education for decades.

The legacy of Chicago’s segregation exposes the character of educational inequality. Although activists, parents, and students fought to expose the challenges and the discrimination they created in the mid-twentieth century to continue to shape educational output today. Understanding the intentional design behind Chicago’s segregation is essential to understanding the persistence racial inequalities that defines American schooling. It is also a call to action reformers today to confront the historical and structural forces that have made these disparities. The fight for equitable education is not just about addressing the present-day inequalities but also dismantling the policies and systems that were built with the purpose of maintaining racial separation. The struggle for equality in education remains unfinished, and by acknowledging the choices that lead to the situation can be broken down by structures that continue to limit opportunities for future generations.

References

Primary Sources

Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Oct. 23, 1963. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1963-10-23/ed-1/.

Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Oct. 22, 1963. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1963-10-22/ed-1/.

Evening Star. (Washington, DC), Sep. 8, 1962. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83045462/1962-09-08/ed-1/.

Naacp Legal Defense and Educational Fund. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records: Subject File, -1968; Schools; and States; Illinois; School desegregation reports, 1952 to 1956, undated. – 1956, 1952. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mss6557001591/.

The Robbins eagle. (Robbins, IL), Sep. 10, 1960. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn2008060212/1960-09-10/ed-1/.

The Key West citizen. (Key West, FL), Jul. 9, 1963. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn83016244/1963-07-09/ed-1/.

Secondary Sources

Carl, Jim. “Harold Washington and Chicago’s Schools between Civil Rights and the Decline of the New Deal Consensus, 1955-1987.” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2001): 311–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/369199.

Dionne Danns. 2020. Crossing Segregated Boundaries: Remembering Chicago School Desegregation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=a82738b5-aa61-339b-aa8a-3251c243ea76.

Danns, Dionne. “Chicago High School Students’ Movement for Quality Public Education, 1966-1971.” The Journal of African American History 88, no. 2 (2003): 138–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/3559062.

Danns, Dionne. “Northern Desegregation: A Tale of Two Cities.” History of Education Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2011): 77–104. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25799376.

Matthew F. Delmont; Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation

Philip T. K. Daniel. “A History of the Segregation-Discrimination Dilemma: The Chicago Experience.” Phylon (1960-) 41, no. 2 (1980): 126–36. https://doi.org/10.2307/274966.

Philip T. K. Daniel. “A History of Discrimination against Black Students in Chicago Secondary Schools.” History of Education Quarterly 20, no. 2 (1980): 147–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/367909.

Paul R. Dimond. 2005. Beyond Busing: Reflections on Urban Segregation, the Courts, and Equal Opportunity. [Pok. ed.]. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=76925a4a-743d-3059-9192-179013cceb31.

Thomas J. Sugrue. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten struggle for Civil Right in the North. Random House: NY.

[1] Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008),

[2] Philip T. K. Daniel, “A History of the Segregation-Discrimination Dilemma: The Chicago Experience,” Phylon 41, no. 2 (1980): 126–36.

[3]Paul R. Dimond, Beyond Busing: Reflections on Urban Segregation, the Courts, and Equal Opportunity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005)

  1. [4]Dionne Danns, Crossing Segregated Boundaries: Remembering Chicago School Desegregation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020)

[5] Jim Carl, “Harold Washington and Chicago’s Schools between Civil Rights and the Decline of the New Deal Consensus, 1955–1987,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 3 (2001): 311–43.

[6] The Robbins Eagle (Robbins, IL), September 10, 1960,

[7]   The New York Times, “Fight on the Floor Ruled out,” July 27, 1960, 1.

[8] Dionne Danns, “Northern Desegregation: A Tale of Two Cities,” History of Education Quarterly 51, no. 1 (2011): 77–104.

[9] Matthew F. Delmont, Why Busing Failed: Race, Media, and the National Resistance to School Desegregation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

[10] Dionne Danns, “Chicago High School Students’ Movement for Quality Public Education, 1966–1971,” Journal of African American History 88, no. 2 (2003): 138–50.

[11] NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Subject File: Schools; States; Illinois; School Desegregation Reports, 1952–1956, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress,

[12] Evening Star (Washington, DC), September 8, 1962,

Camden’s Public Schools and the Making of an Urban “Lost Cause”

Camden’s Public Schools and the Making of an Urban “Lost Cause”

Noelle Cascarelli

In modern-day America, there is perhaps no city quite as infamous as Camden, New Jersey. A relatively-small urban community situated along the banks of the Delaware River, directly across from the sprawling, densely-populated urban metropolis of Philadelphia, in any other world, Camden would likely be a niche community, familiar only to those in the immediate surrounding area. However, the story of Camden is perhaps one of the greatest instances of institutional collapse and urban failure in modern America, akin to the catastrophes that befell communities such as Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey throughout the mid-twentieth century.

Once an industrial juggernaut, housing powerful manufacturing corporations such as RCA Victory and the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden was perhaps one of the urban communities most integral to the American war effort and eventual victory in the Pacific Theatre in World War II. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Camden experienced significant decline, its once-prosperous urban hub giving way to a landscape of disinvestment, depopulation, and despair. By the late twentieth century  – specifically the 1980s and 1990s – Camden had devolved into a community wracked by poverty, crime, and drug abuse, bearing the notorious label “Murder City, U.S.A.” – a moniker which characterized decades of systemic inequity and institutional discrimination as a fatalistic narrative, presenting Camden as a city beyond saving, destined for failure. However, Camden’s decline was neither natural nor inevitable but rather, was carefully engineered through public policy. Through a calculated and carefully-measured process of institutional segregation and racial exclusion, state and city lawmakers took advantage of Camden’s failing economy and evaporating job market to confine communities of color to deteriorating neighborhoods, effectively denying them access to the educational and economic opportunities that had been afforded to white suburbanites in the surrounding area.

This paper focuses chiefly on Camden’s educational decline and inequities, situating the former within a broader historical examination of postwar urban America. Utilizing the historiographical frameworks of Arnold Hirsch, Richard Rothstein, Thomas Sugrue, and Howard Gillette, this research seeks to interrogate and illustrate how segregation and suburbanization functioned as reinforcements of racial inequity, and how such disenfranchisement created the perfect storm of educational failure in Camden’s public school network. The work of these scholars demonstrates that Camden’s neighborhoods, communities, and schools were intentionally structured to contain, isolate, and devalue communities and children of color, and that these trends were not unintended byproducts of natural spatial migration nor economic development. Within this context, it is clear that public education in the city of Camden did not simply mirror urban segregation, but rather institutionalized it as schools became both a reflection and reproduction of the city’s racial geography, working to entrench the divisions drawn by policymakers and real estate developers into a pervasive force present in all facets of life and human existence in Camden.

In examining the influence of Camden’s segregation on public education, this study argues that the decline of the city’s school system was not merely a byproduct, but an engine of institutional urban collapse. The racialized inequitable geography of public schooling in Camden began first as a willful and intentional byproduct of institutional disenfranchisement and administrative neglect, but quickly transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure, as crumbling school buildings and curricular inequalities became manifestations of policy-driven failure, and narratives of students of color as “inferior” were internalized by children throughout the city. Media portrayals of the city’s school system and its youth, meanwhile, transformed these failures into moral statements and narratives, depicting Camden’s children and their learning communities as symbols of inevitable dysfunction rather than victims of institutional exclusion. Thus, Camden’s transformation into the so-called “Murder Capital of America” was inseparable from the exclusionary condition of the city’s public schools, as they not only bore witness to segregation, but also became its most visible proof and worked to inform fatalistic narratives of the city and moral character of its residents.

Historiography

            Historians of postwar America have long since established an understanding of racial and socioeconomic as essential to the development of the modern American urban and suburban landscape, manufactured and carefully reinforced throughout the twentieth century by the nation’s political and socioeconomic elite. Foundational studies include Arnold Hirsch’s “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago” (1983) and Richard Rothstein’s 1977 text, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America serve to reinforce such traditional understandings of postwar urban redevelopment and suburban growth, situating the latter as the direct result of institutional policy, rather than mere byproducts and results of happenstance migration patterns.[1] In The Color of Law, Rothstein explores the role of federal and state political institutions in the codification of segregation through intergenerational policies of redlining, mortgage restrictions, and exclusionary patterns in the extension of mortgage insurance to homeowners along racial lines. In particular, Rothstein focuses on the Federal Housing Administration’s creation of redlining maps, which designated majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods as high-risk “red zones,” effectively denying residents from these communities home loans, thus intentionally erecting barriers to intergenerational wealth accumulation through homeownership in suburban communities such as Levittown, Pennsylvania.[2]

            Hirsch’s “The Making of the Second Ghetto” echoes this narrative of urban segregation as manufactured, primarily through the framework of his “second ghetto” thesis. Conducting a careful case study of Chicago through this framework, Hirsch argues that local municipalities, urban developers/planners, and the business elite of Chicago worked in tandem to enact policies of “domestic containment,” wherein public housing projects were weaponized against Black and Hispanic communities to reinforce racial segregation throughout the city. Utilizing public housing as an anchor rather than tool of mobility, Chicago’s socioeconomic and political elite effectively conspired at the institutional level with one another to confine Black Chicagoans to closely-regulated low-income communities, devaluing land and property values in these areas whilst zoning more desirable land for redevelopment and suburban growth, thereby manually raising housing and movement costs to a level that Black Americans were simply unable to afford due to the aforementioned devaluation of their own communities as well as generational barriers to wealth accumulation.[3] Chris Rasmussen’s “Creating Segregation in an Era of Integration” applies such narratives to a close investigation of New Brunswick, New Jersey, particularly in regards to educational segregation, investigating how city authorities utilized similar institutional frameworks of racial separation to confine students to segregated schools and resist integration (school zoning, prioritization of white communities and schools for development, and segregationist housing placements), working off of the existing community segregation detailed by the work of Rothstein and Hirsch. [4]

            Working in tandem with historical perspectives of segregation as integral to the development of suburban America and subsequent urban decline, historians have also identified disinvestment as a critical economic process integral to the exacerbation of urban inequality, and eventual decay. Beginning in the postwar era, specifically in the aftermath of World War II and suburban development, industrial urban communities faced significant shortages in employment in the manufacturing sectors, as corporations began to outsource their labor to overseas and suburban communities, often following the migration of white suburbanites. Robert Beauregard’s Voices of Decline: The Post-War Fate of U.S. Cities diverges from the perspectives of Hirsch and Rothstein, citing declining employment opportunities and urban disinvestment as the most important factor in the decline of urban America on a national scale. Beauregard argues that by framing the disinvestment of urban wartime industrial juggernauts such as Newark, Camden, and Detroit as an “inevitability” in the face of rapid deurbanization and the growth of suburban America, policymakers at the national and local levels portrayed urban decline as a natural process, as opposed to a deliberate conspiracy to strip employment opportunities and the accumulation of capital from urban communities of color, even before suburbanization began to occur on a large scale.[5] Thomas Sugrue’s Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit also adheres to this perspective, situating economic devastation in the context of the development of racially-exclusive suburban communities, thereby working to tie existing scholarship and the multiple perspectives expressed here together, crafting a comprehensive narrative of urban decline in mid-twentieth century America as recurrent in nature, a cycle of unemployment, abject poverty, and a lack of opportunity that was reinforced by public policy and social programs that in theory, were supposed to alleviate such burdens.[6]

            Ultimately, while these sources focus on differing aspects of urban decline, they all work in tandem with one another to allow for a greater, comprehensive portrait of the causes of urban decay in postwar America, throughout the twentieth century. From deindustrialization to segregation and its influence on disparities in education, these sources provide absolutely essential context for an in-depth examination of the specific case study of Camden, New Jersey both in regards to the city itself, but also its public education system. While these sources may not all cite the specific example of Camden, the themes and trends identified each ring true and featured prominently in the story of Camden throughout this period.

            However, this paper will function as a significant divergence from such pre-existing literature, positioning the failure of public education in Camden as a key factor in the city’s decline, rather than a mere byproduct. A common trend present in much of the scholarship discussed above is that educational failure is examined not as a contributing root to Camden’s decline (and certainly not an important one, when education is briefly discussed in this context), but rather as a visible, tangible marker of urban decay in the area. While this paper does not deny the fact that failures in education are certainly rooted in fundamental inequity in urban spaces and broader social failings, it instead seeks to position Camden’s failing education state as not only a result of  urban decline, but as a contributor – specifically by engaging in a discussion of how educational failure transformed narratives around Camden as a failed urban community, beyond help and destined for ruin. In doing so, this paper advances a distinct argument: that Camden’s educational collapse must be understood not merely as evidence of urban decline, but as a foundational force that actively shaped—and in many ways intensified—the narrative of Camden as a city fated for failure.

Suburban Exodus and the Collapse of Urban Schooling

Prior to launching into an exploration of Camden’s public schooling collapse and the influence of such failures of institutional education on the city’s reputation and image, it is important to first establish a clear understanding of the context of such shortcomings.  Due to this paper’s focus specifically on the institutional failure of Camden’s public schooling system, and how such failures shaped perceptions around the city as an urban lost cause, this section will focus primarily on rising rates of racial segregation in the mid-twentieth century, both within city limits and beyond, specifically in regards to Camden County’s sprawling network of suburban communities. While the factors of deindustrialization, economic failure, and governmental neglect absolutely do factor into the creation of an urban environment situated against educational success, racial segregation was chiefly responsible for the extreme disparities found in educational outcomes through the greater Camden region, and is most relevant to this paper’s discussion of racialized narratives of inevitable urban failure that proved to be so pervasive on a national scale regarding Camden, both within the mid-to-late twentieth century and into the present day.

Such trends date back to massive demographic transitions of the pre–World War II era was the Great Migration – the mass movement of Black Americans to northern industrial cities. Drawn by the promise of stable employment and the prospect of greater freedom and equality than was available in the Jim Crow South, millions of migrants relocated to urban centers along the Northeastern seaboard. Camden, New Jersey, was among these destinations, attracting a growing Black population throughout the early twentieth century due to its concentration of manufacturing giants such as RCA Victor, the New York Shipbuilding Corporation, and Campbell’s Soup.[7] With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939—and especially following the United States’ entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor—industrial production in Camden surged. The city soon emerged as a vital hub of wartime manufacturing and domestic production, cementing its status as a key center of American industrial might.

As a direct result of its industrial growth and expanding wartime economy, Camden continued to attract both Black Americans and new immigrant populations, many of whom were of Latino descent. Among these groups were large numbers of Stateside Puerto Ricans, continuing a trend of immigration dating back to the 1917 extension of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.[8] Motivated by many of the same factors as Black migrants—chiefly the pursuit of steady employment and improved living conditions—these communities helped shape Camden into a diverse and vibrant urban center. The city’s population of color expanded rapidly during this period, its growth driven by wartime prosperity and the allure of industrial opportunity.

Following American victory in the Pacific and the end of World War II, Camden continued to experience rapid economic growth, although tensions arose between the city’s residents during this period along racial-ethnic lines. With the common American enemy of Japan and the Nazis firmly removed from the picture, hostilities began to turn inwards, and racial tensions skyrocketed, especially in the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. As historian Chriss Rasmussen writes in “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965-1976”, “While Brown and the ensuing civil rights movement pointed toward racial integration, suburbanization forestalled racial equality by creating and reinforcing de facto segregation. As many whites moved to the suburbs, blacks and Latinos remained concentrated in New Jersey’s cities.”[9] Thus, as Black Americans increasingly emerged victorious in the fight against racial injustice and began to accumulate more and more rights and legal protections, city-dwelling white Americans grew increasingly fearful and resentful, spurring a mass exodus from urban population centers – including Camden. Drawn by federally backed mortgages, the expansion of highways, and racially exclusive housing policies,[10] white residents moved to neighboring suburbs such as Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, and Pennsauken, while structural barriers effectively excluded Black and Latino residents from the same opportunities. Leaving for the suburbs in droves, white residents fled from Camden, taking significant wealth and capital, as well as major business with them, thus weakening the city’s financial base and leaving workers—particularly people of color—vulnerable to unemployment.[11]

Public and private institutions increasingly withdrew resources from neighborhoods perceived as declining or racially changing and banks engaged in redlining, denying mortgages and loans to residents in nonwhite neighborhoods, while city budgets prioritized the needs of more affluent suburban constituencies over struggling urban areas.[12] Businesses and developers often chose to invest in suburban communities where white families were relocating, rather than in Camden itself, creating a feedback loop of declining property values, eroding tax revenue, and worsening public services. As historian Robert Beauregard writes in Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities, “…while white middle-class and young working-class households had resettled in suburban areas, elderly and minority and other low-income households remained in the central cities. This increased the demand for basic public services (e.g. education) while leaving city governments with taxpayers having lower earnings and less property to tax.”[13] Thus, Camden residents left behind within the confines of the city became increasingly dependent on social welfare programs, which local and state governments began to fund less and less. This combination of economic retrenchment, racialized perceptions of neighborhood “desirability,” and policy-driven neglect fueled a cycle of disinvestment that disproportionately affected communities of color, leaving the city structurally disadvantaged.[14]

Concerns about racial integration in neighborhoods and schools also motivated many families to leave, as they sought communities aligned with their social and economic preferences. Such demographic change was rapid, and by 1950 approximately 23.8 percent of Camden City’s population was nonwhite.[15] While that figure may not seem extreme to the modern American, an individual likely familiar with diverse communities and perspectives, it is particularly shocking when placed in the context of Camden’s surrounding suburbs: by 1950, the nonwhite population of Pennsauken was a mere 4.5 percent,  2.1 percent in Haddonfield, and an even lower 1.9 percent in Cherry Hill.[16] These figures in particular serve as an exemplary demonstration as to the cyclical nature of segregation in the educational sector within the state of New Jersey, contextualizing twentieth century segregation not as a unique occurrence, but rather a continuation of historical patterns. In the nineteenth century, the majority of the state’s schools were segregated along racial lines, and in 1863, New Jersey’s state government directly sanctioned the segregation of public school districts statewide. While such decisions would ultimately be reversed in 1881, active opposition to integration remained into the twentieth century, particularly within elementary and middle school education. For example, a 1954 study found that New Jersey schools, both historically and actively, “…had more in common with states below than above…” the Mason-Dixon line. Most notably however, by 1940, the state had more segregated schools than at any period prior to the passing of explicit anti-segregation legislation in 1881.[17] Thus, it is evident that the state of Camden’s schools in the mid-twentieth century is not an isolated incident, but rather indicative of the cyclical nature of racial separation and disenfranchisement throughout the state of New Jersey in an educational context.

These demographic and economic shifts had profound implications for Camden’s schools, which now served largely Black and Latino student populations. In particular, Blaustein’s work proves particularly valuable in demonstrating the catastrophic impacts of white flight on Camden’s schools, as well as the irreversible harm inflicted on students of color as a result of institutional failures in education. Writing in a 1963 report to then-President John F. Kennedy’s – a cautious supporter of the Civil Rights Movement – Civil Rights Commission, notable civil rights lawyer Albert P. Blaustein establishes a clear portrait of the declining state of Camden’s public schooling system, as well as the everyday issues facing students and educators alike in the classroom. In delivering a scathing report on neighborhood segregation within the city in Camden, as demonstrated by demographic data regarding the race/ethnicity of students enrolled in public education across the Camden metropolitan area, Blaustein writes:

Northeast of Cooper River is the area known as East Camden, an area with a very small Negro population. For the river has served as a barrier against intracity population…Two of the four junior high schools are located here: Davis, which is 4.0 percent Negro and Veterans Memorial which is 0.2 percent Negro. Also located in East Camden are six elementary schools, four of which are all-white and the other two of which have Negro percentages of 1.3 percent and 19.7 percent…Central Camden, on the other hand, is largely Negro. Thus, the high percentage of Negroes in Powell (100.0 percent), Sumner (99.8 percent), Fetters (91.6 percent), Liberty (91.2 percent), and Whittier (99.1 percent), etc.[18]

Based on the data provided here by Blaustein, it is simply impossible to argue that racial segregation did not occur in Camden. Additionally, it becomes quite clear that while much discussion regarding Camden public schools and wide demographic changes in the city as a whole focuses on the movement of white residents to suburban areas, racial segregation and stratification absolutely did occur within the city, thus worsening educational opportunities and learning outcomes for Camden’s students of color even more.

            However, Blaustein does not end his discussion with segregation amongst student bodies, but rather extends his research even further to a close examination of racial/ethnic compositions of school leadership, including teachers, administrators, and school board members, yielding similar results. For example, according to his work, the Fetters School, possessing a student body of 91.6 percent Black students employed nine white teachers and nine Black teachers in 1960, but two white teachers and sixteen Black teachers in 1963. Even more shockingly, Central School, composed of 72.9 percent Black students, employed only white teachers in 1955. By 1963, just nine years later, this number had completely reversed and the school employed all Black educators.[19] Thus, Blaustein’s investigation of variances in Camden public schools’ racial composition reveal that this issue was not simply limited to education nor exclusionary zoning practices, but was rather an insidious demographic trend which had infested all areas of life in Camden, both within education and outside of classrooms. In ensuring that Black students were only taught by Black teachers and white students by white teachers, education in Camden was incredibly nondiverse, eliminating opportunities for cross-racial understanding nor exposure to alternative perspectives, thereby working to keep Black and white communities completely separate not just in the facets of residence and education, but also in interaction and socialization.

Manifestations of Failure in Camden Public Schools

            With the existence of racial segregation both within Camden as well as the city’s surrounding area clearly established, we can now move to an exploration of inequalities in public education within the city. Perhaps one of the most visible and apparent markers of inequalities in public education in Camden can be found in school facilities and buildings. The physical conditions in which children of color were schooled were grossly and completely outdated, especially in comparison to the facilities provided to white children, both inside and outside of the city of Camden. For example, as of 1963, there were six specific public schools that had been cited as in dire need of replacement and/or renovation by Camden’s local legislative board, the vast majority of which were located in segregated communities: Liberty School (1856, 91.2% Black student population), Cooper School (1874, 30.7% Black student population), Fetters School (1875, 91.6% Black student population), Central School (1877, 72.9% Black student population), Read School (1887, 32.0% Black student population), and finally, Bergen School (1891, 45.6% Black student population).[20] Of the schools cited above, approximately half of the buildings that had been deemed by the city of Camden as unfit for usage and nonconducive to education were occupied by majority-Black student populations (Liberty, Fetters, and Central), whereas Bergen School was split just short of evenly between Black and white low-income students.

Additionally, it is important to acknowledge that these figures only account for the absolute worst of Camden’s schools, such trends in inadequate school buildings and facilities occurred throughout the city, in accordance with the general quality of infrastructure and housing present in each neighborhood they were located. In other words, while the data above only references a very small sample size of Camden’s schools, the trends reflected here (specifically, in the intentional zoning of Black students to old, run-down schooling facilities) serve as a microcosm of Camden’s public schools, wherein students of color were intentionally confined to older schools and run-down facilities.

  Education researcher Jonathan Kozol expands on the condition of school facilities in Camden’s disenfranchised communities in his widely-influential book, Savage Inequalities. Written in 1991, Kozol’s work serves as a continuation of Blaustein’s discussion on the failing infrastructure of public education in Camden, providing an updated portrait into the classrooms serving the city’s poorest communities. Kozol pulls no punches in a truly visceral recollection of his visit to Pyne Point Middle School, writing:

…inside, in battered, broken-down, crowded rooms, teem the youth of Camden, with dysfunctional fire alarms, outmoded books and equipment, no sports supplies, demoralized teachers, and the everpresent worry that a child is going to enter the school building armed.[21]

Ultimately, it is inarguable that the physical quality of public schools and educational facilities in Camden was incredibly unequal, reflecting broader residential trends. Where poor, minority-majority neighborhoods experienced a degradation of property values and lived in dilapidated areas of the cities as a direct result of redlining and other racist housing policies, so too were children of color in Camden zoned into old, crumbling school buildings that by this time, barely remained standing, effectively stripping them of the same educational resources and physical comforts provided to white students both in the city and its neighboring suburbs.

            Such inequalities were also present in records of student achievement and morale. Educated in barely-standing school buildings overseen by cash-strapped school districts, students of color in Camden’s poor communities were not afforded nearly the same learning opportunities nor educational resources as white students in the area. In Camden and Environs, Blaustein cites Camden superintendent Dr. Anthony R. Catrambone’s perspective on inequalities in education, writing, “…pupils from Sumner Elementary School (99.8 percent Negro) who transfer to Bonsall Elementary School (50.3 percent Negro) ‘feel unwanted, and that they are having educational problems not experienced by the Negroes who have all their elementary training at Bonsall’ [Catrambone’s words].”[22]

            Thus, it is evident that inequalities in schooling facilities and instruction not only resulted in a considerable achievement gap between students in segregated and integrated communities, but also that such inequalities were clear and demonstrable, even to students themselves at the elementary level. Catrambone’s observation that students from Sumner felt “unwanted” and viewed themselves as struggling, suggests that students in Camden’s segregated neighborhoods internalized the city’s structural inequality, viewing themselves as lesser than their white/integrated peers both in intellectual capacity and personal character. Such perspectives, reinforced by the constant presence of systemic discrimination along racial lines as well as crumbling school facilities and housing units, became deeply entrenched in minds and hearts of Camden’s youth, thereby creating trends of educational failure that were cyclical in nature, reinforced both externally by social structures and institutions as well as internally within segregated communities of color.

            Similarly, dysfunction soon became synonymous with segregated schools and low-income communities of color at the institutional level. School administrators and Boards of Education began to expect failure of students of color, stripping away any opportunity for such schools to prove otherwise. For example, Camden’s school leadership often designated rigorous curriculums and college-preparatory courses to majority-white schools, neglecting to extend the same opportunities to minority-majority districts. For example, in reporting on administrative conversations on the potential integration of Camden High School in 1963, Blaustein observes:

The maintenance of comprehensive academic tracks was recognized by administration as dependent on white students, implying students of color alone were not expected to sustain them: ‘if these pupils [white college preparatory students from the Cramer area] were transferred to Woodrow Wilson [a majority-Black high school located in the Stockton neighborhood], Camden High would be almost entirely a school for business instruction and training in industrial arts.[23]

It is vital to first provide context as to Blaustein’s usage of the terms “business instruction” and “industrial arts.” In utilizing these terms, Blaustein refers primarily to what is referred to as “vocational education” in modern-day America. With this crucial context firmly established, it becomes evident that public educators in early-1960s Camden viewed college education as a racially-exclusive opportunity, to be extended only to white students.

Such attitudes were reflected in the curricular rigor present in Camden’s minority-majority schools which were, to say the least, held to an extremely low standard. The lessons designed for children of color were incredibly simple and non-complex, as schools were treated less as institutions of learning and self-improvement, but rather as detention centers for the city’s disenfranchised youth. As Camden native and historian David Bain writes in the piece Camden Bound, “History surrounds the children of Camden, but they do learn a lot of it in school…Whitman is not read by students in the basic skills curriculum. Few students that I met in Camden High, indeed, had never heard of him.”[24] As such, Black and Hispanic students were effectively set up for failure as compared to white students, viewed as predestined to either not graduate from their primary schooling or to enter lower-paying careers and vocational fields rather than pursue higher education, and opportunities that college afforded students, particularly during this period where college degrees were significantly rarer and highly-valued than in the modern day.

            Thus, it is evident that throughout the mid-twentieth century Camden’s public school system routinely failed Black and Hispanic students. From inequalities in school facilities and curriculum, Camden’s public school system repeatedly communicated to students in segregated areas that they simply were not worth the time and resources afforded to white students, nor possessed the same intellectual capacity as suburban children. Denied quality schools and viewed as predestined high school drop-outs, Camden’s public schools never truly invested in their children, creating an atmosphere of perpetual administrative negligence in improving schools and learning outcomes for the city’s disadvantaged youth. As Blaustein so aptly writes, “‘…the school authorities are against changing the status quo. They want to avoid headaches. They act only when pressures are applied’”.[25]

The Narrative of Inevitability: Camden as a “Lost Cause”

It is clear that such drastic disparities in learning outcomes arose not only out of administrative negligence, but also as a direct result of segregation within the city. While no law affirming segregation was ever passed in New Jersey, it is clear that schools in Camden were completely and unequivocally segregated, and that a hierarchical structure clearly existed in regards to determining which schools and student populations were most supported and prepared for success. Time and time again, educators favored white students and white schools, kicking students of color and their schooling communities to the curb. It is against this backdrop of negligence and resignation that wider narratives around the city of Camden and its youth as “lost causes” beyond any and all help began to emerge.

By the late twentieth century (specifically the 1980s and 1990s), narratives around Camden as a drug and crime-infested urban wasteland began to propagate, rising to a national scale in the wake of increasing gang activity and rapidly-rising crime rates in the area. While public focus centered on the city’s criminal justice department and woefully-inept political system, reporting on the state of Camden’s public schools served to reinforce perceptions of the city as destined for failure and beyond saving, chiefly through local press’ demonization of Camden’s youth. For example, the Courier Post article “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime”, reads, “‘Girls are being raped in schools, drugs are proliferating, alcohol is proliferating, and instead of dealing with it, some parents and administrators are in denial…they insist it’s not happening in their backyard’”.[26] The manner in this author speaks of public schooling in Camden reads as though the city’s schools and places of education were not learning communities, but rather prisons – the students inhabiting these spaces not children, but prisoners, destined to be nothing more than a “thug”.

  Ignoring the city’s long history with racial segregation and redlining, which as established earlier in this paper, clearly resulted not only in disparities in learning outcomes but also caused a deep internalization of institutional failure within many students of color and their learning communities, articles such as this neglect the willingness to truly explore the roots of crime and poverty in Camden, focusing instead on the result of decades of institutional neglect of communities of color, rather than the root cause of these issues. In doing so, media coverage of such failures in Camden removed the burden of responsibility from the city lawmakers and school administrators responsible for abject poverty and educational disparities, instead putting the onus on the communities which were intentionally and perpetually disenfranchised at the institutional level across all aspects of Camden’s sociopolitical network.

Additionally, this article’s veiled assertion of Camden parents as disinterested and uninvested in their children’s success is especially gross and inaccurate. The fact of the matter is that parents and local communities within even the most impoverished and crime-ridden neighborhoods of Camden had long-lobbied for improvements to public schooling and their communities, concerned chiefly with their children’s futures and opportunities. For example, by the late 1990s, Camden City’s charter network had experienced significant growth, much of its early success owed directly to parents and grassroots organizations devoted to improving the post-schooling opportunities of disadvantaged children. In 1997, over seventeen new charters were approved by the city of Camden, the first opening in September of that year. The LEAP Academy University Charter School was the result of years of political lobbying and relentless advocacy, of which the loudest voices came from parents and community activist groups. Spearheaded by Rutgers University-Camden professor and city native, Gloria Bonilla-Santiago, the LEAP Academy included specific parent action committees, community outreach boards, and sponsored numerous community service events.[27] Thus, this inclusion of virtually one of the only groups truly invested in children of color’s success in Camden alongside the group which repeatedly conspired to confine them to crumbling schools and prepare them only for low-paying occupations is wildly inaccurate and offensive in a historical context, thereby demonstrating how media narratives around Camden and its school system repeatedly disregarded factually-correct reporting, in favor of sensationalized reports on Camden’s struggles, framing schools and city youth as ground zero and progenitors of the wider issues facing the city as a whole.

While community activism was absolutely present across Camden, it is also important to highlight the damaging impact of such negative narratives surrounding the city on its residents. In his book Camden Bound, a literary exploration of the history of Camden and its community, Camden-born historian David Bain highlights the internalization of damaging, sensationalized descriptions of Camden. He writes:

For most of my life, my birthplace, the city of Camden, has been a point of irony, worth a wince and often hasty explanation that though I was born in Camden, we didn’t actually ever live in Camden, but in a succession of pleasant South Jersey suburban towns…As I moved through life…I would write out the name Camden (I’m ashamed to name my shame now) with a shudder.[28]

While Bain’s Camden Bound does relate specifically to his own individual experience and struggle with the acknowledgement of his birthplace in the wake of national infamy, he spends perhaps even more time exploring the current state of the city, as well as the perspectives of current Camden residents. In recounts his most recent visit to Camden, Bain describes nothing short of absolute devastation and complete social blight and urban decay, writing:

Too many newspaper headlines crowd my brain – “Camden Hopes for Release From Its Pain”; “In Struggles of the City, Children Are Casualties”; “Camden Forces Its Suburbs To Ask, What If a City Dies?”; “A Once Vital, Cohesive Community is Slowly, but Not Inevitably, Dying.” And that devastating question from Time: “Who Could Live Here?”…It has been called the poorest city in New Jersey, and some have wondered if it is the poorest in the nation. Adult men and women stand or sit in front of their shabby two- story brick houses, stunned by purposelessness. In abandoned buildings, drug dealers and their customers congregate. On littered sidewalks, children negotiate through broken glass, condoms, and spent hypodermics.[29]

Judging from Bain’s simple description of the sights that he witnessed while driving through Camden, it is evident that Camden’s residents have been burned out by the widely-circulating narratives of the city and its national infamy. The vast majority of residents poverty-stricken and lacking the financial or social capital to create meaningful change for their communities themselves, such headlines and narratives of the city were nothing short of absolutely devastating. Such soul-crushing portrayals signal yet another air of perpetual negligence and resignation by powerful voices, within the media, local politics, and even national government, thus demonstrating a national perception of Camden as “failed”, and were thus internalized by Camden’s residents.

For example, in interviewing Rene Huggins, a community activist and director of the Camden Cultural Center, Bain chiefly relays her frustration with recent state legislation upon the assumption of office by Republican governor Christine Todd Whitman and recent rollbacks of welfare programs, occupational training, and educational funding that had been promised to the city. Speaking on the increasing hopelessness of many city residents, Huggins states, “And on top of all that…we get that headline in Time magazine – ’Who Could Live Here?’ Why not just give us a lot of shovels and bury the place?’”.[30] Such statements, alongside Bain’s experiences of Camden, thus demonstrate that as a direct result of national resignation to the state of Camden and a lack of willingness nor initiative to improve the city (and even more damaging, a removal of resources and social initiatives designed specifically to improve the state of the city), many Camden residents adopted a similar mentality of resignation and shame toward their community, choosing to simply exist with the city’s misery as opposed to creating any real, meaningful change, having been spurned and failed by various powerful sociopolitical institutions and organizations across generations, thereby reinforcing the harmful narratives that had played such a crucial role in the development of such behaviors.

The very article mentioned in ire by Ren Huggins, Kevin Fedarko’s “Who Could Live Here?”, also offers insight into public perceptions of Camden and more specifically, its youth, during the late twentieth-century. Written in 1992, Fedarko postures the city of Camden as a barren wasteland and its inhabitants – predominantly young people and children – as akin to nothing more than prisoners and criminals. For example, Fedarko writes:

The story of Camden is the story of boys who blind stray dogs after school, who come to Sunday Mass looking for cookies because they are hungry, who arm themselves with guns, knives and — this winter’s fad at $400 each — hand grenades. It is the story of girls who dream of becoming hairdressers but wind up as whores, who get pregnant at 14 only to bury their infants.[31]

Fedarko’s description of Camden’s children is extraordinarily problematic, in that it not only treats the city’s youth as a monolithic group, but then proceeds to demonize them en masse. In describing the city’s young people as baselessly sadistic and violent, while neglecting to position rising youth crime rates in the context of historical disenfranchisement nor take a moment and pause to acknowledge that this is not the case for all of the city’s young people, Fedarko’s work only furthers narratives of Camden and its young people as lawless and destined for jail cells rather than degrees. In particular, Fedarko’s description of Camden’s young women as “whores” is especially gross, considering the fact that the people of whom Fedarko speaks are children, thereby applying unnecessary derogatory labels to young women (largely women of color), while failing to acknowledge the true tragedy of Camden and the conditions to which young people are subjected to. In describing the situation of a teenager involved in gang activity, Fedarko also employs similarly disrespectful and dehumanizing language, writing:

…drug posses …use children to keep an eye out for vice- squad police and to ferry drugs across town. Says “Minute Mouse,” a 15- year-old dealer: “I love my boys more than my own family.” Little wonder. With a father in jail and a mother who abandoned him, the Mouse survived for a time by eating trash and dog food before turning to the drug business.[32]

Ultimately, it is evident that during the late twentieth century, specifically the eighties and nineties, narratives surrounding Camden portrayed the city as nothing more than an urban wasteland and lost cause, a sad excuse for urban existence that eschewed its history as a sprawling manufacturing juggernaut. More damaging however, were narratives surrounding the people of Camden (especially youth), who became synonymous with violence and criminal activity, rather than opportunity or potential. In short, media coverage of Camden was concerned chiefly with the concept of an urban space and people in chaos and thus, prioritized the spectacle of Camden’s failures over the historical tragedy of the city, neglecting to situation the former in the context of self-imposed de facto segregation and racialized disenfranchisement.

Conclusion

Ultimately, it cannot be denied that perceptions of Camden’s public education system as failing and its youth as morally debased were absolutely essential to the formulation of “lost cause” narratives regarding the city. In the popular imagination, Camden became synonymous with decay and dysfunction—a city transformed from a thriving industrial hub into what national headlines would later call “Murder City, U.S.A.” However, these narratives of inevitability in truth emerged from the city’s long history with racial segregation, economic turmoil, and administrative educational neglect. Camden’s schools were central to this development, acting as both products and producers of inequity, serving as clear symbols of the failures in public policy, which were later recast as moral shortcomings of disenfranchised communities themselves.

As demonstrated throughout this study, the structural roots of Camden’s failures in public education were grounded in segregation, manufactured by the same redlining maps and exclusionary residency policies that confined families of color to the city’s most desolate neighborhoods, which would also determine the boundaries of their children’s schools. White flight and suburban migration drained Camden of its capital and tax base, instead concentrating such resources in suburban communities whose already-existing affluence was only reinforced by federal mortgage programs and social support. Historical inquiry into urban decline and the state of urban communities in the postwar period have long since emphasized the importance of understanding urban segregation not as a natural social phenomenon, but rather an architectural inequity, extending into every aspect of civic life and education. Camden’s experience confirms this: segregation functioned not only as a physical division of space but as a moral and ideological one, creating the conditions for policymakers and the media to portray the city’s public schools as evidence of cultural pathology rather than systemic betrayal.

By the late twentieth century, these narratives had become fatalistic. Newspaper headlines depicted Camden’s classrooms as sites of chaos and its youth as violent, transforming real inequities into spectacle. The children who bore the weight of these conditions—students of color educated in crumbling buildings and underfunded programs—were cast as perpetrators of their city’s demise rather than its victims. The label “Murder Capital” distilled these complexities into a single, dehumanizing phrase, erasing the structural roots of decline in favor of a narrative that made Camden’s suffering appear inevitable. In doing so, public discourse not only misrepresented the city’s reality but also justified further disinvestment, as policymakers treated Camden’s collapse as a moral failure rather than a product of policy.

However, despite such immense challenges and incredibly damaging narratives that had become so deeply entrenched in the American national psyche regarding the city, Camden and its inhabitants persisted. Refusing to give up on their communities, Camden’s residents, many of whom lacking the influence and capital to create change alone, chose to band together and weather the storm of national infamy. From community activism to political lobbying, Camden’s communities of color demonstrated consistent self-advocacy. Viewing outside aid as perpetually-promised yet never provided, Camden’s communities pooled their resources and invested in their own communities and children, establishing vast charter networks as well as advocating for criminal justice reform and community policing efforts.

While change was slow and seemingly unattainable, Camden has experienced a significant resurgence in the past decade or so. From investment by major corporations and sports organizations (for example, the Philadelphia 76ers’ relocation of their practice facilities and front offices to the Camden Waterfront in 2016) as well as a revitalization of educational access and recruitment of teaching professionals by the Camden Education Fund, the city has slowly begun to reverse trends of decay and decline, pushing back against narratives that had deemed its failure as inevitable and inescapable. Celebrating its first homicide-free summer this year, Camden’s story is tragic, yet far from over. Rather than adhere to the story of persistent institutional failure and disenfranchisement, Camden’s residents have chosen to take charge of the narrative of their home and communities for themselves, changing it to one of perseverance, determination, and strength. In defiance of decades of segregation, disinvestment, and stigma, Camden stands not as America’s “Murder City,” but as its mirror—a testament to how injustice is built, and how, through resilience, effort, and advocacy, it can be torn down.

References

 “The case for charter schools,” Courier Post, March 02, 1997

Bain, David Haward. “Camden Bound.” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 104–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40637098 

Beauregard, Robert A. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003 http://www.123library.org/book_details/?id=112493

Blaustein, Albert P., and United States Commission on Civil Rights. Civil Rights U.S.A.: Public Schools: Cities in the North and West, 1963: Camden and Environs. Washington, DC: United States Commission on Civil Rights, 1964.

Douglas, Davison M. “The Limits of Law in Accomplishing Racial Change: School Segregation in the Pre-Brown North.” UCLA Law Review 44, no. 3 (1997): 677–744.

Fedarko, Kevin. “The Other America.” Time, January 20, 1992. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,974708-3,00.html. 

Gillette, Howard. Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Goheen, Peter G., and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234. https://doi.org/10.2307/25140590. 

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: Broadway Books, 1991.

Rasmussen, Chris. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 480–514. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26846389

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. First edition. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Tantillo, Sara. “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime,” Courier Post, June 8, 1998

Yaffe, Deborah. Other People’s Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey’s Schools. New Brunswick, NJ: Rivergate Books, 2007. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=225406

[1] Peter G. Goheen and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234.

[2] Richard Rothstein. The Color of Law : A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. First edition. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2017.

[3] Peter G. Goheen and Arnold R. Hirsch. “Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960.” Labour / Le Travail 15 (1985): 234.

[4] Chris Rasmussen. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): 480–514.

[5] Robert A. Beauregard. Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2003.

[6] Thomas J. Sugrue. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

[7] Howard Gillette, Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 12–15.

[8] David Howard Bain, “Camden Bound,” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 104–44.

[9] Chris Rasmussen,. “Creating Segregation in the Era of Integration: School Consolidation and Local Control in New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965–1976.” History of Education Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2017): p.487

[10] Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), 70–75; Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 52–54.

[11] Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 45–50; Bain, “Camden Bound,” 110–12.

[12] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 35–40.

[13] Beauregard, Robert A. Voices of Decline : The Postwar Fate of U.S. Cities. Second edition. New York: Routledge, 2003, 91

[14] Gillette, Camden after the Fall, 50–55; Bain, “Camden Bound,” 120.

[15]Albert P. Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.: Camden and Environs, report to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, 1963, 22.

[16] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 23–24.

[17]Davison M. Douglas, “The Limits of Law in Accomplishing Racial Change: School Segregation in the Pre-Brown North.” UCLA Law Review 44, no. 3 (1997)

[18] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 18.

[19] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 18.

[20] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[21] Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities : Children in America’s Schools. New York: Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 1991.

[22] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A., 22.

[23] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[24] Bain, David Haward. “Camden Bound.” Prairie Schooner 72, no. 3 (1998): 120-121.

[25] Blaustein, Civil Rights U.S.A.,

[26] “Battle being waged to keep youths from crime,” Courier Post, June 8, 1998

[27] Sarah Tantillo, “The case for charter schools,” Courier Post, March 02, 1997

[28] Bain, Camden Bound, 108-109.

[29] Bain, Camden Bound, 111.

[30] Bain, Camden Bound, 119.

[31] Kevin Fedarko, “The Other America,” Time, January 20, 1992

[32] Ibid.

Third Gender Identities in South Asia and their Cultural Significance in Modern History

Third Gender Identities in South Asia and their Cultural Significance in Modern History

Andrew Kazim

 “Hijras are often seen doing mangti (begging) at busy intersections. The chelas knock on car windows to ask for money in exchange for their blessing… They fear that if they don’t give money, we might curse them with bad luck. We beg to feed ourselves. Even if they don’t want to, they’ll still give money. They’re scared they’ll be reborn as hijras in their next life, or they’ll lose a loved one, or have bad business… During mangti, I’ve been beaten many times. Some people have ripped my clothes. Nobody sees what’s good about us. People see us from a negative perspective. Some people even slap us, or will just tell us to go away. The police never help us. They discriminate against us or they pressure us into having sex with them.”[1]

The above passage is a testimony provided by a hijra to a Western news outlet, describing her experiences during mangti, a transaction that asks civilians to pay for services such as blessings. Despite this being a fair transaction, average civilians hold a hostile view towards Hijra who are asking for payment, yet many still pay for the service. This is one of the few ways that hijra make money in the present day; it resonates with their traditional practices at childbirths, weddings, and other communal events to support and provide blessings to their communities. The negative perception of Hijra by the public can be seen through the police brutality and violence that many of these individuals go through in the present. However, the story of the Hijra did not start in the 21st century and third gender individuals have had a presence in South Asia for centuries.

The Hijra are a modern group of individuals that live in South Asia, identifying as a third gender that is legally recognized in the 21st century, these individuals are born male but do not identify with their sex. Many who identify with the term also consider themselves as “Demigods” and beyond the identity of an ordinary individual. Their history and community tell the narrative of resilience against social and cultural oppression while striving to be understood as human beings, just like many other transgender or indigenous third identities that exist throughout the world. For the Hijra, the survival of their culture comes often from small communities or gharana that are set up with a Guru, the teacher, as well as the Nayak that is the gharana’s figurehead, living as a family with one another. However, the gharana have not been empowered enough to combat the social systems that keep the Hijra oppressed or marginalized. The fear from the “common” citizens of the Hijra creates a continued circle of refusal to accept the people. In many spaces where Hijra make their livelihood, there is public resistance to their presence and a physical harm that is often pushed onto these individuals. This fear has roots in colonial policy that still impacts the daily lives of Hijra because of the dismissal in understanding the relationship of gender within pre-colonial culture and Hinduism.

The Hijra are also significantly connected to the historical term of the Khwajasarai, third gender individuals who had a role in the Mughal Court, the center of governmental powers, during the rule of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. While the Khwajasarai were individuals with social status and political power, it was ultimately the British East India Company’s policies that enforced Western standards of gender that removed them from their societal role. Much like the Guru or Nayak of a gharana, the Khwajasarai served as holders of “knowledge traditions of teacher-disciple lineages, practices of kinship-making and elite codes of masculinity”.[2] In early attempts to police the Khwajasarai, British officials used religious laws to assert themselves into the territories power structures, but in doing so, they indirectly invalidated the conceptions of sexual practices and kinship that the Khwajasarai held power in.[3] Ultimately, the British were able to assert the control that they wanted over the region using British standards of gender and instituted policing and regulations on homosexual activities, Khwajasarai and other non-Western standards of presentation and identity. The history of discrimination towards individuals who stretch beyond the binary lens of gender and sexuality is drastic in South Asia; it is still ongoing in ways that legal policy of reparations cannot disrupt. This paper will argue that the history of discrimination towards the Indigenous gender identities of South Asia run so deep that despite efforts to support the agency of Hijra and other individuals, there is more of a need for a cultural shift in attitude towards the Hijra overall. With this understanding of gender dynamics, many Hijra have understood this as a call to action and at times have alienated other Hijra in rural areas, who are non-Hindu, and belong to a lower social class or caste.

Western Misconceptions and Defining the Hijra 

Throughout the West and many other parts of the world, there is a common misconception that third gender identities or transgender people are a recent phenomenon, but it could not be further from the truth. In this paper, the word Hijra, Indigenous gender identities, third-gender identity will be used instead of euro-centric terminology such as trans, transgender, or eunuch, unless a specific individual has associated themselves with it. As Vaibhav Saria, author of Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural Identity and professor of anthropology, explores the idea that “Hijras, with their long-documented history, are not a local or cultural instantiation of the global category of trans… Hijras were referred to as “eunuchs” in much of colonial discourse and in English language dailies until quite recently”.[4] As time progresses, the West learns to adapt and accept the terminology that best describes and translates the power of the identity of the Hijra, but using words such as eunuch and transgender continue to fail to embrace the diverse group that identifies with the term. From Hindus to Muslims and many more cultural or religious groups within India, the Hijra have a shared and complex history that must not be ignored. When simplifying Hijra to be “transgender”, the West continues to assert that their language and cultural understanding of gender is superior.

Unlike how Western culture has defined gender identity as a sole relation to one’s gender presentation and given strict roles to conform with, the Hijra have a more complex relationship with society, religion, socio-economic status, living situations and more. The West simplifies gender into a binary that has influenced the Global South and other countries that were colonized which creates a struggle for Indigenous people that fall into a “third gender” to be respected even if they have deep roots within their communities. Numerous Indigenous gender identities, such as the Hijra, are defining for themselves how their expression should be perceived. For many Hijra, they understand it to be a culture: “a tradition and a community that has its roots in ancient times” and those who see themselves as transgender understand it to be “more like an identity. We see ourselves as transgender. There is no pressure from the community. We’re free to do what we want. But if we want to be hijras, there are rules restricting our actions.”[5] There are significant repercussions with the association to the Hijras that is not carried through people who align themselves with the trans community, therefore, these groups are different. The Hijra have found a way of life and form gharana to survive which is not a culture that exists within trans communities. The Hijra are ostracized and limited to how much they are able to do, being forced to beg for support in the streets, more subject to being attacked and having no intervention or protection. Because of the harm that is conducted towards the Hijra, it is essential to learn about their practices, community structures, and gain a basic understanding of their livelihood. In effect, the understanding of how individuals identify can assert agency towards a group that is still oppressed within Indian society.

A main critique from the Hijra community about misconceptions is the inability for some to recognize the difference between the Hijra and trans identity. Saria describes “Using the word ‘transgender’ is a way to avoid using the word ‘hijra,’ since the word has been and continues to be used disparagingly by some people; it is a way of respect, as seen in the text of Indian legal and parliamentary documents.”[6] By not using the word and specific identity, many disempower this marginalized community. As individuals in the West, it is essential that usage of language by a specific community is asserted into academic scholarship and common language when discussing issues that affect a certain population. While many legal documents in India fail to establish a difference between the Hijra and transgender people, it is the job of all those who wish to advance Hijra rights to practice asserting agency to this community by using the correct terminology.

While terminology is often misunderstood in transition, it still remains the job of Western audiences to remain vigilant to the Hijra. For the Hijra, they have connected their spiritual existence for thousands of years in relation to Hinduism. Many connect to Ardhanarishvara, a deity that presents both masculine and feminine through god, Shiva, and goddess, Parvati. In Hindu mythology, there is a specific reference towards a third body that does not fit in the binary of female or male that is further supported by the existence of Ardhanarishvara: the symbolic understanding that femininity and masculinity are interconnected forces.[7] In the present day, the Hijra are still highly connected to the spiritual aspect of their identity and understand how others perceive them as people who can both bless and curse because of their connection to Ardhanarishvara.

While the Hijra continue to re-empower themselves in society through the gharana, there are other dynamics that make the community of the Hijra complex and beyond the comprehension of Westerners if only looked through a particular lens. Because the Hijra associate themselves highly with Hinduism, there has been a stretch to rename themselves as the “Kinnar”. Saria addresses that this particular project of renaming the Hijra by using Kinnar is more often found in urban centers where access to privilege is more common. However, many activists believe that “it could possibly be an alibi to absorb hijras within ascendant right-wing Hindu nationalism”.[8] There is a threat of Hindu nationalism which attempts to nationalize Hinduism and justify oppression for individuals who are not Hindu, most notably, Muslims. This directly harms all Hijra as well as non-Hindu Hijra is significant and heavily impacts liberatory practices that can be conducted towards all trans and third gender identities throughout India. The small population that benefits from a close proximity to Hindu nationalism does not make up for the exclusionary practices of other marginalized people within Indian society or contribute to lessening the societal fear of the Hijra.

Global Indigenous Third Gender Identities

            Besides South Asia, especially in present day-North India and Pakistan where the Hijra predominantly live, there are numerous indigenous gender identities that are often erased or excluded from the welfare of the present-day government and institutions. While these individuals served as community builders or held positions to help care for children, because of the influence from European colonizers that asserted their two gender binary traditions, many of these communities are shamed. Despite those forms of oppression and marginalization being current to these groups, it is important for a Western audience to understand that many of these individuals, across the world, still hold positions of power in their society. Even with their positions of power, many are often disenfranchised by political institutions and society even though they have existed as identities for hundreds or thousands of years.

            Within present-day Mexico, an Indigenous third gender identity, Muxe, has existed for centuries within the culture of Zapotec people prior to the pre-Columbian era and colonialism. In regions around the Zapotec people, there were many gods that were both women and men explaining the diversity in gender conceptualization.[9] As an identity, these individuals are Mexican Indigenous male-bodied, differently gendered people that do not fit into Western standards of the binary. The Muxe continue to maintain traditions of the Zapotec from the language, dress, and other elements of culture that are no longer practiced but do not serve as religious representations of Meso-American gods or higher powers like the Hijra do in India. Originally, the Muxe worked to preserve culture by completing traditional feminine tasks such as embroidery or craftsmanship and today, they continue that legacy by maintaining community. 

            The Muxe and third gender individuals in South Asia have a parallel history because of colonization. Prior to the arrival of Spanish, French or British gender influences, third gender individuals had a significant role in their communities and gender was not viewed in a binary way where only male or female was acceptable. However, because of this long history of colonization and the establishment of gender binaries into South Asia and present-day Mexico, there is a societal push to exclude and discriminate against individuals who have previously been considered sacred.

Historiography

The study of third gender identifying individuals across time and cultures has drastically differed depending on the political nature of the time period. The focus on each dynamic of queer or third gender identity ranges depending on new media developed, more civil rights protections being established, and the activism of local communities for recognition. Historians such as Ruby Lal and Emma Kalb tell the story of Mughal Authority and how that impacted third gender individuals. Kalb illustrates how the Khwajasarai were placed on different levels of hierarchy within the Mughal Courts; some had specific access and privileges that were not given to other third gender individuals unless earned. Lal focused more on how different Emperors, such as Akbar, discussed or valued the Khwajasarai and explicitly mentions how they were enslaved individuals, taken from their families at a young age. While some of these individuals were able to achieve high status in the court, they were not able to choose their identity and served the Court by its immediate needs.

Queering India: Same Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society by Ruth Vanita as one of the first major examinations of queer culture in Indian society throughout the last two centuries. The monograph was published in 2002 and specifically, Vanita was inspired to write the book based on discussions raised by the film Fire by Deepa Mehta. The author’s thesis is focused on how colonialists and nationalists focused on and continue to target old traditions and completing the process of “rewriting” the traditions, trying to create uniform traditions and simplify history. The context of this book is powerful as it came to be published soon after the rise of feminist, dalit, queer history and cultural studies in India in the 1990s. Despite being written early in the contributions to Indian Queer Studies and History, Vanita explored the idea of Hijras using Hinduism to explain identity but is unable to connect Hindu Nationalism, which was briefly mentioned in the chapter, to the evolution of Hijra rights.

            While the early discussion of Section 377 in historical research did not focus on the impact the policy had on Hijra, Jessica Hinchy’s research changed the focus towards addressing the restrictions and policing of Hijra during colonial India. Hinchy also furthered research on the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 which explicitly mentions “eunuchs” which was the term that the British used to describe the people known as Khwajasarais in some regions of India.

            Two of Hinchy’s first major articles were published in 2014 which was the same year as National Legal Services Authority v Union of India (NALSA). The NALSA made the decision that granted Hijras recognition as a third sex as well as the right to choose their gender classification. Additionally, it sought to grant Hijra access to affirmative action policies since it recognized them as a group that was historically discriminated against. The historical context of Hinchy’s articles are relevant because it led to a significant shift in the study of queer culture in India, one that focused solely on same-sex relations to a more holistic view of queerness including people who identify as Hijra or transgender.

Vaibhav Saria studies third gender individuals in South Asia in the present through an anthropological lens. Their work explored how Hijra communities have formed and continue to face different challenges based on their location and economic status. Saria’s research is a dedication to telling the stories of Hijra through an ethnographic lens in a time period where Hijra are marginalized by society and their lives are highly impacted by identity, kinship, and economic value.

As the historiography of Third Gender individuals in South Asia continues, I hope to expand on the modern day consequences of the disenfranchisement: the oversimplification of gender identity that created the Hijra label, the alliance between Hijras and Hindu nationalists, and the continued push to assert “transgender” rights over same-sex marriage and relationships in India. While some of the historical works have focused on a post-colonial movement against Section 377 and the Criminal Tribes act 1871, they lack an analysis on how the 21st Century reactionary Hijra pair themselves with religious nationalists and those on the far-right that alienate same-sex attracted individuals. Many of these pieces of scholarship discussed trans and gay individuals as separate communities which has manifested into the politics of Indian society rather than sharing a similar history and a continuing narrative of betrayal despite allyship between all queer people across the globe. Additionally, research beyond Northern India and Pakistan must be done to tell a more diverse story of how these identities originally were disenfranchised.

Third Gender People in the Pre-Colonial Period: The Khwajasarai

During the Mughal period, there were structures that allowed local princes and royalty to assert power in the 16th to the 19th Century; one of these structures was known as the Mughal Court that was a form of rules and laws. In the Mughal Court, there were significant expressions of hierarchy and control that were asserted through royalty in the palace. In these spaces, eunuchs “served as another element in this formation of space, as embodied boundaries and mediators”.[10] There were individuals who served roles to ensure safety and security of the leader, meaning that private spaces within the harem or sleeping quarters must have been kept. Despite this, eunuchs of different privileges and levels within the hierarchy had powers to enter these spaces.

Before they were able to attend to these responsibilities and tasks, young Khwajasarai needed to prove that they were ready to assume adult responsibilities. Unlike other youth in society who could access more responsibilities through the process of puberty, “that competence in adab [Islamic values of proper manners and conduct] was a significant marker of adult-hood may have broader relevance, particularly for male Islamic childhoods.”[11] This would cite how differently treated third gender individuals were even if they had status in the court because they were forced to follow good manners and proper conduct with standards above their peers. Additionally, this led to “acculturation and kinship-making were broadly speaking part of the experiences of slave children in early-modern and modern South Asia” where “forming cultural and interpersonal links appears to have been an important way in which child slaves coped with their enslavement and deracination.”[12] The young Khwajasarai were held to higher standards and taken from their homes at young ages to serve the court; community within the court by third gender individuals was needed for survival and assimilation where they formed new cultural ties and personal relationships. 

            Within the Mughal Court, there were different positions for the Khwajasarai. The third gender people served the Court but also participated in the harems, “a sacred area around a shrine; a place where the holy power manifests itself”.[13] There were some “personal attendants (khawāsān) and palace eunuchs (mahallīyān)” that would be “present behind the emperor” along “with the nāzir (eunuch superintendent of the household) also flanking the emperor on stage left… the master of the ceremonies (mīr tūzuk) stands in front of the emperor, behind the most powerful Mughal state officials such as the wazīr al-mamālik, with mace-bearers (gurz-bardārs)”.[14] While these individuals did not hold the highest position within the courts, the significance of their inclusion behind the emperor shows the power structures that had been established to demonstrate their significance. Additionally, there were some eunuchs that have been shown throughout historical preservations such as the narration of Mahābat Khān’s coup that demonstrate how these individuals were “stationed in proximate positions close to the emperor and around the more restricted parts of the palace.”[15] The freedom of movement with little restriction is an important note for any person who exists throughout time and the ability for the Khwajasarai to have agency is notable to their own power and significance in each court. Even with unequal power dynamics because of a social hierarchy that was built, eunuchs were still able to exist in close proximity to individuals of higher stance and had the possibility to move up the power structure into nobility. Often their stories are recorded in archival highlights another display that these individuals held strict importance, even while it ranged, within society.[16]

            The duties of the Khwajasarai would change based on the Court context because there were no fixed tasks placed on individuals or strict caste divisions for these tasks, but certain privileges could be denied to others based on status within the Court. Some examples of this blend of power include the fact that “a water carrier could (and did) write a memoir, a foster nurse could serve as a diplomat and a swordsman could be a storyteller, however strict the codes of conduct that they were expected to follow.”[17] Agency and movement based on proximity to the emperor did not limit your duties because anything could be significant in service to the Court.

            The Khwajasarai had a close proximity to the emperor through their ritual practices. In formal public spaces and the inner areas of the palace, they still were able to take up space. Depending on the position of the Khwajasarai, they served “on practical functions, such as holding fans, passing on petitions, or standing guard” that were essential to the success of the hierarchy.[18] For some functions of the court, Khwajasarai were able to “achieve positions of intimacy, knowledge, and influence with the emperor and members of the royal family” and throughout time, there have been numerous eunuchs of high status that could be a part of close encounters with the royal family. Depending on the emperor, the prominence of the Khawajasarai changed, however, one thing stayed consistent: the gesture to forbid castration of young boys. However, “ ‘all Mughal emperors from Akbar down to Awrangzeb… no one had previously issued an injunction against a practice that had enslaved young boys and turned them into eunuchs without their consent”.[19] This reasserts how third gender individuals were enslaved and seen as necessities to the functionality of the Court.

Despite their differences in gender presentation or the status of being an eunuch, there were a range of opportunities while also still having low-ranked eunuchs that “could become entangled in moments of political conflict, intrafamilial and otherwise, a situation that provided greater opportunities but also heightened risk”.[20] There would also be women and non-eunuch males serving in similar positions throughout the palace, but significantly, the Khwajasarai were not excluded from practices that were held by those other than male or female. With the exclusion of Khwajasarai in the history of India and the Mughal Court, a significant part of the diversity of gender and status can be erased.

The Colonial Period and Legal Discrimination Towards Third Gender Individuals

            With colonist intervention, the historical significance and positions of the Khwajasarai within society were erased in the British colonial period. By being a third gender identity, the Khwajasarai caused significant moral panic to the British colonizers but have also been left out of the exploration of Indigenous gender identities throughout history. Hinchy made it clear that “the majority of archive life histories were recorded as accounts of ‘eunuchs’, not ‘Hijras’. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish those ‘eunuchs’ who identified as Hijras from those who found themselves categorised as ‘eunuchs’ because they crossdressed in theatrical or ritual contexts, or because their everyday gender expression was non-binary”.[21] Any usage of the term Hijra that provides quotes or evidence from Hinchy’s monograph, Governing Gender, will be italicized as her politic and understanding of third gender identity had changed between her monograph and prior works. The italicization represents how Indigenous terminology was stripped during the colonial period but Hijra was a term that can not fully represent all individuals who were discriminated against in regards to their sexual or gender presentation. Hinchy illustrated how the “British East India Company’s interventionist policies towards Indian-ruled principalities intensified, setting the stage for Awadhi khwajasarais to become embroiled in the sexual politics of imperial expansion.”[22] The Khwajasarais were seen as a threat to colonial rule because of their knowledge, traditions and practices of kinship-making and community building; they could easily resist the policing that was provided by colonial power.

To continue to assert control over the region and to force individuals to conform to Western standards, there were high levels of policing. Laws such as the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 and Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code targeted the Khwajasarai disproportionality. During the period of policing, “colonial law marginalised diverse domestic and kinship forms that offended Victorian sensibilities”.[23] The Indian Penal Code was a part of legislation that was drafted in the 1830s by Thomas Babington Macaulay but was not enacted until the 1860s; the Code was inspired by English laws and the British’s need to codify their own standards across their colonial territories. Section 377 of the Code, part of Chapter XVI that related to punishment of Sexual Offences including rape and Sodomy. The extent of “the imprisonment (for life, or alternative up to ten years) of ‘[w]hoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal and specified that penetration was ‘sufficient’ to constitute ‘carnal intercourse’”.[24] Because the author focuses on the policing of the performances, she stressed the importance of the Badhai, Hijra’s traditional performance, as an event that is held during weddings or childbirth. The moral panic that came from the British colonial officers and British masculinity was pushed on Hijra.

Hijra were targeted between 1850 to 1900 while sexuality was being regulated by Section 377. Hinchy described the significance of the term Hijra in modern day Pakistan and Northern India, placing the Hijra in a particular region rather than creating the idea that third gender people in South Asia all identified the same way. Instead of a gender overview of the Hijra, Hinchy provided information on how “the North-Western Province (NWP) government, the contested representations of Hijras in official archives, were a troubling hurdle to suppressing the community and demonstrated the failure of colonial intelligence collection”.[25] The colonial government failed to execute many of their actions towards prosecution because of their lack of understanding of Hijras.

The major shift in the attitudes towards penetration and the development of Section 377’s power from different court cases throughout the 19th Century. Section 377 was defined by courts to prosecute individuals and the process of defining what penetration was. Ultimately, a “judge in the Brother Anthony case also concluded without adducing any reasons, that of the sexual perversions he had originally listed, only sodomy, buggery, and beastiality would ‘fall into the sweep’ of Section 377.”[26] Vanita described how the British were able to assert their power through their own gender and sexual expectations but were able to figure out more about Indian affairs to these issues through British men keeping mistresses. One of the first strategies that they worked on was dividing Hindu and Muslim religious customs and standards but ultimately, judges decided on a standard definition for what the Section criminalize. Vanitas’ work that explored third gender individuals focused more on the cultural presence of “transvestites” in theatre. An emphasis is placed on how Hijras re-invented the culture of theatre but were ultimately held back due to that taboo placed upon them because of their connection to women and womanhood. The author did choose to focus on how Hijras used Hindu myth to create aspects of their womanhood; early in their prosecution, Hijras were using justifications for their existence such as their morality due to the connections to Hinduism.[27]

            For the British colonizers, it made logical sense to find a way to oppress the non-confirming individuals to better enable all conformity throughout India but they first had to identify who they were and how they did not fit into society. For a thirty year time frame from the early 1870s to the beginning of the 20th Century, “Hijras seen as pimp, dancer, bard, performer, indefinite and non-productive/miscellaneous and disreputable.”[28] Western standards of productivity and value in society were vastly different from Indian perception. The Khwajasarai and other Indigenous third gender identifying individuals existed within India for centuries, creating a clash of culture and values.

This legislation addressed “Unnatural offenses” which were used as a direct target on Khwajasarai as they did not fit British standards for gender presentation and was an active threat to patrilineal order that colonial law wished to instill throughout India. As this legislation was being revised, the presence of Hijras were becoming more relevant to colonial rule, especially throughout the 1850s, as they were represented as the symbol of Indian sexual perversity. By the time that this Code was officially placed into law, Hijras were seen as a danger to children and therefore, a greater threat to society.

While Hinchy supported the Khwajasarais’ original power structures, an examination of the transfer of power was also made. With the influence of colonial government, the “definitions of the family and notions of sexual respectability narrowed greatly” and “evangelical ideology produced new middle-class definitions of the ‘private’ sphere of the household as a domestic and feminine domain, demarcated from the masculine ‘public’ sphere.”[29] Hinchy examined how class and perceptions of gender identity changed rapidly due to new government structure under British rule.

            Similarly, The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was further legislation that helped to criminalize Hijra in Indian society. It sought to criminalize the Hijra as kidnappers, castrators, and sodomites which were already punished through the IPC.[30] The CTA allowed for the prevention of physical reproduction from Hijra, forced cultural elimination, removed children from Hijra care, further criminalized actions that Hijra sought to create a means of livelihood, and created interference with Hijra succession practices. Overall, the Hijra found their identities as well as domestic arrangements policed by the CTA. Police officials were allowed increased surveillance powers that allowed them to control the public presence of Hijra as well as conduct investigations onto “registered people’s” [people who were suspected to be eunuchs or similar classifications] households, removing children from their care by force.[31] Despite the various lives that Hijra lived, their gender presentation, domestic arrangements, and entire livelihoods were policed by the colonial government. Another form of control of colonial oppression to the Hijra was prevention of physical reproduction, interference in Hijra discipleship or succession practices, removal of children and complete cultural elimination.[32] The colonial government attempted to deal with the “issue” of the Hijraby ensuring there were no generational communities that could support rebuilding or maintaining their culture. The British viewed Hijrasas “figures of failed masculinity” that dressed as women and believed that Hijra needed to be eliminated from society to protect the image of proper masculinity according to Western standards.[33]

Hinchy discusses that sexuality and gender identity were unevenly disciplined on a local level.[34] This examination of how colonial law was drastically different based on location in colonial India was newer in the research of transgender identities. By explaining the complex relationship with law and policing, Hinchy described the agency the Hijras had to resist discrimination and described how they used strategies to negotiate and used gaps in control to evade punishment.[35] The turn towards providing agency and highlighting resistance is powerful for this time period where transgender individuals are asserting their own agency in the modern day.

Overall, this specific article makes a lot of commentary about how the lack of enforcement of policy allowed the community to perform and cross dress without policing or made decisions to move to Indian-ruled states to continue their practices, being strategic about their political borders to maintain identity.[36] For the first attempt to move to assert agency towards queer individuals in colonial India, the author used the original terminology of the Hijras to restate political power to that label that had been stripped from that marginalized group in the 19th Century.

Decolonization and Efforts for Third Gender Rights in the 20th Century

            After decades of cultural erasure and violence towards the Indian population, South Asia became liberated from the colonial presence in 1947 after the end of World War II through the Indian Independence Act. A main part of the liberation movement was a commitment to anti-colonial nationalism by the newly established Indian government and to implement international pressure on Britain to decolonize after WWII. The anti-colonial movement focused on reclaiming or assembling parts of Indian culture that had been erased because of Western standards. Embedded into the Indian Constitution which was created in 1949, secularism was enshrined because the Indian National Congress, a political group that had led parts of the liberation movement favored an India that would maintain religious diversity. However, other political interests such as Hindu Nationalists were frustrated, wanting to create a country that would strictly follow Hinduism and reclaim the territory for people who followed the religion and exclude Muslim Indians. Despite the conflict that built in India over religious rights, new leaders of the Indian government quickly overturned some elements of harm that had been done to the region under British rule. The Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 was one of the major laws examined and was repealed the same year that the Indian Constitution was created in 1949. Even though TCA was overturned, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that created anti-Sodomy laws, targeting homosexuals was not removed. Some progress was made for third gender individuals but not homosexuals.

            While the Indian National Congress remained in power for five decades after initial liberation of India, the late 20th Century saw a rise of neo-liberalism and Hindu nationalism in India. Neo-liberalism not only opened up the Indian economy to foreign capital and privatization but created economic deregulation and led to rising wealth inequality in India during the 1990s.

Hindu Nationalism took advantage of the rise of neoliberalism that took attention from class conflict which divided working-class people and led to a major deflection of class-driven anxieties onto minority communities. The influence of Hindu nationalism would continue to strengthen within Indian electoral politics in the 2000s.

Internal and External Discourse in Third Gender Identity in the 21st Century

            As a country within the Global South, India continued to see the effects of colonialism in the 2000s. Elements of right-wing populism emerged in India focused against cultural globalization despite the onslaught of Western culture on India and Hinduism. Through the 2014 and 2019 elections, the BJP won the largest majority asserting Shri Narendra Modi into the role of Prime Minister. Alongside these changes the 21st century has seen various attempts to legalize a recognition for a third gender classification, but more specifically, to recognize the Hijra. In 2014, there was a dramatic shift in the legal recognition despite previous rulings that had supported the anti-sodomy laws created in the 19th century that discriminated against homosexuals and targeted the Khwajasarai. The UK Constitutional Law Association published commentary in reaction to the ruling of National Legal Services Authority v Union of India (NALSA). This decision from 2014 declared that Hijras must be legally treated as a third gender classification group. The commentary stresses how the decision is a direct contrast to previous decisions even a year prior that ruled sodomy, which the Hijras have historically been associated with, as criminal action.[37] The new protections granted to Hijras include recognition as the third sex, right to choose their presentation/classification, and are now granted affirmative action privileges for being a group historically discriminated against. PM Modi, who would express intent on protecting transgender individuals throughout his time in power, assumed office in May of 2014, a month after the publication of this review of the decision and the decision itself.

            A few years following the establishment of the legal gender classification, the Indian Supreme Court Overturned Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. One of the organizations that commented on this historical ruling was The Human Right’s Campaign also known as THC. THC is an international organization that has its origins in Washington D.C. and was founded in the 1980s. Throughout its expansion, the Western organization has taken interest in ensuring universal protections for LGBTQ+ identities across the world. After the decision that overturned Section 377 of the IPC, before official removal from the IPC from law in 2024, the organization celebrated this historical win in 2018. HRC Global Director Ty Cobb acknowledged the historical win by congratulating “the LGBTQ advocates who worked tirelessly for decades to achieve this tremendous victory. We hope this decision in the world’s largest democracy and second most populous country will set an example and galvanize efforts to overturn similar outdated and degrading laws that remain in 71 other countries.”[38] For the Western audience who has little knowledge of the historical legacies of colonial Britain’s enforcement of anti-Sodomy laws, the announcement by the HRC does not outline how important yet complex this accomplishment is, allowing for Westerners to believe that progress has been completed. The commentary notes that the IPC is a result of colonial rule enforced in 1860 and emphasized its criminalization of adults of the same sex but not the historical usage to disempower third gender identities. The organization includes that it was PM Modi’s decision to allow the Supreme Court to make this decision and chose not to directly associate his government with the case.[39] An Indian member of the HRC staff, who worked to support the case’s argument, was quoted in the article addressing the affirmation of the right to one’s body and the right to love but the language is vague towards the audience, not claiming to be a clear protection for transgender people.

            Despite efforts to receive certain status for recognition, there is still a lot of conflict within the Hijra community. Because there are different ways to contribute to the economy and receive payment, many Hijra argue over the “better” way to interact with the public and that begging should be considered shameful. Some Hijra go as far as to consider that Hijra who “beg on trains [are not real Hijra]. They have no honor and are just gandus’” because they belong “to these old, respected, established hijra households with large numbers of celas and nati-celas, whose right to take money at weddings and child births were undisputed, even protected by the police”.[40] Even with the difference of opinions on how to receive payment, Hijra who ask for money on trains provide a transaction through blessings and “work very hard to earn their money… Getting ready entailed bathing, putting on makeup, wearing clean, gaudy saris, and hiding large pins”.[41] There is a sacrifice for Hijra who put themselves in harm’s way for these transactions and labor is performed through negotiations beyond the daily efforts to get ready and wear proper attire for the day.

The Hijra and Hindutva Collaboration

            As legal recognition has expanded, it can be noted that a tactic for Hijra’s to be accepted into Indian society is through collaboration with the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJP is a political party that currently controls the Indian government and is one of the major political parties.In 2019, the BJP released a manifesto that explained their political agenda for the next several years if elected. The BJP had been in national political power since 2014 after not having won the position of Prime Minister for their party since 1999. The Prime Minister until 2019 had made vague statements of his support for the Hijra or transgender community, but in this manifesto, the party makes a clear stance in protecting the security of the “transgender community”. The manifesto’s section header is entitled “Empowering Transgenders” is a strong commitment to maintaining and re-asserting power dynamics that third gender identities in India had previously had. One promise embedded in the BJP’s policy is a commitment “to bring[ing] transgenders to the mainstream through adequate socio-economic and policy initiatives.”[42] Despite being a far-right, religious nationalist party, it has prioritized the protections of an universally marginalized identity across the world.

The act, The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019, is defined as “an Act to provide for protection of rights of transgender persons and their welfare and for matters connected therewith and incidental thereto.”[43] The protections granted in the legislation extend to the entire country of India and need to be enforced by the central government. The main protections address non-discriminatory access to education, employment, healthcare services, the right to property, and stop denying transgender people from being denied public office. Transgender people can also have formal recognition of their identity as a transgender person and the legislation lays out the application for recognition. This legislation was passed in 2019, the same year as the re-election of the BJP and PM Modi’s solidification of power for another five years. Earlier that year, they had released their manifesto that had addressed making transgender people “more mainstream” and this protection act is a commitment to their protections of that community. The amount of individuals that have benefited directly from this legislation continues to be examined, but the limitation of progress can be noted by the unwillingness to use words native to the South Asian continent.

However, there still remains push back from a diverse range of voices that believe that using Western terms, instead of Indigenous ones like Hijra, limit the amount of progress that can be made. Individuals of high caste privilege such as Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, believe that supporting Hindutva and justifying the caste system guarantees her safety as a third gender individual. In advancing her own political agenda to support third gender rights, she has actively excluded many from the narrative and continued the oppression of other marginalized groups within India. She has joined Hindutva politics to argue that the Temple of Ram, needed to be rebuilt after its destruction by the Mughal Empire despite the direct marginalization it has put on the Muslim minority within India’s borders. Others, usually from marginalized castes or religious backgrounds, believe that there is more to the fight for equal rights than what Tripathi has proposed. There are other ways to assert rights for Hijra and third gender individuals than sympathizing with an oppressive government that does not listen to the specific and diverse struggles amongst non-men and women.

Teaching Third Gender Identity in Social Studies Classrooms

            Beyond the Hijra and other third gender identities throughout South Asia, there are hundreds of Indigenous cultures that centered non-male or female individuals in their communities throughout history and the present. As educators of culture, religion, and World History, social studies teachers have a duty to discuss the diversity of gender presentation and why certain individuals are discriminated against in their modern societies. No matter their race, transgender and third gender individuals deserve opportunities to see themselves throughout history. Often, rhetoric is used to insinuate that trans and gay people are “new” and have not existed for centuries but teaching third gender individuals across cultures, continents, and races can fulfill the mission of getting rid of a Euro-centric curriculum. With a significant increase of Asian American, specifically South Asian Americans, in the United States, a curriculum that increases visibility into Asian culture and life is essential. Supporting students who are immigrants or first generation students from South Asia starts with making their cultures visible in the classroom and remains even more true for students with multiple identities that are marginalized such as being trans.

A social studies classroom can choose to reflect on this country’s contribution to colonizing nations in the Global South and address how the country founded on colonization with the attempt to remove, displace, and harm Indigenous populations. In the United States, trans rights are constantly being debated and movements for cisgender queer individuals to separate themselves from associations with transgender people. Anti-trans hate and legislation has spread around the United States within the last ten years, especially with the rise of Christian nationalism and the alt-right Conservatism. The ways that India and the United States have manifested various beliefs of acceptance and legal recognition for different queer groups shows the complexity of gender history. An introduction to this topic in our classrooms can help to create conversations within the diaspora but also a reflection to students of European descent, those who have to reflect on their privilege and ancestor’s role in removing acceptance for third gender individuals.

References

ABC News (Australia), “Gender and Sexuality in Hindu Mythology | India Now! | ABC News,”  (ABC News: 2022) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ZZAD9FhTw.

Bharatiya Janata Party. “Manifesto 2019”. 2019.

British India. “The Indian Penal Code”. 1860.

Bureau, The Hindu. “Supreme Court Rejects Review of Its Same-Sex Marriage Judgment.” The Hindu, January 9, 2025. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/same-sex-marriage-supremecourt-dismisses-petitions-seeking-review-of-october-2023judgement/article69081871.ece.

Chisholm, Jennifer. “Muxe, Two-Spirits, and the Myth of Indigenous Transgender Acceptance.”

International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 11, no. 1 (2018): 21-35. doi: https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcis.v11i1.558.  

https://login.tcnj.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/muxe-two-spirits-myth-indigenous-transgender/docview/2917322843/se-2. 

Hinchy, Jessica. 2015. “Enslaved Childhoods in Eighteenth-Century Awadh.” South Asian History and Culture 6 (3): 380–400. doi:10.1080/19472498.2015.1030874. 

Hinchy, Jessica. 2019. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India : The Hijra, c.1850-1900. Cambridge University Press.

Hinchy, Jessica. “Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity: Hijras in Public Space in Colonial North India.” Asian Studies Review 38, no. 2 (2014): 274–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2014.901298.

Hinchy, Jessica. “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion: Eunuchs and Indirect Colonial Rule in Mid-Nineteenth-Century North India.” Gender & History 26, no. 3 (2014): 414–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12082.

Höfert, Almut, Matthew M. Mesley, and Serena Tolino, eds. Celibate and Childless Men in Power : Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World. Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.

Journeyman Pictures, “Demigods: Inside India’s Transgender Community.” (2019).

Kalb, Emma. “A Eunuch at the Threshold: Mediating Access and Intimacy in the Mughal World.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33, no. 3 (2023): 747–68. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186322000827.

Khaitan, Tarunabh. “NALSA v Union of India: What Courts Say, What Courts Do.” UK Constitutional Law Association, (2014). https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2014/04/24/tarunabh-khaitan-nalsa-v-union-of-india-what-courts-say-what-courts-do/

Republic of India Parliament. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act.

Peters, Stephen. “India Supreme Court Overturns Colonial-Era Law Criminalizing Same-Sex…”(Human Rights Campaign: 2018). https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/india-supreme-court-overturns-colonial-era-law-criminalizing-same-sex-relat.

Saria, Vaibhav. Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.

Vanita, Ruth, ed. Queering India : Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society. New York ; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2002.

[1] Journeyman Pictures, “Demigods: Inside India’s Transgender Community,” June 15, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxL5qfbtKqg.

[2]  Jessica Hinchy. “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion: Eunuchs and Indirect Colonial Rule in Mid-Nineteenth-Century North India.” (Gender & History, 2014), 416.

[3] Hinchy, “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion”, 420.

[4] Saria, Hijras, Lovers, Brothers, 3.

[5] Journeyman Pictures, “Demigods: Inside India’s Transgender Community.” (2019).

[6] Vaibhav Saria. Hijras, Lovers, Brothers: Surviving Sex and Poverty in Rural India. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 4.

[7] ABC News (Australia), “Gender and Sexuality in Hindu Mythology | India Now! | ABC News,” June 27, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ZZAD9FhTw.

[8] Saria, Hijras, Lovers, Brothers, 4.

[9] Jennifer Chisholm. “Muxe, Two-Spirits, and the Myth of Indigenous Transgender Acceptance.” (International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies: 2018), 25.

[10] Emma Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold: Mediating Access and Intimacy in the Mughal World.”, (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 33: 2023), 752.

[11] Jessica Hinchy.  “Enslaved Childhoods in Eighteenth-Century Awadh.” (South Asian History and Culture: 2015), 393.

[12] Hinchy. “Enslaved Childhoods in Eighteenth-Century Awadh”, 394.

[13] Almut Höfert, Matthew M. Mesley, and Serena Tolino, eds. Celibate and Childless Men in Power : Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World. (Abingdon, Oxon: 2018), 96.

[14] Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold”, 756.

[15] Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold”, 755.

[16] Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold”, 753.

[17] Höfert, Almut eds. Celibate and Childless Men in Power, 100.

[18] Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold”, 756.

[19] Höfert, Almut eds. Celibate and Childless Men in Power, 103.

[20] Kalb. “A Eunuch at the Threshold”, 768.

[21] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 143.

[22] Jessica Hinchy. “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion: Eunuchs and Indirect Colonial Rule in Mid-Nineteenth-Century North India.” (Gender & History, 2014), 414.

[23] Hinchy, “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion”, 420.

[24] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 52.

[25] Jessica Hinchy. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India : The Hijra, c.1850-1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 119.

[26] Ruth Vanita ed., Queering India : Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (New York: Routledge, 2002), 22.

[27] Vanita, Queering India, 171.

[28] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 41.

[29] Hinchy, “The Sexual Politics of Imperial Expansion”, 420.

[30] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 107.

[31] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 2.

[32] Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India, 93.

[33] Hinchy, “Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity”, 284.

[34] Hinchy, “Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity”, 276-277.

[35] Hinchy, “Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity”, 277.

[36] Hinchy, “Obscenity, Moral Contagion and Masculinity”, 286.

[37] Tarunabh Khaitan. “NALSA v Union of India: What Courts Say, What Courts Do.” (UK Constitutional Law Association: 2014), 2.

[38] Stephen Peters. “India Supreme Court Overturns Colonial-Era Law Criminalizing Same-Sex Relationships”, (Human Rights Campaign: 2018), 1.

[39] Peters, “India Supreme Court Overturns”, 2.

[40] Saria, Hijras, Lovers, Brothers, 109.

[41] Saria, Hijras, Lovers, Brothers, 115.

[42] Bharatiya Janata Party. “Manifesto 2019”, 36.

[43] “The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act”, (Republic of India Parliament: 2019), 1.

Cultivating Virtues and Reasoning about the Common Good

Cultivating Virtues and Reasoning about the Common Good

Roshni U. Patel

            Before we delve into the realm of the common good, let us begin by looking at the overall matter of the common good. To promote the common good, individual interests need to be pushed aside for the well-being of society to create a more positive community. Michael J. Sandal’s literature expresses many concepts of the common good, society, and community. In order to get a sense of the common good we “…must find a way to cultivate in citizens a concern for the whole” rather than following individualism.[1] This leads us to the matter that more and more Americans move to gated communities and begin sending their children to private and boarding schools which defeats the purpose of the common good. These gated communities where the HOA (homeowners association) fees are ridiculously high, feature brand new and private amenities such as gyms, pools, parks, playgrounds, and literal gates to prevent outsiders from coming in. Some gated communities will have two security checkpoints and even a guard to make sure only residents of the community are entering. The need for “public” housing (I use quotes because it is open to anyone) is no longer desired as it used to be.

Homeowners used to crave land, yard space, and stand-alone houses with their own home gyms and pools but the craving has gone to housing communities. The desire to be in a gated community, with all these great amenities, has increased leaving more of these communities being built and nature destroyed. As for private and boarding schools, parents feel that their children need to be seeking a greater education when public schools can offer just that. Private schools can lead to diversity disasters and create social division and inequality.

Michael Sandel wrote a book titled Justice: What’s The Right Thing to Do? about three approaches to justice. Along with Sandel, I too agree with the third approach, “…justice involves cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good,” nevertheless justice also includes freedom of choice and independence.[2] If people want to feel an extra sense of safety by living in a gated community, it is up to the homeowner but what is stopping someone from jumping the fence? Along with homeownership, families are moving to more affluent areas with great school districts to benefit themselves and their children or paying additional costs to send their children to private and boarding schools. Again, the common good focuses on community but at what cost if people are following the idea of individualism?

Public facilities such as pools, recreation centers, parks, libraries, and more would “…draw people out of their gated communities and into the common spaces” creating the sense of community that everyone was looking for.[3] Now, “The affluent send their children to private schools (or to public schools in wealthy suburbs), leaving urban public schools to the children of families who have no alternative. A similar trend leads to the secession by the privileged from other public institutions and facilities. Private health clubs replace municipal recreation centers and swimming pools. Upscale residential communities hire private security guards and rely less on public police protection. A second or third car removes the need to rely on public transportation. And so on. The affluent secede from public places and services leaving them to those who can’t afford anything else”.[4] It is as if the working class is left with leftovers and even less. Gated communities have created a space for the affluent to have no reason to leave unless they absolutely need to because of all the provided amenities.

Taking a look at private education, it is the root of many problems. Even though these private institutions are trying to work on solutions for racial, socioeconomic, and educational diversity and inequality, many schools still face a lack of diversity. Post-secondary education and even graduate schools face the issues of diversity. In the past, diversity rarely included race and ethnicity, it was mostly “…students from California, New York, and Massachusetts; city dwellers and farm boys; violinists, painters and football players; biologists, historians and classicists; potential stockbrokers, academics, and politicians,” it never included the physical and economic attributes of people.[5] Taking racial and ethnic backgrounds into consideration, students of color and ethnic diversity can bring what Caucasians and Whites can’t, which is diversity. When students share their experiences the audience can learn from others making an educational difference. Sharing stories from their past from cultures to religion, can educate others and create a more safe and comfortable environment.

Oral history is so powerful. Stories from the past are being preserved and told in a certain tone that impacts the audience making it stronger than reading text. Having students from all backgrounds can cultivate an enriching learning environment where everyone is learning the oral history of others which can also benefit them. These oral histories can prevent the audience from making mistakes made in the past, thus creating a learning and teaching moment.

Socioeconomic status has always been a barrier for children attending private institutions at all levels, leading to a lack of awareness of the different levels and situations people are in. Schools like Lawrenceville School require a tuition of seventy thousand dollars a year and for the average American, that is a yearly salary. If those who are sending their children to these exclusive schools are not going to be exposed to the variety of socioeconomic statuses that exist, and will only be mindful of their own. Having the privilege of attending a college preparatory school is not an option for everyone creating educational disparities. Some schools are trying to create more equal opportunities but that is not the case for everyone. A school in Texas named The Tenney School released a statement from the headmaster saying “The single biggest factor impacting diversity in private schools is tuition…it is very difficult to find diverse families who can afford private tuition…private schools do attempt to attract diverse students through scholarship programs, but at the end of the day, there will be some tuition to attend a private school,” meaning some type of tuition is always going to be on the invoice which only certain, most likely White, families can pay.[6]

College preparatory schools set children up for their future with a more advanced education that is catered to each child. Comparing this to a standard public school that is built around standards for the general population, these private schools give children a huge advantage when it comes to colleges and universities because of the institutions’ status, thus setting up the privately educated child to become successful in the future. Think of this like a chain of effects. If the parents make loads of money, they will live in a privileged area leaving them with two options; option one is to send the child to a very nice public school with everything that is possibly needed or send that child to a private school with everything and more. If option two is picked, the child will receive an education that is meant specifically for them, a higher chance of getting to an Ivy or public Ivy university, and lastly, a greater chance of a successful career and high salary. This chain of events will continue to this family’s future children and a never-ending cycle of private school privilege. From personal experience, where I went to school (South Brunswick, NJ), by the time some of my classmates reached sixth grade, they attended private schools, and for ninth grade, some went to boarding schools. Why? Because their parents felt that a private school would be needed to make their children more successful because of the advantages. The inequality margin is getting larger and larger every day because of the number of children attending private schools.

As I said previously, the common good is an independent choice, but why remove the concept when some are in need? Sandel agrees with his third reasoning for justice, “cultivating virtue and reasoning about the common good,” but the United States no longer fosters the same opinion.[7] Many in the US are fostering a more greedy mentality through actions like living in a gated community or sending their children to private schools. There is no longer a need for public facilities, but they can enhance the sense of community and create a place of belonging for children. Those who do not have access to private facilities could be going to public ones but that isn’t an option because the common good wasn’t kept up with and a fee is included with everything. An example of this would be the local dog park. In order to access, a high fee must be paid, but if you are not a resident of the town, you must pay an even higher one. Why have a park if you have to pay for it? The answer is easy. Greed. Towns need money and the only way to make it is through fees and payments. America needs to adopt a mentality that makes us think about others, not just ourselves. The only way we can better society is through working together but that is not possible if people are only looking out for themselves and how they can make it more luxurious.

Encouraging people to attend public schools and buy stand-alone housing not in gated communities is a start to increasing the sense of community and common good, but again, it is a choice and people have the freedom to do as they please. Taking that away from families is simply wrong, however, they should be aware of their actions and the consequences. Making the private school sector more available to all classes and providing information about the community can make everyone more aware. In gated communities, removing the facilities can increase families leaving and going to public ones, leading to fostering friendships and relationships with others. Asking the American people to do this after gated communities and private institutions are embedded in our society is a lot but the difference that can be made is even greater. I agree with Sandel and the concept of the common good, but asking the American people to believe in this when everyone has different values will be difficult, maybe even impossible.

Applying to Social Studies Education

            Social Studies is such a broad subject where students learn about the various cultures, races, ethnicities, and so on. It is one of the only core subjects taught in schools where students can take the time and learn from each other. They can tell personal stories, explain their cultures and traditions, and most importantly, listen to each other. My paper above is about the common good, one of the goods being public education. Private institutions take away the learning opportunities that public schools have to offer. At these institutions, there is one kind of group of kids: those of a higher socioeconomic status. With that being said, many of these kids are White. There is no opportunity to learn about various backgrounds and ethnicities. With my experience in public schools, I learned so much about different cultures and people. It really influenced me to think deeper about what other hardships people face in their lives. While I don’t have first-hand experienced life in a private school, I can speak on behalf of the many people I know who attend private institutions for their K-12 education. It is so simple, it’s not diverse.

            In order for students to be knowledgeable about the problems in this world, it is crucial they take the time to understand and learn from others. One student does not have the same life as another. Although they will never truly know what others have experienced, discussion is a great place to start. In high school, I took a sociology class that changed my perspective on life in general. We would discuss our backgrounds, cultural traditions, and  our family and family life. This class allowed me to learn what true diversity is, in turn, making me want to expose my future students to each other. Not enough credit goes out to students. They are not only listeners but they are teachers. They teach what teachers can’t, cultures and traditions. We can only talk about what we know but it is more personal when it comes from a true place and narrator. There is nothing more valuable than students sharing their experiences with their classmates, it builds a community.

[1] Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

[2] Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

[3] Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

[4] Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

[5]  Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

[6] Is there a lack of diversity in private schools?, accessed May 13, 2024, https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/articles/is-there-a-lack-of-diversity-in-private-schools.

[7]   Michael J Sandel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009).

Book Review-Homeless Outreach and Housing First: Lessons Learned

Book Review of Homeless Outreach and Housing First: Lessons Learned, by Jay S. Levy, 2012.  Ann Arbor, MI: Loving Healing Press.  Paper, 36 pages.

Reviewed by Thomas Hansen, Ph.D.

Jay S. Levy has written an excellent book for aldermen, social workers, counselors, taxpayers, nurses, street helpers, and many others to read.  It is excellent because of how it gets the reader into the topic and provides clear definitions and examples.  *See the two articles below for more explanation of this important topic, housing first.

This book looks like a workbook, actually.  It is a thinner paperback, and it is a brief and clear guide about not only providing outreach to get people ready to be housed but also moving ahead with the well-known strategy of using “housing first.”  Housing first is the successful—but underused—process of getting persons indoors right away in the move to solve homelessness.  Rather than making people jump through a dozen hoops, plus half-way houses and shelters, plus appropriate counseling, housing first gets the person stable housing so that all of the other pieces can fall into place.

The phenomenon of housing first, developed by Stefancic and Tsemberis, is highly successful, but more expensive than approaches which pick and choose from the homeless person’s needs.  Books and articles by those two experts are easy to locate through a quick search.

It costs more because in housing first somebody has to pay the rent for the ex-homeless person to be housed—typically in an apartment.  The documentation is very clear.  The successes are great.  It is a longer-term solution.  Housing first allows the newly-indoors individual to save money by having a refrigerator to keep leftovers, a place to keep any needed medication, a place to be safe from attack and danger and murder.

Housing first provides—very importantly—a secure dwelling for sleep and safety.  Therefore, Housing first is a lifesaver.  This should be simple to understand.

The book’s clarity and brevity are both plusses.  The book can be read easily in one sitting and therefore it is perfect for weekend retreats with board members and others who need to come to a quick understanding of how housing first works as the key element to successful placement of persons into the indoors. 

Also helpful is the way Levy brings together three different pieces to provide context, definitions, and an example of an individual who “makes it” despite his challenges of addiction, homelessness, and depression.  It is a good and quick reference—clear explanation—of the world of housing first.

Part One is an article about hope and ethics.  Part Two is the first housing first process used by the author, Jay S; Levy.  Part Three is an interview with someone who was helped by Levy’s intervention.

The author is a social worker who tells of the quality of the housing first strategy and his own growth—not just that of the individuals he helps.  It is an inspiring book, and the author is an encouraging and prayerful professional.  Levy has written not only about homeless first strategies but also about the pretreatment necessary for the system to work.  This is a piece of the puzzle people need to know more about.

As an educator, I recommend this book highly and hope all persons helping the homeless will read it, study it, and reflect on it.  I admire professionals who can write clearly and well, explaining, using illustrations, and making their point succinctly.  Great information here, and easy to understand and utilize.  

As an educator with a Jesuit background, I am forever reflecting on my own ideas and decisions, thinking about how I could have done things better… how I can communicate better, and how I can help the unhoused with their challenges more effectively.  I grew from reading this book.  

The book is good background reading and important to get onto your bookshelf to be loaned to others.  The book would also be great for professional development classes, retreats, fundraising, and other uses.  I encourage everyone to read it soon. 

For further reading:

Levy, J. S. (1998, Fall). “Homeless Outreach: On the Road to Pretreatment Alternatives.  Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services, 81(4), pp. 360-368.

Levy, J. S., (2011, July). “The Case for Housing First: Moral, Fiscal, and Quality of Life Reasons for Ending Chronic Homelessness.  Recovering the Self: A Journal of Hope and Healing, III(3), pp. 45-51.

Documenting the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Documenting the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

Prepared by Fabrizio Caruso and Sofia Sanchez

  1. Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776)
  2. Remember the Ladies by Abigail Adams (1776)
  3. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
  4. Preamble to the United States Constitution (1787)
  5. Declaration of the Rights of Man, August 26, (1789)
  6. Celebrating the Declaration of Independence by John Q. Adams (1821)
  7. Speech on the Oregon Bill by John C. Calhoun (1848)
  8. Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
  9. What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass (1852)
  10. Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln (1863)
  11. Thirteenth Amendment (1865)
  12. The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883)
  13. Release from Woodstock Jail by Eugene V. Debs (1895)
  14. Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
  15. Four Freedoms Speech by Franklin Roosevelt (1941)
  16. The Struggle for Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt (1948)
  17. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
  18. Declaration of Conscience by Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1950)
  19. Farewell Address by Dwight D. Eisenhower (1961)
  20. Nation’s Space Effort by John F. Kennedy (1962)
  21. I Have a dream by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
  22. Civil Rights Act (1964)
  23. Bicentennial Ceremony by Gerald R. Ford (1976)
  24. The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman (2021)

Common Sense – Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776

Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously in a pamphlet in 1776. In it, he called for independence from Great Britain, which was a foreign idea at the time. He argued that his claims were common sense and that breaking away from the rule of Great Britain was a necessity for the good of the colonists.

Portrait of Thomas Paine, a key figure in American history known for his influential writings advocating for independence and civil rights.

In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense…

I have heard it asserted by some, that as America has flourished under her former connection with Great-Britain, the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true; for I answer… that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power taken any notice of her. The commerce by which she hath enriched herself are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.

But she has protected us, say some… We have boasted the protection of Great Britain, without considering, that her motive was interest not attachment… This new World hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe… As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it…

Europe is too thickly planted with Kingdoms to be long at peace, and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain… There is something absurd, in supposing a Continent to be perpetually governed by an island…

Where, say some, is the king of America? I’ll tell you, Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Great Britain… So far as we approve of monarchy… in America the law is king…

A government of our own is our natural right… Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are opening the door to eternal tyranny. . .

Questions:

  1. How does Paine compare America to a child? How does this compare to the situation of America wanting independence?
  2. Why is Great Britain protecting America, according to Paine?
  3. What happens to America whenever Great Britain is at war? Why?
  4. According to Paine, who is the king of America?
  5. What does Paine say of people who are opposing independence?

“Remember the Ladies” – Abigail Adams, March 31, 1776

Abigail Adams was the wife of revolutionary and second president John Adams. She herself fought for the rights of colonists and advocated for equal rights for women in a time where this was uncommon. In one of her frequent letters to John Adams, she urged him to “remember the ladies” as he was working on the initial draft to the Declaration of Independence. Ultimately, the wording of the Declaration of Independence was exclusionary and women did not receive equal rights until the twentieth century.

A portrait of a woman seated in an ornate chair, wearing a burgundy dress with a white lace collar, holding a bouquet of flowers, against a backdrop with decorative elements.

Tho we felicitate ourselves, we sympathize with those who are trembling least the Lot of Boston should be theirs. But they cannot be in similar circumstances unless pusillanimity and cowardise should take possession of them. They have time and warning given them to see the Evil and shun it. — I long to hear that you have declared an independancy — and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.

Questions:

  1. What is Abigail Adams asking of John Adams?
  2. What does Abigail Adams believe of all men?
  3. Why must men pay attention to the ladies, according to Adams?

Declaration of Independence – July 4, 1776

On July 4, 1776, the most important foundational document in the history of the United States was approved by the Second Continental Congress. The Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, outlined a formal “declaration” of the 13 colonies as an independent, sovereign state that had broken away from the British Crown and listed various grievances that the new country had against the King. Jefferson scattered the document with political and social ideological thought that would become ingrained principles of American government and society.

A historical painting depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence, featuring prominent figures in a grand room adorned with an American flag.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government…”

Questions:

  1. What are the three “unalienable Rights” Thomas Jefferson identifies?
  2. According to Jefferson, what must the people do if a government fails to safeguard these unalienable Rights?
  3. In your opinion, has the U.S. government upheld the message and liberties outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Explain.

Preamble to the Constitution, 1787

Once the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, the nation’s founders needed a stronger, more structured set of laws for government. The initial Articles of Confederation were weak and did structure the government in a way that would be sustainable. Thus, the Constitution was formed after deliberation at the Constitutional Convention. The Preamble serves as the introduction to the Constitution as a whole and establishes the tone and goals for this new budding nation.

A historical painting depicting the signing of the United States Constitution, featuring delegates in formal attire gathered in a large room with decorative details, including a chandelier and an American flag.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Questions:

  1. What is the importance of the first three words of the Constitution?
  2. List the six goals outlined in the Constitution.
  3. Why was it important for the United States to write the Constitution after the Articles of Confederation?
  4. Select one of the goals of the Constitution. Why do you think the authors believed it was important to include the goal that you chose?

“Declaration of the Rights of Man” – National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789

Just a few years after the end of the American Revolution, France was experiencing a revolution of their own. The Third Estate had become overwhelmingly frustrated by the poverty, stagnant economic growth, inept leadership, and poor quality of life they faced while the First and Second Estates lived in luxury and prosperity. The newly formed National Assembly released the Declaration of the Rights of Man in the midst of this violent revolution.

A large crowd gathered in front of a historical building, waving flags and holding banners, as they engage in a passionate display of political support or protest.

“The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties…Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:

Articles:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, and security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

…7. No personal shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished.

…9. As all persons are held innocent until they have been declared guilty…

10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights…

Questions:

  1. According to the preamble, what is the purpose of this declaration?
  2. In the context of the French Revolution, why is the wording of “equal in rights” significant?
  3. Discuss the extent in which this declaration compares to the Declaration of Independence?
  4. How do the two declarations define the rights guaranteed to all men?

“Celebrating the Declaration of Independence” –John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821

While serving as Secretary of State under President James Monroe, John Quincy Adams was invited to Congress to give a speech to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Adams spends much of this speech praising the Declaration and commending the Founding Fathers’ bravery and triumph over the British Crown in establishing the new nation. This speech has become synonymous with the idea of “American exceptionalism.”

Portrait of a seated elderly man with gray hair, dressed in formal attire, sitting in a wooden chair with hands clasped, set in a domestic interior with a lamp and a patterned rug.

“…In the long conflict of twelve years which had preceded and led to the Declaration of Independence, our fathers had been not less faithful to their duties, than tenacious of their rights. Their resistance had not been rebellion. It was not a restive and ungovernable spirit of ambition, bursting from the bonds of colonial subjection; it was the deep and wounded sense of successive wrongs, upon which complaint had been only answered by aggravation, and petition repelled with contumely, which had driven them to their last stand upon the adamantine rock of human rights.

            …It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the cornerstone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude.

            …It will be acted o’er [over], fellow-citizens, but it can never be repeated. It stands, and must forever stand alone, a beacon on the summit of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light, till time shall be lost in eternity, and this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men; a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed…so long shall this declaration hold out to the sovereign and to the subject the extent and the boundaries of their respective rights and duties; founded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God. Five and forty years have passed away since this Declaration was issued by our fathers; and here are we, fellow-citizens, assembled in the full enjoyment of its fruits.”

Questions:

  1. What does John Quincy Adams say the Declaration of Independence was the “first” declaration to do?
  2. Why does Adams call the American Revolution a “resistance,” not a “rebellion?”
  3. Why does Adams call the Declaration a “beacon on the summit of the mountain?”
  4. Do you agree with Adams’ perspective of the revolution and the Declaration? Explain.

“Speech on the Oregon Bill” – Senator John C. Calhoun, June 27, 1848

As the nation crept closer to an impending Civil War, American politics became engulfed over the issue of slavery. One of the leading voices of the pro-slavery movement was South Carolina Democrat senator John C. Calhoun. After serving as Andrew Jackson’s vice president, he ended his career in the Senate. There, he was one of the Democratic Party’s most outspoken supporters for “states’ rights” to defend and uphold slavery within its borders. This speech was in response to the Oregon Bill, which was set to outlaw slavery practices in the new Oregon territory.

A historical black and white portrait of a man with long hair, dressed in a dark suit and vest, seated with hands clasped together.

“The proposition to which I allude, has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is, that “all men are born free and equal.” I am not afraid to attack error, however deeply it may be entrenched, or however widely extended, whenever it becomes my duty to do so, as I believe it to be on this subject and occasion.

            Taking the proposition literally (it is in that sense it is understood), there is not a word of truth in it. It begins with “all men are born,” which is utterly untrue. Men are not born. Infants are born. They grow to be men. And concludes with asserting that they are born “free and equal,” which is not less false. They are not born free. While infants they are incapable of freedom, being destitute alike of the capacity of thinking and acting, without which there can be no freedom. Besides, they are necessarily born subject to their parents, and remain so among all people, savage and civilized, until the development of their intellect and physical capacity enables them to take care of themselves…

If we trace it back, we shall find the proposition differently expressed in the Declaration of Independence. That asserts that “all men are created equal.” The form of expression, though less dangerous, is not less erroneous…

… [G]overnment has no right to control individual liberty beyond what is necessary to the safety and well-being of society. Such is the boundary which separates the power of government and the liberty of the citizen or subject in the political state, which, as I have shown, is the natural state of man—the only one in which his race can exist, and the one in which he is born, lives, and dies.”

Questions:

  1. What does Senator Calhoun say about the phrase “all men are created equal?”
  2. According to Calhoun, how should the government’s role be limited?
  3. What is the connection that Senator Calhoun makes between liberty and race? What does this mean about his message in this speech?

Declaration of Sentiments – Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, 1848

At the Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, 68 women and 32 men signed the “Declaration of Sentiments”, which was essentially a Bill of Rights for women. The document called for equal social, civil, and political liberties for women, which included the right to vote, equal education opportunities, and more legal protections. Elizabeth Cady Stanton served as the primary author as well as Lucretia Mott and Martha Coffin Wright. The Declaration of Sentiments was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, which was written just 72 years prior.

Two women in 19th century attire seated together at a table, with a decorative backdrop.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. […]

“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice. He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men – both natives and foreigners. Having deprived her of this first right as a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns. […]

“Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, – in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.”

Questions:

  1. What other document is the introduction to the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after?
  2. What is the purpose of this excerpt of the Declaration of Sentiments?
  3. List two of the grievances that the authors included.
  4. Do you believe that this declaration is convincing enough to help women gain equal rights? What would you change if anything?

“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” – Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland in 1818. He escaped slavery in 1838 and used his tutoring of the English language to become a renowned orator and writer. He used the strength of his words to call for the abolition of slavery and worked to ensure freedom for all enslaved people. This speech was written to encourage people to think about what the Fourth of July means for those in America who are not free and who do not experience the same rights and opportunities as their White counterparts.

A historical portrait of Frederick Douglass, a prominent abolitionist and social reformer, seated with an earnest expression, showcasing his distinctive hairstyle and 19th-century attire.

“This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom . . . There is consolation in the thought that America is young […] The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects . . . You were under the British Crown . . . But, your fathers . . . They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to […] Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-­‐day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ring-­‐bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny.

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival […]

“Allow me to say, in conclusion . . . I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.”

Questions:

  1. What words does Douglass use that show he does not align with free Americans?
  2. How is the fourth of July different for enslaved people and free people? Use one example from the text.
  3. How does Douglass conclude his speech? Why do you think he feels this way?

“Gettysburg Address” – Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

Between July 1 and 3, 1863, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Both the Union and Confederacy faced catastrophic losses, with casualties totaling over 50,000 men. The Battle of Gettysburg remains the deadliest battle of American history. Four months later, President Abraham Lincoln arrived at Gettysburg to declare the battlefield as a national cemetery. Many in the crowd were anticipating a long speech from President Lincoln, however this famous address only lasted about 3 minutes. Nevertheless, the Gettysburg Address would become enshrined as one of Lincoln’s, and U.S. history’s, most powerful speeches.

Black and white portrait of a man with a beard and a bow tie, looking directly at the camera.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

…But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate–we can not consecrate–we can not hallow–this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom–and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Questions:

  1. According to Lincoln, what is the “proposition” that the nation was founded on?
  2. What is this civil war “testing?”
  3. What is Lincoln’s tone throughout the speech? Use at least two pieces of textual evidence to support your response.
  4. How does President Lincoln use ideas from the Declaration of Independence in this speech? To what extent is it effective? Use at least two pieces of textual evidence to support your response.

Thirteenth Amendment, 1865

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States. Slavery had been an institution in the United States since the first ship holding enslaved people arrived from the shores of Africa in 1619. Prior to the entire United States abolishing slavery, some states had already dismantled the system of slavery. Many became champions for the abolition of slavery and helped enslaved people escape to freedom. The amendment was ratified in December 1865 after being passed by Congress in January 1865. The Thirteenth Amendment serves as the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments. While it ended legal slavery, Southern states later used the “punishment for crime” clause to create “Black Codes”, which prevented Black people from voting and limited their rights.

An 1860s political cartoon depicting Abraham Lincoln addressing a group of people, including both Black and white individuals, with a banner stating 'Freedom for all, both Black and White.'

“Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

“Section 2

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Questions:

1. What did the thirteenth amendment accomplish?

2. Where is involuntary servitude still legal?

3. Who has the power to enforce the thirteenth amendment?

4. Do you believe that it is justified for involuntary servitude to be used for criminal offenders? Why or why not?

The New Colossus – Emma Lazarus, 1883

Emma Lazarus was an American poet who wrote the poem “The New Colossus” in 1883. When writing this sonnet, she was inspired by the Statue of Liberty and what the statue represents. In 1903, this poem was engraved onto a bronze plaque and is now on the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

Image of the Statue of Liberty against a backdrop of the New York City skyline.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Questions:

  1. How does Emma Lazarus describe the Statue of Liberty in the poem? Use one line from the text that supports your answer.
  2. What group of people might lines 10-14 be referring to? How do you know?
  3. Why is it appropriate that Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” appears on the base of the Statue of Liberty?

“Speech on Release from Woodstock Jail” – Eugene V. Debs, November 22, 1895

Eugene V. Debs was one of the nation’s leading critics of big business and corporations. He was an adamant socialist and sought to educate workers to unionize to combat malicious business practices by their employers. In 1893, there was a massive strike organized against the Pullman Sleeping Car Company. Debs helped organize a boycott with the American Railway Union. President Grover Cleveland had sent the U.S. military to handle the strike, and Debs was later arrested for federal contempt and conspiracy charges.

A black and white portrait of a man wearing a suit and bowtie, looking directly at the camera.

            “Manifestly the spirit of ‘76 still survives. The fires of liberty and noble aspirations are not yet extinguished. I greet you tonight as lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. I comprehend the significance of this demonstration and appreciate the honor that makes it possible for me to be your guest on such an occasion. The vindication and glorification of American principles of government, as proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence, is the high purpose of this convocation.

            Speaking for myself personally I am not certain whether this is an occasion for rejoicing or lamentation. I confess to a serious doubt as to whether this day marks my deliverance from bondage to freedom or my doom from freedom to bondage…It is not law nor the administration of law of which I complain. It is the flagrant violation of the Constitution, the total abrogation of law and the usurpation of judicial and despotic power, by virtue of which my colleagues and myself were committed to jail, against which I enter my solemn protest; and any honest analysis of the proceedings must sustain the haggard truth of the indictment.

            In a letter recently written by the venerable Judge Trumbull that eminent jurist says: “The doctrine announced by the Supreme Court in the Debs case, carried to its logical conclusion, places every citizen at the mercy of any prejudiced or malicious federal judge who may think proper to imprison him.”. .

            The theme tonight is personal liberty; or giving it its full height, depth, and breadth, American liberty, something that Americans have been accustomed to eulogize since the foundation of the Republic, and multiplied thousands of them continue in the habit to this day because they do not recognize the truth that in the imprisonment of one man in defiance of all constitutional guarantees, the liberties of all are invaded and placed in peril.

Questions:

  1. What ideas is Debs referencing when he says “the spirit of ‘76 still survives?”
  2. What rights does Debs claim the government has taken away from him and/or denied?
  3. Do you agree with Debs’ analysis of the situation he faced during the Pullman Strike? Explain your answer using evidence from the speech.

Nineteenth Amendment, 1920

From the founding of the United States, women have been championing for equal rights and the ability to vote. From Abigail Adams calling for John Adams to “remember the ladies” to the suffragettes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women and their allies had been calling for equal opportunities since America’s inception. In 1920, the nineteenth amendment was ratified and women were guaranteed the right to vote.

Historical photograph of a women's suffrage march, featuring women holding signs that advocate for the right to vote.

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

“Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Questions:

  1. What did the nineteenth amendment accomplish?
  2. Who holds the power to enforce this amendment?

Do you think that any women were prevented from voting following the 19th amendment? Who? Why?

“Four Freedoms Speech” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 6, 1941

As World War II engulfed Europe, President Roosevelt and the U.S. government navigated the tightrope of effective foreign policy. The United States had long held a strong position of isolationism, and many Americans were firmly opposed to any involvement in Europe’s second world war. However, the U.S. government had shifted away from its isolationism by the end of the 1930s. FDR’s State of the Union address in 1941 echoed a new dawn of American interventionism, as he outlined the four freedoms everybody in the world was entitled to.

A formal portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States, smiling and dressed in a suit with a tie, set against a plain background.

“Since the permanent formation of our Government under the Constitution, in 1789, most of the periods of crisis in our history have related to our domestic affairs. Fortunately, only one of these–the four year War Between the States–ever threatened our national unity. Today, thank God, one hundred and thirty million Americans, in forty-eight States, have forgotten points of compass in our national unity.

            …In like fashion from 1815 to 1914–ninety-nine years–no single war in Europe or in Asia constituted a real threat against our future or against the future of any other American nationf…In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

            The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

            The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way–everywhere in the world.

            The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants–everywhere in the world.

            The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor–anywhere in the world.

            That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very anthesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.”

Questions:

  1. What does FDR say has been the reason for (most) periods of crisis in U.S. history? Why is the current situation in Europe (World War II) different?
  2. What are the four freedoms FDR lists in this speech?
  3. In your opinion, do people “everywhere in the world” experience the four freedoms today? Explain your answer.

“The Struggle for Human Rights” – Eleanor Roosevelt, 1948

Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady of the United States from 1933-1945 while her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, was president. She redefined the role by speaking out often and calling attention to important social issues. Her speech “The Struggle for Human Rights” was given at the United Nations, to which she served as a delegate to its General Assembly, where she served as chair of the commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights document during a presentation.

We must not be confused about what freedom is. Basic human rights are simple and easily understood: freedom of speech and a free press; freedom of religion and worship; freedom of assembly and the right of petition; the right of men to be secure in their homes and free from unreasonable search and seizure and from arbitrary arrest and punishment. We must not be deluded by the efforts of the forces of reaction to prostitute the great words of our free tradition and thereby to confuse the struggle. Democracy, freedom, human rights have come to have a definite meaning to the people of the world which we must not allow any nation to so change that they are made synonymous with suppression and dictatorship…

The basic problem confronting the world today, as I said in the beginning, is the preservation of human freedom for the individual and consequently for the society of which he is a part. We are fighting this battle again today as it was fought at the time of the French Revolution and at the time of the American Revolution. The issue of human liberty is as decisive now as it was then. I want to give you my conception of what is meant in my country by freedom of the individual…

            Indeed, in our democracies we make our freedoms secure because each of us is expected to respect the rights of others and we are free to make our own laws…

​             Basic decisions of our society are made through the expressed will of the people. That is why when we see these liberties threatened, instead of falling apart, our nation becomes unified and our democracies come together as a unified group in spite of our varied backgrounds and many racial strains…

            It is my belief, and I am sure it is also yours, that the struggle for democracy and freedom is a critical struggle, for their preservation is essential to the great objective of the United Nations to maintain international peace and security…

            The future must see the broadening of human rights throughout the world. People who have glimpsed freedom will never be content until they have secured it for themselves. In a true sense, human rights are a fundamental object of law and government in a just society. Human rights exist to the degree that they are respected by people in relations with each other and by governments in relations with their citizens.

Questions:

  1. What are the basic human rights that Eleanor Roosevelt claims are “simple and easily understood”?
  2. What does Roosevelt say makes freedom secure?
  3. In your opinion, why are freedom and democracy essential for all people?

“Universal Declaration of Human Rights” – United Nations, December 10, 1948

Following the end of World War II, the victorious European powers and the United States created a new global organization to govern international affairs. The United Nations was created to replace the failed League of Nations, and serve as the leading world institution to maintain peace, protect human rights, and prevent future wars and conflict. One of the first declarations of the United Nations was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Below are Articles 1 through 7 of the UDHR.

United Nations emblem featuring a world map encircled by olive branches on a blue background.

Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of person.

Article 4

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Questions:

  1. Identify three (3) rights that are guaranteed by the UDHR.
  2. According to Article 2, what kinds of “distinctions” are prohibited from deny people their rights?
  3. Which phrases of ideas in the UDHR connect to the Declaration of Independence?
  4. How does the UDHR expand on the phrase “all men are created equal?”
  5. In your opinion, does the world today uphold these human rights? Explain.

Declaration of Conscience – Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1950)

In June 1950, in the midst of an anti-communist campaign identified with Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) spoke out against “selfish political exploitation” targeting innocent people and threatening basic American rights.

Political cartoon depicting Senator Margaret Chase Smith confronting smear tactics used during the anti-communist campaign.

“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership either in the legislative branch or the executive branch of our government. … I speak as a Republican. I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American. …  I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.   I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech, but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.”

Whether it be a criminal prosecution in court or a character prosecution in the Senate, there is little practical distinction when the life of a person has been ruined.

“The Basic Principles of Americanism”

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism –

The right to criticize.

The right to hold unpopular beliefs.

The right to protest.

The right of independent thought.

The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in.

The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as “Communists” or “Fascists” by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.”

Questions:

1. What is the national feeling identified by Senator Smith?

2. What does she want American leaders to do?

3. What basic rights does Senator Smith believe are threatened?

4. In your opinion, why did Senator Smith focus on “The Basic Principles of Americanism”?

Farewell Address – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961

On January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower delivered a ten-minute farewell to the American people on national television from the Oval Office of the White House. In the speech, Eisenhower warned that a large, permanent “military-industrial complex,” an alliance between the military and defense contractors, posed a threat to American democracy. 

Black and white photograph of President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivering a speech from the Oval Office, with microphones in front and the U.S. flag in the background.

“We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.”

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. … Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations. … This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.”

Questions:

1. According to President Eisenhower, why does the United States need to maintain a strong military?

2. Why is President Eisenhower concerned about a “military-industrial complex”?

3. What does President Eisenhower alert the American people to do?

“The Nation’s Space Effort” – President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962

Five years prior, the Soviet Union had successfully launched Sputnik 1 into orbit, sparking the beginning of the Space Race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. The United States quickly sought to catch up to the Soviet Union’s many “firsts” in the Space Race (first satellite, first man in space, first man to orbit the Earth, etc.). Then, in September 1962, President Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University discussing the new goal for America’s space program: put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

President John F. Kennedy delivering a speech at Rice University, discussing the United States' commitment to space exploration.

“…We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. I do not say the we should or will go unprotected against the hostile misuse of space any more than we go unprotected against the hostile use of land or sea, but I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours.

NASA Apollo program logo featuring the letter A with a depiction of Earth and the Moon.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

Questions:

  1. Why does President Kennedy say it is important to “set sail on this new sea?”
  2. What justification does President Kennedy give that the United States should be the first nation to conquer space?
  3. How does Kennedy’s vision for space reflect the ideals in the founding documents?

“I Have a Dream” (from the March on Washington) — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963

On August 28, 1963, in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, civil rights leaders and organizations planned a momentous rally in Washington, D. C. Officially known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, over 200,000 people gathered to protest and advocate for the end of segregation and guarantee of civil rights for African Americans. At the end of the march, at the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most influential leaders, delivered his most famous speech.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the March on Washington, with a large crowd in attendance.

“…It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual…

            …We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only…

            …So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

            I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”

Questions:

  1. How does Dr. King describe the current situation of African Americans in 1963?
  2. Why does Dr. King call 1963 “not an end, but a beginning?”
  3. What founding document does Dr. King reference in this speech? Why does he reference this document?
  4. In your opinion, has the “dream” described in this speech been achieved? Explain.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. This act called for desegregation of public spaces, schools, and made voting free and fair for all. This was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The act made segregation illegal but it also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment.

A historic moment capturing President Lyndon B. Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. engaged in a conversation, with other attendees in the background, symbolizing the partnership in the Civil Rights Movement.

To enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the “Civil Rights Act of 1964”.

TITLE I: No person acting under color of law shall … apply any standard, practice, or procedure different from the standards, practices, or procedures applied under such law or laws to other individuals within the same county, parish, or similar political subdivision who have been found by State officials to be qualified to vote; deny the right of any individual to vote in any Federal election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting … employ any literacy test as a qualification for voting in any Federal election unless (i) such test is administered to each individual and is conducted wholly in writing…

TITLE II: All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

            All persons shall be entitled to be free, at any establishment or place, from discrimination or segregation of any kind on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin, if such discrimination or segregation is or purports to be required by any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, rule, or order of a State or any agency or political subdivision thereof…

Questions:

  1. What era of history led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
  2. What does Title I of the Civil Rights Act pertain to?
  3. What caused Title I to be necessary?
  4. What is the goal of Title II?
  5. Why do you believe that the Civil Rights Act was essential?

Bicentennial Ceremony at the National Archives – President Gerald R. Ford, July 2, 1976

On August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon had resigned from the presidency following the disastrous Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford, Nixon’s vice president, assumed the office immediately and pardoned Nixon one month later. The entire Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation created great disdain against the U.S. government. Many Americans became extremely untrustworthy of elected officials and had little faith in the government. Becoming President during the bicentennial of the U.S., Ford dealt with difficult challenges both domestically and abroad.

Portrait of Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States.

“The Declaration is the Polaris of our political order–the fixed star of freedom. It is impervious to change because it states moral truths that are eternal.

The Constitution provides for its own changes having equal force with the original articles. It began to change soon after it was ratified, when the Bill of Rights was added. We have since amended it 16 times more, and before we celebrate our 300th birthday, there will be more changes…

Jefferson’s principles are very much present. The Constitution, when it is done, will translate the great ideals of the Declaration into a legal mechanism for effective government where the unalienable rights of individual Americans are secure. In grade school we were taught to memorize the first and last parts of the Declaration. Nowadays, even many scholars skip over the long recitation of alleged abuses by King George III and his misguided ministers. But occasionally we ought to read them, because the injuries and invasions of individual rights listed there are the very excesses of government power which the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and subsequent amendments were designed to prevent…

But the source of all unalienable rights, the proper purposes for which governments are instituted among men, and the reasons why free people should consent to an equitable ordering of their God-given freedom have never been better stated than by Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are cited as being among the most precious endowments of the Creator–but not the only ones.”

Questions:

  1. What role does President Ford say the Constitution has in relation to the Declaration?
  2. Why does President Ford say it is important to read the grievances listed against King George III in the Declaration?
  3. Do you agree with President Ford that the Declaration is unchanging while the Constitution changes over time? Explain your answer.

“The Hill We Climb” – Amanda Gorman, 2021

This poem was read at the inauguration of President Joseph Biden in 2021 by its author, Amanda Gorman. She is a poet, activist, and author who wrote this poem for the inauguration under the theme of “America United”.

Amanda Gorman delivers a poem during the inauguration of President Joe Biden, wearing a yellow coat and red headband, with an audience in the background.

…We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect, we are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.

So we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another, we seek harm to none and harmony for all…

That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare it because being American is more than a pride we inherit, it’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it. That would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy, and this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can periodically be delayed, but it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth, in this faith, we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us, this is the era of just redemption we feared in its inception we did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves, so while once we asked how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us. We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free, we will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, our blunders become their burden. But one thing is certain: if we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left, with every breath from my bronze, pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one, we will rise from the golden hills of the West, we will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution, we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states, we will rise from the sunbaked South, we will rebuild, reconcile, and recover in every known nook of our nation in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful will emerge battered and beautiful, when the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid, the new dawn blooms as we free it, for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.

Questions:

  1. Why does Amanda Gorman urge readers to look towards the future?
  2. What does Gorman believe that being an American includes?
  3. What is the overall tone of the poem? Cite two quotes that support your answer.

New York State Resource Guide for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution

New York State Resource Guide for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution

Theme 1: Indigenous History is New York History

Ganondagan State Park (https://www.iloveny.com/listing/ganondagan-state-historic-site/125277/): Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor, NY stands at the location of what was one of the largest, most vital 17th-century Seneca towns until its destruction in 1687. 

New York State Museum (https://nysm.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/representguide.pdf): Exhibits on contemporary Native American Art appropriate for a diversity of ages, correlate.

New York Archives Junior (https://considerthesourceny.org/new-york-archives-jr/fall-2023): Designed for grades 4-8, NY Archives JR! The Fall 2023 theme issue is on the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. Some Haudenosaunee people sided with the British. In 1777, colonists attacked Haudenosaunee homes. 

Theme 2: Choose Your Side

PBS Learning Media: 250th (https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/shared/1165858/6390679/)

New York Archives Junior (https://considerthesource.s3.amazonaws.com/8017/2676/6031/NYArchives_Jr_Fall_2024_final_pagesLR.pdf): Designed for grades 4-8, NY Archives JR! The Fall 2024 theme issue focuses on the betrayal of Benedict Arnold and the capture of John Andre.

Black History (https://considerthesourceny.org/featured-collections/black-history-resources) Documents and learning activities related to the history, culture, and struggle for equality of African Americans in New York and the United States.

Treason of the Blackest Dye (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4SGafhwyfo) This video was created as a companion to the Fall 2024 NY Archives JR! and tells the story of the capture of John Andre and the area known as the Neutral Zone during the Revolution.

Theme 3: Power of Place

New York State Museum Fort Orange Guide (https://nysm.nysed.gov/fort-orange-educational-guide)

Created for teachers of the 4th and 7th grades, this educational guide provides five lessons that introduce students to Fort Orange and the world of New Netherland.

Path Through History (https://www.iloveny.com/things-to-do/path-through-history/attractions/historic-sites/) Links to the I Love NY Path Through History featuring numerous historical sites relevant to the six Themes of the Revolution.

Saratoga National Historical Park (https://savingplaces.org/places/saratoga-national-historical-park): The Battle of Saratoga was an American victory during the Revolutionary War in the fall of 1777. 

Fort Ontario State Historic Site (https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/fortontario/details.aspx): Visitors to Fort Ontario State Historic Site today will see the star-shaped fort dating to the early 1840’s with 1863 to 1872 improvements. 

Washington’s Headquarters State Historic Site (https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/17/details.aspx): In the critical months that General George Washington spent at Newburgh, he made some of his most important contributions to shaping the American republic. It was here that Washington rejected the idea of an American monarchy.

Theme 4: We the People

Federal Hall (https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/17/details.aspx): On Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, George Washington took the oath of office as our first President. The building serves as a museum and memorial to our first President and the beginnings of the United States of America.

First Steps to Freedom (https://nysm.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/ep_teachers-guide_final_links_a_1.pdf): The educational materials in this guide were developed around President Abraham Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, a draft of which is in the collections of the New York State Library in Albany, New York.

The Fifteenth Amendment Educator Guide (https://nysm.nysed.gov/fifteenth-amendment): On February 3, 1870, the United States ratified the 15th Amendment, which allowed all African American men the right to vote. The educational materials in these activities were developed to explore the ratification of the 15th Amendment.

Theme 5: Unfinished Revolutions

Stonewall National Monument (https://www.iloveny.com/listing/stonewall-national-monument/31541/):

The birthplace of the modern gay rights movement took place on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in June 1969 at the Stonewall Inn. 

Women’s Rights National Historic Park (https://www.iloveny.com/listing/womens-rights-national-historical-park/3890/): Website for the Seneca Falls 1848 Women’s Rights Convention.

NYSM Women’s Suffrage Centennial Educator’s Guide (https://nysm.nysed.gov/sites/default/files/votes-for-women-educator-guide_0.pdf): A teaching aid for use with the New York State Museum’s exhibition Votes for Women.

Theme 6: Changing Interpretations of the Revolution

New York State Library American Revolution Primary Sources (https://www.nysl.nysed.gov/scandocs/revolution)

Fraunces Tavern Museum (https://www.frauncestavernmuseum.org/history): Built by the De Lancey family in 1719, 54 Pearl Street has been a private residence, hotel, and one of the most important taverns of the Revolutionary War. The Fraunces Tavern Museum website featuring educational resources focused on the taverns impact during the American Revolution and its’ evolving legacy today.

Book Review – Erasing History: How Fascist Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future

By Jason Stanley

Reviewed by Hank Bitten, NJCSS Executive Director

“Wars are won by teachers.” Vladimir Putin

This quote published in the Washington Post on May 7, 2024 is the opening statement in Chapter 1 of Erasing History. It is a powerful statement and thesis for this book and a compelling reason for teachers to read the arguments presented by Jason Stanley, Yale University Professor of Philosophy. There are numerous examples in this book explaining the biased perspective of American history regarding Black Americans, Latinx, Native Americans, women, children, etc. and there are examples of how history has been erased in Kenya, Palestine, India, China, and Ukraine.

Every teacher of U.S. history teaches the different views of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois to assimilate into American society at the turn of the 20th century. However, the perspective presented by Jason Stanley offers students in our classes the opportunity for a critical debate regarding two different paths towards assimilation.

“In his public writings, Washington urged Black Americans to prioritize industrial education over political education, and thus to place greater emphasis on their productive potential as workers than on their identity as democratic citizens.  As Du Bois saw it, this approach served white supremacy.  He counseled Black American citizens instead to seek a liberal education, whose purpose was not only to elevate the soul but also to give them skills to democratically advance their own interests.” (page 39)

Some societies and governments favor a part of their population as the dominant or protected class and discount or “erase” the contributions of other people in their state. The technological advances of artificial intelligence present new challenges for teachers as history can easily be revised from quoting textbooks, historical papers, and extremist views from the past and make them appear as valid scholarship.  The increasing popularity of PraegerU is an example of how school districts, Departments of Education, and individual teachers are accepting the information and lessons provided by non-academic institutions. Teachers have a unique responsibility and position because they are trusted by students and what they say is transformed from sight and sound to memory.

Teachers will find the historiography and analysis of the concepts of nationalism, American exceptionalism, and colonialism to be helpful for the development of lesson plans in both U.S. history and world history. It is less about ‘erasing’ history than changing history or emphasizing certain historical themes while ignoring others. Curriculum designers and teachers have both power and responsibility in how lessons are structured, implemented, and assessed. One example from the book is including the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and ignoring his many contributions in the civil rights movement.

This is an important debate regarding assimilation in a society with a dominant class. A current example is the debate of how the working class earning an hourly wage without benefits can assimilate into the middle class. Is the best way to address this through subsidized education, new tax policies, or paying a living wage?

Teachers must have a strong content background in the westward movement, labor, Reconstruction, civil rights, Ukraine, Palestine, etc. to be aware of what is missing in the sources and resources they are using with students. The example below provides different points of view on the 1932-33 engineered famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine.

“The most significant of these omissions pertains to Holodomor a genocide of the Ukrainian people, in which millions of Ukrainian peasants starved to death after Stalin demanded draconian requisitions of grain from them, knowing full well that this would have devastating consequences. In Ukrainian and Russian, the term “Holodomor” consists of two parts: “famine” and “to kill” or “make someone suffer” – the closest translation is essentially “someone making others starve intentionally.”  Importantly, although the word “Holodomor” and the tragedy it represents are well known throughout both countries, Russian textbooks describe the event using the generic term for “famine,” implying that Holodomor was merely a bureaucratic accident, and one that affected all of the USSR equally.  In Ukrainian textbooks, it is represented as a famine that Stalin inflicted specifically upon the Ukrainians, which is considerably closer to the truth.” (pages 67-68)

Fascism is not taught is most high schools and college courses may not have provided this instruction for teachers. Fascism, socialism, Marxism, communism, and Naziism are critical movements in world history and they are complicated to teach because the are not monolithic. Professor Stanley provides five major themes that are part of a fascist education: (page 78)

  1. National greatness
  2. National purity
  3. National innocence
  4. Strict gender roles
  5. Vilification of the left

The strategy that wins the support of people is often fear and patriotism.  In the United States, the theme of national greatness is most visible with “Make America Great Again” and defining the United States as the greatest nation or what is defined as American exceptionalism.  However, associating crime, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, etc. with a specific demographic group is part of the fascist goal of national purity. In Germany, it was the Aryan population.  In the United States it is critical race theory, structural racism, and making white Americans feel guilty. We see the theme of strict gender roles in the directives to teach traditional roles of women and banning references to the contributions of the LGBTQ persons. The placing of blame for everything on a past president or a specific political party is another effective strategy. Teachers should be aware of these five signs and why populations embrace it.

President Trump delivered a speech in September 2020 when he introduced the White House Conference on American History. Particularly, in the 250th anniversary year of the signing of the declaration of Independence, teachers need to be aware of how President Trump understands the teaching of patriotic history.

“Our mission is to defend the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character.  We must clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms, and teach our children the magnificent truth about our country.  We want our sons and daughters to know that they are citizen of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” (page 81)

Erasing History dedicates three chapters to the importance of education in both preventing and promoting authoritarian rulers or advocating against democracy and for authoritarianism. Teachers of social studies, history, and literature have a responsibility to recognize bias and ignorance and to select the sources and perspectives that lead to an understanding of the American values of equality, liberty, and the rule of law.

“The dismantling of public education is backed by oligarchs and business elites alike, who see in democracy a threat to their power, and in the taxes required for public goods a threat to their wealth.  Public schools are the foundational democratic public good.  It is therefore perfectly logical that those who are opposed to democracy, including fascist and fascist-leaning movements, would join forces with right-wing libertarians in undermining the institution of public education entirely.” (pages 121,122)

The movement for school vouchers, criticisms of curriculum, the attack on the 1619 Project, and the emphasis on America’s greatness contribute to distrust about public schools and confuses parents.

“The goal of anti-education is not only to render a population ignorant of the nation’s history and problems but also to fracture those citizens into a multitude of different groups with no possibility of mutual understanding, and hence no possibility of mass unified action. As a consequence, anti-education renders a population apathetic – leaving the task of running the country to others, be they autocrats, plutocrats, or theocrats.” (page 133)

I found Professor Stanley’s analysis of classical education to be exceptional. The extreme right and the extreme left (and those in between) support the teaching of Greek and Roman civilizations. What I found interesting is how each side selects the leaders and documents that support their perspective of government. For example, Pericles Funeral Oration describes Athenian democracy:


“Its administration favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy.  If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life fall to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition….We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing…while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger.” (page 143)

While the above speech favors democracy, others look to Plato as evidence of a strong ruler with a clear authoritarian philosophy.  The Greeks and Romans supported gender and racial superiority, owned slaves, favored landowners and intellectuals, and had colonies. These examples support a fascist ideology. Teachers have the responsibility to teach historical context, provide the reasons for social changes, help students to analyze how freedom is related to continuity and change over time, and an understanding of equality, reason, liberty, and power. Concepts we thought had clear definitions have become complicated.

There are more compelling insights in this book than I can comment on in a book review. Teachers of all subjects should read this book, but in particular history, social studies, and teachers of literature. Pre-service teachers also need to read and discuss this book.  Let me conclude with these observations:

  1. Critical thinking is essential.
  2. Understanding a point of view and historical perspective are essential.
  3. The current movement away from democracy has been part of our American history for a long time. We see it in the separate but equal policy on race, segregation laws, imperialism, xenophobia, criticisms of the New Deal, Brown v. Board of Education decision, McCarthyism, civil rights protests, Nixon’s imperial presidency, supply-side economics, and in the reaction to the decline of the United States as a world power.
  4. Democracy ended in Athens, and in the Roman Republic. We need to understand how and why this happened.

As a teacher of history and/or social studies, you are on the front line and can expect to be criticized! Our responsibility as teachers is to include the experiences and contributions of all people – especially women, children, immigrants, people of different faiths, Black and Native Americans, laborers, individuals with disabilities, individuals who are LGBTQ, etc. Teaching history includes compassion, empathy, struggles, contributions, and the untold stories that you will discover. Erasing History is about forgotten and neglected history.

Three Social Studies Lessons Using Baseball as an Introduction to History

Three Social Studies Lessons Using Baseball as an Introduction to History

Developed by John Staudt

How Baseball and Jackie Robinson Shaped New York’s Identity

Jackie Robinson played with the Dodgers’ minor league Montreal team.

Introduction: The Brooklyn Dodgers were not just a baseball team; they were a cultural institution that embodied Brooklyn’s identity from 1883 until their departure in 1957. Prior to 1898, Brooklyn was the fourth largest city in America. After incorporation into the greater city of New York, the Dodgers contributed to Brooklynites maintaining their separate sense of identity. In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. This historic moment changed not only baseball but also had profound social implications that shaped Brooklyn’s identity. After decades of falling short, particularly against the Yankees, the Dodgers finally won the World Series in 1955. This victory was a defining moment for Brooklyn’s collective identity. In 1957, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley moved the team to Los Angeles after failing to secure a deal to build a new stadium in Brooklyn. This departure left a profound impact on Brooklyn’s identity and development. The departure of the Dodgers coincided with other significant changes in Brooklyn and New York City. The borough’s identity had to evolve in the absence of its beloved team.

Questions

  1. In your opinion, what does the phrase “Wait ’til next year” reveal about Brooklyn’s character and the relationship between the team and its fans?
  2. Why was defeating the Yankees particularly significant for Brooklynites’ sense of identity?
  3. How did Brooklyn residents react to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn?
  4. Do professional sports teams have any obligations to their loyal fanbase?
  5. The proposed site for a new Dodgers stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues eventually became the Barclays Center in 2012. What does the building of this arena reveal about Brooklyn’s evolution in your lifetime?

Jack Roosevelt Robinson: Baseball Pioneer and Civil Rights Activist Timeline

Pre-Integration Era (1865-1946)

  • 1865-1877: Reconstruction era provides brief period of expanded rights for Black Americans.  Republican support among Black voters, however, declines when President Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South
  • 1876: National League founded (all-white)
  • 1884: Moses Fleetwood Walker becomes last Black player in major leagues prior to International League institutes unwritten “gentlemen’s agreement” (1887) barring Black players
  • 1920s: Negro National League established as segregated professional baseball thrives
  • 1939: Jackie Robinson enrolls at UCLA, becomes first athlete to letter in four sports
  • 1944: Robinson court-martialed for refusing to move to back of segregated bus while in Army
  • 1945: Branch Rickey signs Robinson to Montreal Royals (Dodgers’ farm team). Robinson agrees to avoid responding to provocations from racist white fans and players
  • 1946: Robinson leads International League with .349 average and 40 stolen bases

Breaking the Color Barrier (1947-1956)

  • April 15, 1947: Robinson debuts with Brooklyn Dodgers
  • 1948: President Truman issues Executive Order 9981 desegregating armed forces
  • 1949: Robinson wins NL MVP, batting .342 with 37 stolen bases
  • 1954: Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision outlawed school segregation
  • 1955: Rosa Parks, MLK and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
  • 1955: Robinson helps Dodgers win World Series
  • 1956: Robinson retires from baseball rather than accept trade to Giants

Post-Baseball Activism (1957-1972)

  • 1957: Robinson is hired as VP at Chock Full O’Nuts
  • 1957: Robinson heads NAACP Fund Drive
  • 1957: Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School in Arkansas
  • 1959: Robinson begins writing syndicated newspaper columns
  • 1960: Robinson campaigns for Richard Nixon in presidential election
  • 1963: Robinson participates in March on Washington with MLK
  • 1964: Robinson co-founds Freedom National Bank in Harlem
  • 1964: Civil Rights Act passed
  • 1965: Voting Rights Act passed
  • 1968: Robinson supports Hubert Humphrey after disillusionment with Republican Party
  • 1970: Robinson creates Jackie Robinson Construction Corporation
  • October 15, 1972: Final appearance at World Series, calls for Black MLB managers
  • October 24, 1972: Robinson dies at age 53 from heart attack and diabetes complications

Legacy (1973-Present)

  • 1973: Rachel Robinson establishes Jackie Robinson Foundation
  • 1997: MLB universally retires Robinson’s number 42
  • 2004: MLB establishes Jackie Robinson Day (April 15)

Timeline Critical Thinking Questions:

  1. What economic, cultural, or social factors might have made baseball more willing to accept racial integration before other American Institutions?
  2. Why did MLB’s integration have such a profound impact on American society?

Robinson in Historical Context

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson played first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, becoming the first Black player in Major League Baseball since 1884. The Dodgers defeated the Boston Braves 5-3. This historic moment ended the “gentlemen’s agreement” among team owners that had kept baseball segregated. Robinson’s journey began when Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager, signed him to the Montreal Royals (the Dodgers’ minor league affiliate) in 1945. Rickey specifically chose Robinson not only for his athletic ability and competitive fire but for his character and temperament, asking him to “turn the other cheek” in the face of racial hostility. After excelling in Montreal during the 1946 season, Robinson joined the Dodgers for the 1947 season. Robinson’s debut received dramatically different coverage in white and Black newspapers. Most mainstream white papers barely mentioned the historic significance, focusing instead on other aspects of the game. In contrast, Black newspapers across the country made Robinson’s debut front-page news, with extensive coverage and photography.

Throughout his first season, Robinson endured racist taunts, pitches thrown at his head, and opponents attempting to spike him on the basepaths. Despite this, he batted .297, led the league in stolen bases, and won the first Rookie of the Year award. His decade-long career included six National League pennants, a World Series championship in 1955, and the National League MVP award in 1949. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Robinson was politically engaged throughout his post-baseball life. He served as chairman of the NAACP Freedom Fund Drive, traveling the country to recruit members and raise funds. From 1959, he wrote syndicated newspaper columns addressing race relations, politics, and other social issues for the New York Post and later the New York Amsterdam News. Robinson developed close relationships with civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., whom he accompanied on numerous speaking tours. Robinson supported King’s work and helped raise funds for the Civil Rights Movement. Specifically, he and his wife Rachel hosted jazz concerts at their Connecticut home to raise bail money for protesters arrested during civil rights Robinson’s impact on civil rights was summarized by Martin Luther King Jr., who told Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe: “You will never know how easy it was for me because of Jackie Robinson.” Robinson’s approach to civil rights combined direct advocacy with practical action. Robinson believed that speaking out against injustice was a responsibility that came with his privileged celebrity position, frequently stating he would not remain silent when witnessing wrongdoing. He challenged professional sports leagues, politicians, and fellow athletes to do better on racial issues throughout his life.

After retiring from baseball in 1956, Robinson became vice president of personnel at Chock Full O’Nuts, becoming the first African American to hold such a position at a major American corporation. He used this platform to advocate for civil rights, writing letters to politicians on company letterhead and challenging discriminatory practices. Robinson believed strongly in economic independence for Black Americans. He co-founded the Freedom National Bank in Harlem in 1964 to provide financial services to the Black community, and in 1970 he created the Jackie Robinson Construction Corporation to build affordable housing. He consistently advocated for Black capitalism and criticized businesses that failed to employ African Americans.

In presidential politics, Robinson initially supported Hubert Humphrey in the 1960 Democratic primaries before backing Republican Richard Nixon in the general election, believing Nixon had a stronger civil rights record than John Kennedy. Later, he campaigned for progressive Republican candidate Nelson Rockefeller and opposed Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Republican nomination, which he felt represented a rightward shift that would attract more white voters by alienating Black voters. By 1968, disillusioned with Nixon, he supported Humphrey again.

At his final public appearance at the 1972 World Series, just nine days before his death, Robinson used the opportunity to call for more Black managers and coaches in baseball. After his death from a heart attack on October 24, 1972, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson delivered his eulogy, calling him “the Black Knight in a chess game… checking the King’s bigotry and the Queen’s indifference.” In 1973, Rachel Robinson established the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides scholarships and support services to minority students. By 2021, the foundation had graduated over 1,500 students, maintained a nearly 100% graduation rate, and provided more than $70 million in assistance. The Jackie Robinson Museum in New York City was created to further preserve his legacy. Robinson’s own quote, engraved on his tombstone, captures his philosophy: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” Through both his baseball career and his activism, Jackie Robinson’s life embodied this principle, changing American sports and society forever.

Robinson and Black Voters

As “the Party of Lincoln,” Republicans had delivered emancipation, the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th), and various civil rights acts from 1866 to 1875. However, this alignment between Republicans & Black Americans began to fracture after Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes ended Reconstruction by withdrawing federal troops from the South in 1877. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal attracted Black voters to the Democratic Party.

In 1960, Robinson supported Richard Nixon over John Kennedy. This choice reflected Robinson’s approval of the Eisenhower administration’s deployment of federal troops to protect Black students in Little Rock and passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. At that time, Nixon’s civil rights record appeared stronger than Kennedy’s or Johnson’s.

As an executive at Chock Full O’Nuts, Robinson championed Black economic self-sufficiency, believing that Black-owned businesses and financial institutions were crucial for community advancement. This economic philosophy aligned with traditional Republican values. Robinson’s party loyalty evolved as the political landscape shifted. He supported Democrat Lyndon Johnson over Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 after Goldwater opposed that year’s Civil Rights Act. By 1968, Robinson had broken with Nixon and voted for Democrat Hubert Humphrey. By 1972, the year of Robinson’s death, Democrat George McGovern won 87% of the Black vote —a percentage that has remained consistent in subsequent elections, demonstrating the complete reversal of Black voters’ historical party alignment.

Robinson’s Vision of Black Capitalism

After retiring from baseball in 1956, he moved into the business world and increasingly focused on economic advancement for Black Americans as a pathway to greater equality. Robinson became the first Black vice president of a major American corporation when he joined Chock Full O’Nuts in 1957. He used this platform to advocate for racial equality and demonstrate that Black Americans could excel in corporate leadership. In 1964, Robinson co-founded Freedom National Bank in Harlem. He believed Black-owned banks were essential to provide capital to communities that had been traditionally excluded from mainstream financial services. As Rachel Robinson noted, the bank was “probably one of his major post-baseball achievements” because it allowed people to “get mortgages” and “small businesses could begin to get loans.” In 1970, Robinson established the Jackie Robinson Construction Company to build affordable housing for low-income families. He saw housing as a critical component of economic stability and community development. Robinson combined his economic initiatives with direct political activism. He corresponded regularly with political leaders, participated in civil rights marches with Martin Luther King Jr., and used his business platforms to advocate for broader social change. Robinson believed in simultaneously pursuing political equality and economic advancement. He saw economic power as a necessary companion to political rights.

In his approach Robinson built on several core beliefs and principles established 60 years earlier by Black economic equality activists such as Booker T. Washington. Both men emphasized the importance of Black economic independence and viewed entrepreneurship as essential for advancement. Both created or supported Black-owned institutions that could serve community needs without relying on white approval or support. Both valued practical education that could translate directly into economic opportunities. Both saw Black-owned businesses as vehicles for community development and racial advancement. Both believed that demonstrating Black capability and success would help undermine racist stereotypes and arguments.

Despite these similarities, there were crucial differences in their approaches. Robinson saw economic initiatives as complementary to—not a replacement for—the fight for immediate civil and political rights. Robinson actively challenged segregation and participated in direct civil rights activism alongside his economic initiatives. Robinson directly challenged racial inequities, even when it alienated white supporters. As Robinson stated, he was “very much concerned over the lack of understanding in White America of the desires and ambitions of most Black Americans.” Robinson pursued integration across both social and economic spheres. As Robinson experienced the limitations of Black political advancement, he intensified his focus on economic institutions. Robinson’s economic vision expanded from individual advancement to community-wide initiatives that could create systemic change.

Robinson’s approach to Black capitalism influenced later civil rights leaders who recognized the importance of economic power alongside political rights. His founding of Freedom National Bank was a pioneering step in the community development banking movement. The bank served as the financial backbone of Harlem into the 1990s. In many of his actions and words, Robinson further developed the idea that economic empowerment without political rights is insufficient, but that political rights without economic power remains incomplete.

Historical Context Questions

  1. How was Major League Baseball’s “Gentlemen’s Agreement” supported by social, legal and economic factors?
  2. Explain how Robinson’s post-baseball activities reflected his commitment to economic justice for Black Americans.
  3. Robinson said, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” Identify three specific ways Robinson impacted American society beyond sports.
  4. Compare and contrast Jackie Robinson’s approach, tactics, philosophies, to other prominent civil rights figures (Paul Robeson, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, etc.).
  5. What do Robinson’s shifting endorsements of Republican and Democratic candidates reveal about the politics of civil rights?
  6. How have recent events in sports and society continued Robinson’s legacy of athlete activism?
  7. Examine how Robinson’s story has been memorialized, commemorated, and sometimes sanitized with the removal of controversy in American public memory.

Critical Analysis Questions

As students of history, examining primary sources allows us to understand historical figures in their own context rather than solely through the lens of later interpretations. Robinson’s words reveal the complex interplay between his baseball career, civil rights activism, and political engagement.

Robinson’s Letter to President Eisenhower (May 13, 1958): Robinson wrote this letter on Chock Full O’Nuts letterhead to express his disappointment with President Eisenhower’s advice that Black Americans should be patient in their quest for civil rights. By this time, Robinson had been retired from baseball for two years and was using his position as a corporate executive to advocate for civil rights.

“I was sitting in the audience at the Summit Meeting of Negro Leaders yesterday when you said we must have patience… On behalf of myself, and I know thousands and thousands of my fellow Americans, I respectfully remind you sir that we have been the most patient of all people.”

Questions

  1. How does Robinson’s tone and words differ from his public persona during his playing days?
  2. What does Robinson’s use of corporate letterhead suggest about his business position and his activism?
  3. How might Robinson’s letter have influenced Dr. King’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” What risks did Robinson and King face in writing their letters?

“I Never Had It Made” Autobiography (1972): Published in the year of his death, Robinson’s autobiography presented a more critical and candid perspective on American racism than he had publicly expressed during much of his baseball career. This statement reflects his evolving views on patriotism and racial progress.

“I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a Black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.”

Questions

  1. How does this statement challenge simplified narratives about Robinson as a symbol of American progress? Why might Robinson have felt more comfortable expressing these views in 1972 than earlier in his baseball career?
  2. Compare Robinson’s perspective with athlete activism today. What parallels and differences can you make?

Robinson on Economic Justice (New York Amsterdam News, 1962): Robinson wrote regular columns for the New York Amsterdam News, a prominent Black newspaper. In these columns, he advocated for economic opportunities for Black Americans and challenged discriminatory practices in business and sports.

“It is the duty and responsibility of each and every one of us to refuse to accept the faintest sign or token of prejudice. It does not matter whether it is directed against us or against others. Racial prejudice is not only a vicious disease, it is contagious.”

Questions

  1. How did Robinson’s economic perspectives and activities promote civil rights?
  2. How did Robinson’s status as a former athlete and business executive shape his particular form of civil rights activism?

Robinson’s Final Public Statement (October 15, 1972): This statement came nine days before Robinson’s death during a ceremony honoring the 25th anniversary of his breaking baseball’s color barrier. Despite the celebratory occasion, Robinson used the platform to highlight ongoing inequalities in Major League Baseball.

“I’d like to see a Black manager. I’d like to see the day when there’s a Black man coaching at third base.”

Questions

  1. What does this statement reveal about Robinson’s assessment of baseball’s progress on racial equality since 1947? Why would Robinson choose this particular moment to highlight the status of Black Athletes? How does it add to the statements historical significance?
  2. How long did it take for Robinson’s wish to be fulfilled? What does this reveal about institutional resistance to social change? What does this reveal about Robinson’s impact on Baseball and American society?

Culminating assignment: Write a paragraph essay addressing one of the following prompts:

  1. How did the Brooklyn Dodgers both reflect and shape Brooklyn’s identity and how did their departure impact the region? Use specific examples for both.
  2. What lessons can be learned from the Dodgers story about the relationship between sports teams or cultural institutions and a community’s identity? Provide one modern example.

Resources and Bibliography

  • The Jackie Robinson Foundation Archives
  • Papers of the NAACP (Library of Congress)
  • Robinson, Jackie. I Never Had It Made (autobiography)*
  • Robinson, Rachel. Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait*
  • Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment
  • Long, Michael G. First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson
  • Rampersad, Arnold. Jackie Robinson: A Biography
  • Long, Michael. 42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
  • Long, Michael G. First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson
  • Burns, Ken. Jackie Robinson (documentary)

Chavez Ravine: From Barrio to Dodger Stadium

This worksheet is based on an article originally published by PBS American Experience, written by Eduardo Obregón Pagán.

In the shadows of Los Angeles’ urban development lies the story of Chavez Ravine, a once-thriving Mexican-American community sacrificed for the creation of Dodger’s Stadium. This rural enclave near downtown Los Angeles maintained a tight-knit, self-sufficient character despite lacking basic city services. Residents grew their own food, raised livestock, and fostered strong community bonds through local institutions like their Catholic church, elementary school, and neighborhood businesses.

The community’s fate changed dramatically in the post-World War II era. Initially, Chavez Ravine was designated for a federally-funded public housing development. Residents were forced to sell their homes at below-market prices with promises they would receive priority housing in the new development. Many families complied, believing the government’s promises.

However, the story took a decisive turn when Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley sought a new location for his team. Los Angeles investors, eager to attract a major sports franchise, offered Chavez Ravine as the perfect stadium site. In the politically charged McCarthy era, city leadership abandoned the housing project, labeling it as too “communist,” and voters approved the stadium plan in a referendum.

Community resistance formed as remaining residents organized, created petitions, and testified at city meetings about their rights to their homes and land. Their efforts ultimately failed when, on May 9, 1959 – known as “Black Friday” – sheriff’s deputies forcibly removed the last families from their homes. Bulldozers quickly moved in, destroying all traces of the once-vibrant neighborhoods. The promised replacement housing never materialized for those who had initially complied with orders to sell their properties.

Dodger Stadium rose from these ruins, becoming a celebrated landmark for baseball fans while simultaneously standing as what many consider “a monument to the power of wealth over the impoverished.” The stadium represents the racialized nature of urban renewal policies and the unjust displacement of marginalized communities in favor of commercial interests.

This history demonstrates several significant patterns that continue to resonate in American urban development: racial and economic injustice in planning decisions, broken promises to vulnerable communities, tensions between public housing needs and commercial development, and the erasure of marginalized histories from popular narratives. From a legal perspective, O’Malley & The Dodgers operated within existing law – the land acquisition occurred through government processes, was approved by voters, and evictions were executed by law enforcement. However, ethical questions linger about a process that exploited residents with limited political power and the acceptance of land obtained through broken promises. The story of Chavez Ravine remains relevant today as cities continue to wrestle with questions of development, displacement, gentrification, and whose interests take priority in urban planning decisions.

The story of Chavez Ravine’s transformation from a Mexican-American community to the site of Dodger Stadium represents one of baseball’s most complex historical chapters, yet it remains unfamiliar to many fans and virtually erased from the popular baseball narrative. Baseball’s dominant stories traditionally focus on on-field achievements.. The mythology of Dodger Stadium emphasizes its picturesque setting, perfect sightlines, and the excitement of the Dodgers’ arrival in Los Angeles rather than examining the displacement that preceded it. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the media celebrated the economic benefits and civic pride the team would bring rather than investigating the local community costs.

Additionally, baseball’s gatekeepers (team and league officials, journalists, TV & marketing execs, and fans) have traditionally reflected baseball’s power structures. The voices and perspectives of displaced Mexican-American residents had little representation in the game’s official story.

More recently, as sports history has become more inclusive and critical, the Chavez Ravine story has gained increased attention through academic studies, documentaries, and community remembrance projects. However, these efforts remain peripheral to mainstream baseball coverage, which continues to celebrate ballparks without fully acknowledging any complicated origins.

For baseball to fully reckon with this history would require confronting uncomfortable questions about who benefits from and who pays the price for the growth of the sports industry across the world – a conversation that challenges the game’s preferred self-image as an innocent pastime above politics and social conflict.

Critical Thinking Questions:

  1. How has baseball’s storytelling traditions (which emphasizes baseball’s positive impact on communities) contributed to the erasure of the Chavez Ravine displacement story?
  2. How might the Chavez Ravine controversy further complicate Walter O’Malley’s legacy in New York’s baseball history?
  3. What does the Dodgers departure from Brooklyn and their relocation to LA teach us about community dynamics and professional sports teams business decisions?

Civics Era 9 The Great Depression and World War II (1929–1945)

New Jersey Council for the Social Studies

www.njcss.org

Engaging High School Students in Global Civic Education Lessons in U.S. History

The relationship between the individual and the state is present in every country, society, and civilization. Relevant questions about individual liberty, civic engagement, government authority, equality and justice, and protection are important for every demographic group in the population.  In your teaching of World History, consider the examples and questions provided below that should be familiar to students in the history of the United States with application to the experiences of others around the world.

These civic activities are designed to present civics in a global context as civic education happens in every country.  The design is flexible regarding using one of the activities, allowing students to explore multiple activities in groups, and as a lesson for a substitute teacher. The lessons are free, although a donation to the New Jersey Council for the Social Studies is greatly appreciated. www.njcss.org

Era 9 The Great Depression and World War II (1929–1945)

The Great Depression brought about significant changes in the regulatory power of the federal government of the United States. The reforms of the New Deal were to stabilize the capitalistic economics system of the United States and they also imposed a mild form of welfare state capitalism that was prevalent in European countries. As a result, this era provides students with several opportunities to test their analytical skills regarding presidential power, the effectiveness of a democracy in addressing a major crisis, and the effect of the reforms of the New Deal on racial minorities, women, children and other groups.

Activity #1:  The Packing of the U.S. Supreme Court (1937) and the Supreme Court in Ghana

The Constitution does not stipulate the number of Supreme Court Justices; the number is set by Congress. There have been as few as six, but since 1869 there have been nine Justices, including one Chief Justice. All Justices are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and hold their offices under life tenure. Justices may remain in office until they resign, pass away, or are impeached and convicted by Congress.

After winning a landslide election in 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the Judicial Procedures Reform Act which would allow the president to nominate an additional judge to the Court for every sitting judge who had served at least ten years and reached the age of 70. The initial reason that was explained by President Roosevelt was that the aging justices could not keep up with their caseload. Roosevelt changed his reasoning when this argument appeared flawed because the additional judges would likely increase deliberations and delay the time to make a decision. The new argument that the appointed justices did not reflect the will of the people at a time when the United States faced unprecedented economic problems was explained to the people in a Fireside Chat.

President Roosevelt continued to advocate for the Judicial Procedures Reform Act until the Senate voted 70-20 to send the bill back to committee in July, 1937. It was never passed.

The individual states determine the number of judges on their state supreme courts. The number varies between five and nine justices. The Supreme Court of New Jersey has seven judges.

The Supreme Court of Ghana

The Supreme Court is the highest Court in the administration of justice in Ghana.

The Court is presided over by the Chief Justice and in his absence the most senior of the Justices of the Supreme Court, as constituted shall preside. Judges who sit in the Supreme Court are referred to as Justices of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court consists of the Chief Justice and not less than nine Justices. It has exclusive original jurisdiction in all matters relating to the enforcement or interpretation of the 1992 Constitution. It also has supervisory jurisdiction over all the Courts in Ghana. It is located only at the Headquarters in Accra.

Questions:

  1. In the United States, should the final decision on legislation be made by non-elected judges on the U.S. Supreme Court?
  2.  If the United States Congress was to reform the U.S. Supreme Court, what changes would you recommend they consider?
  3. Does the Tenth Amendment best serve the interests of representative democracy by allowing the individual states to make decision on issues not specifically delegated to Congress or is popular sovereignty served through the popular vote of the election of congressional representatives and senators?
  4. Do you prefer the structure of the Supreme Court in Ghana, which establishes a minimum number of judges, to be a better plan for decision making than how the United States structures its Supreme Court?
  5. Can Ghana prevent a president from adding judges with a similar political philosophy?

National Constitution Center

Information on State Supreme Courts

The Structure and Jurisdiction of the Courts of Ghana

To Cap or Not Cap the Justices on the Supreme Court of Ghana

Activity #2: Child Labor Laws in the United States and Côte d’Ivoire

The right of parents to take advantage of the productive capacity of their children was long recognized both in the United States and abroad. The perceived value of the child can be viewed through how the legal system treated the wrongful death of a child and the damages the parents could hope to recover. Courts of that period usually found that the proper amount due was “the probable value of the services of the deceased from the time of his death to the time he would have attained his majority, less the expense of his maintenance during the same time.” The courts recognized that the parent naturally benefited from the productive labors of his child until the child reached the age of majority.

The wages the child earned served the common purpose of supporting the family. The wages of a child generally became the property of the parents and often were the key to survival for many working-class families. Rather than the wife being the secondary wage earner, as became the case in the 1970s, for many families the child performed this role in American history.

Today, states have moved to extending working hours for children, eliminate work permit requirements and lower the age for teens to handle alcohol or work in hazardous industries. At the same time, there has been a 69% increase in children employed illegally by companies since 2018, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.” Source 

New Jersey: 34:2-21.2. Minors under 16 not to be employed; exceptions; nonresidents.

“No minor under 16 years of age shall be employed, permitted, or suffered to work in, about, or in connection with any gainful occupation at any time; provided, that minors between 14 and 16 years of age may be employed, permitted or suffered to work outside school hours and during school vacations but not in or for a factory or in any occupation otherwise prohibited by law or by order or regulation made in pursuance of law; and provided, further, that minors under 16 years of age may engage in professional employment in theatrical productions upon the obtaining of a permit therefor and may engage outside school hours and during school vacations in agricultural pursuits or in street trades and as newspaper boys as defined in this act, in accordance with the provisions of section 15 of this act.”

Except as to the employment of a minor for whom a theatrical employment permit has been issued, no minor under 16 years of age not a resident of this State shall be employed, permitted or suffered to work in any occupation or service whatsoever at any time during which the law of the state of his residence required his attendance at school, or at any time during the hours when the public schools in the district in which employment in such occupation or services may be available are in session.

NLS data show that 52 percent of 12- and 13-year-olds in its 1997 cohort had paid work experience. The work performed at these ages was found to be freelance in nature. Babysitting and yardwork accounted for more than 70 percent of the work they performed.  For 14- and 15-year-olds, the dominant form of work remains freelancing. When children do work, it is most commonly when school is out of session. Children have largely shifted to the service industries.

Child Labor in Côte d’Ivoire

Due to security issues in both Mali and Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire has an estimated 13,214 refugees (2,489 households), of which an estimated 59 percent are children. Children are also brought to Côte d’Ivoire from those countries for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor, including in begging, cocoa production, and mining. Children from Côte d’Ivoire are also subjected to human trafficking for forced labor in domestic work within the country and North Africa. Although the minimum age for a child to work is 16, this law lacks enforcement.

School is mandatory for children ages 6 to 16 in Côte d’Ivoire. Although the Law on Education provides for free education, students are often required to pay for textbooks and uniforms, which may be prohibitive to some families. A shortage of teachers, poor school infrastructure, lack of transportation systems in rural areas, and inadequate sanitation facilities have negatively impacted children’s ability to attend school.  Research also suggests that some students are physically and sexually abused at school, which may deter some students from attending school. Because of this, roughly one in four girls (25%) in Côte d’Ivoire are not able to attend primary school.

The UN Special Rapporteur, Tomoya Obokata, reported in November 2023 on the progress the government is making:

“I commend Côte d’Ivoire for its solid legal and institutional architecture on child labor and trafficking in persons. But the Government needs to do more to lift people, including in rural areas, out of poverty, promote the economic empowerment of women and ensure access to decent work, particularly for young people,” the expert said.

“Despite the efforts undertaken, I was informed that instances of child labor persist in various sectors of the economy including agriculture, domestic work, street vending and in artisanal gold mining. I am also concerned about the fate of girls who have either been trafficked from countries in the region for the purpose of sexual exploitation or who are subject to forced and early marriage in the country,” Obokata said.”

Questions:

  1. Should the state or federal government regulate child labor laws?
  2. Should the government have any authority over parental decisions regarding child labor?
  3. Should children be protected from working in unhealthy or dangerous occupations? (serving alcohol, casinos, nail salons, landscaping, etc.)

History of Child Labor in the United States (Part 1, Bureau of Labor Statistics)

History of Child Labor in the United States, (Part 2, Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Child Labor in America, 1920 (NPR)

The Unjust Cost of Child Labor (Roosevelt Institute)

Hammer v. Dagenhart (U.S. Supreme Court, 1918)

Child Labor and Forced Labor Reports in Côte d’Ivoire  (U.S. Department of Labor)

Child Labor Rises to 160 Million-First Increase in Two Decades (UNICEF)

Activity #3: The Power of Government to Control Private Enterprises in the United States and India

The U.S. government influences private business through compulsory taxes by spending the tax revenues on public functions such as parks, roads and other infrastructure, schools, law enforcement, homeland security, and scientific research, as well as welfare and social insurance programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment assistance. The federal government also issues and enforces standards ranging from environmental quality, to consumer protection, business and banking practices, nondiscrimination in employment, Internet privacy, and safety for food, drugs, manufactured products, and the places where people work.

Chinese tech giant ByteDance, in 2017, purchased the popular karaoke app Musical.ly and relaunched the service as TikTok. Since then, the app has been under the microscope of national security officials in Washington fearing possible influence by the Chinese government.

Government Regulation of Private Enterprise in India

India began its regulatory reforms in the early 1990s, reducing state involvement through the privatization of companies, by putting in place independent regulatory mechanisms to boost competition and private-sector-led growth, and to strengthen consumer protection. But the reform efforts lacked coherence and have stalled. Even though the economy grew rapidly over the past decade, the slowing-down of reforms created an image of a country where doing business is difficult.

India lacks a modern regulatory governance regime. Based on the Constitution, all levels of government can regulate, including the Central Government and 29 state governments. Regulatory barriers to competition are high and rule-making in India is complex due to the different layers of government.

India needs to further strengthen the governance of state-owned enterprises, simplify regulations, and reduce administrative burdens on firms. India should develop and implement a regulatory governance system following international good practices such as regulatory impact assessment, public consultation, and administrative simplification. The creation of national Regulatory Commissions since 2005 was a positive move, but there is lack of accountability and consistency of the overall regulatory system.

Establishing a whole-of-government approach to regulation, using international best practice tools and systems such as regulatory impact assessments and public consultation, and building effective institutions for regulatory quality management, are key. In this sense, India needs to catch up with other emerging economies such as China, Mexico and Vietnam, which have already taken important steps in that direction, in line with the OECD’s 2012 Recommendation on Regulatory Policy and Governance.

In 2019, India passed a new Consumer Protection Act which streamlined all methods of exchanges relating to the purchase of merchandise and e-commerce. It also expanded the protections for deceptive trade practices and introduced product liability laws for the first time.

Questions:

  1. Should governments encourage or restrict startup businesses?
  2. Is it possible for governments to regulate the safety of products manufactured and sold withing their country?
  3. Are government requirements for minimum wage, social security, safety, equal opportunity in hiring, necessary or should they be optional?

Examples of Government Regulation of Business in the United States

The Role of the U.S. Government in the Economy

Consumer Protection Act of 2019 in India

Consumer Handbook in India

OCED Regulatory Reform in India

Activity #4: The Roosevelt Corollary in the Caribbean and China’s Hegemony in the South Pacific

The Roosevelt Corollary signaled an important shift in the economic and diplomatic policy of the United States in Latin America at the beginning of the 20th century. In its efforts to ensure that Latin and Central American governments repaid their debts, the United States also used its military power to protect its hegemony or interests. By doing this the Roosevelt Corollary also negatively affected our diplomatic relations with Europe and set a precedent for the foundation for the Fourteen Points after World War I.

There are different perspectives about the impact of the Roosevelt Corollary in policy regarding its history of imperialism, limitations on self-government, and the impact it had on the social order and culture in Latin and Central America.  The U.S. Constitution is silent on a president acting as the international policeman to correct wrong behaviors in another country. President Roosevelt changed the original interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine from keeping foreign powers out of the western Hemisphere to justifying America’s intervention in independent countries in Latin America.

This set a precedent for future presidents who sent American troops into Latin American countries eight times.

China’s Hegemony in the South Pacific

In the beginning of the 21st century, China expanded its naval power and influence in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Since 2016, China has constructed naval ports in an around the Spratly Islands. China’s actions impinge in the maritime entitlements and legal claims of Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam for fishing and oil exploration. The South China Sea may have billions of barrels of untapped oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.

China should consider the economic cost of its investments in these small islands as the impact of rising sea levels is likely to limit their economy and increase their debt. Will the economic costs weaken instead of strengthening China in the future?  The security of Australia, Taiwan, and Japan is a concern as military support from the United States may be limited by China’s presence in this area. The distance from the United States to Japan, Taiwan, and Australia is much further than it is for its rivals of North Korea, Russia, and China.

The novel legal argument is that under the Belt and Road Initiative, China is providing economic assistance to these small island in exchange for a ‘good neighbor’ policy with Beijing.

Questions:

  1. Does the Roosevelt Corollary set a precedent for giving the president of the United States too much authority in foreign affairs?
  2. How should situations of violations of international laws regarding financial matters and human rights be addressed in the 21st century?
  3. Is China’s policy of expanding its military and economic influence into the South China Sea a violation of the UN’s Law of the Sea?

President Theodore Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address: The Roosevelt Corollary (1904)

How Theodore Roosevelt Changed the Way America Operated in the World

Council of Foreign Relations Perspective on the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine