Lessons for Today from a Landmark New Jersey Desegregation Case
By Lamont Repollet
Education has the potential to be the great equalizer that truly changes the trajectory of people’s lives. The struggle to realize that potential has a long history here in New Jersey. Looking back, we know Black activists were demanding civil rights reform in education here in the Garden State more than a decade before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision desegregated public schools across the nation in 1954. Concerted efforts by the NAACP, other advocates and mothers weary from discrimination in education led to legal battles that paved the way for changes and pivotal federal legislation. One of the precedent-setting cases that helped the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was New Jersey’s Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education(1944).
In 1943, two mothers from Trenton, Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams, attempted to enroll their children in a neighborhood middle school. The school, the women were told, wasn’t “built for Negroes.” As a result, they enrolled their children in a Blacks-only school more than two miles away while simultaneously filing lawsuits against the Board of Education of Trenton. Represented by Robert Queen of the NAACP, the case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled intentional segregation in public schools to be a violation of New Jersey law. Schools in New Jersey would no longer be segregated.
In the courts, the Hedgepath-Williams decision proved to be a precedent on which proponents of desegregation could build the historic case that ended legal racial segregation in schools across the nation, Brown v. Board of Education. In his legal brief for that case, attorney Thurgood Marshall cited the Hedgepeth–Williams decision. Ultimately, racial segregation was deemed unconstitutional -– even if the segregated schools were otherwise equal in quality.
The broader impact of the historic ruling was profound. It resulted in a massive shift in the national landscape of racial justice and the American judicial system as a whole. The next year, New Jersey’s state legislature passed a fair employment practices act, with a fledgling enforcement division, that prohibited racial discrimination in hiring practices. The number of Black teachers rose exponentially.
Further racial barrier-breaking developments also occurred. New Jersey’s State Constitution of 1947 codified the desegregation of public schools. In 1949, a civil rights bill in the state banned discrimination in public accommodations. New Jersey became a model for New York and Pennsylvania, and ultimately the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Today, nearly eight decades since the Hedgepeth-Williams ruling laid the groundwork for even more dramatic reforms nationwide, race-based inequalities remain pervasive in our schools. How do we follow in the footsteps of our predecessors and fulfill the mandate secured by trailblazers like Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams? We need to compensate teachers equitably across districts to attract and retain quality candidates of all races to the field, but specifically Black educators. We must offer professional development, research opportunities, and holistic support to new and early-stage educators so they can succeed. Without these resources, we are setting young teachers up for failure before they even begin. When our educators feel whole, their students can be at the top of their game, too.
Furthermore, we cannot underestimate the power and importance of Black students seeing people who look like them in the classroom and in leadership positions across academia. Last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Trenton’s population was nearly 50 percent Black, 37 percent Hispanic and 13 percent white, yet the hiring of teachers of color there and elsewhere is slow to catch up to the diversity of its students. Imagine how much greater our students’ academic achievement will be when more Black educators teach Black children Black history, as well as all of the other subjects they are taught in school. Or how high their standards and visions of self-actualization will soar when students of color see themselves more fully represented in the sciences and research, the arts, business, sports, civil rights and in positions of leadership in these fields and others.
It’s also high time we invest more in higher education. We must continue to demand funding and resource allocations for our schools and universities, particularly prioritizing underserved communities. From pre-K through college and into graduate school, we must find and reach the undiscovered brilliant minds, the dreamers, the entrepreneurs, the leaders who are right there in our midst waiting to be put on an educational path that lets them become their full selves. Education is a pathway to upward mobility. It is a way for students to break free from the cycle of poverty and oppression in order to achieve their dreams. When we invest in equal education for all, we are building a stronger future for all of us.
In God’s eyes, we are created equal. However, history and current events remind us that we are not all treated equally. Everyone hears a lot about self-determination and being the architect of their own future. That’s easy to say when you are born into privilege and opportunity. It is a much more difficult proposition for anyone facing racism, systemic negligence and prejudice throughout their lives. We as a community cannot ignore the disadvantages that hold so many of our people back. Instead, we must leverage our positions as educators to create programs and deliver resources that will make a difference in students’ lives. Like the activists of today and decades past, we must work relentlessly to make sure that governments and systems of education do their part. Hedgepeth and Williams v. Board of Education is a call to equity in action as much now as it was in 1944, and we must rededicate ourselves to its moral imperative.
The website freethoughtrail.org says she was born in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in 1817, and worked as a schoolteacher. At age 18, she married John Maubry Davis, and they moved to Boston. He died of consumption in 1841. According to womenhistoryblog.com, “In 1843, Lucy married Luther Coleman (she later changed the spelling of her married name to Colman).” They moved to Rochester, and their daughter, Gertrude, was born about 1845. “Motherhood brought Colman’s attention to the issue of women’s rights,” the blog says. “She began to ask why married women and mothers had so few rights, and why women were dependent on the goodwill of their husbands for what freedoms they had.” She also befriended Rochester abolitionist Amy Post and advocated for emancipation of the slaves. By 1852 she had renounced Christianity because of churches’ complicity with slavery.
Coleman’s husband was killed in 1854 while working at the New York Central Railroad, which she blamed on the company’s unwillingness to spend money on repairs. She was hired afterward as a teacher in a segregated “colored school,” where Colman met Susan B. Anthony. According to the blog, at the state teachers convention, she spoke out against corporal punishment in schools, and she and Anthony decried the unequal salaries of male and female teachers. Disgusted with segregation, Colman “lobbied parents to withdraw their children, causing the school to close and losing her job in the process. By 1856, Rochester was providing education for both white and black children.”
Between 1856 and 1860, she became an abolitionist lecturer in Ohio, Iowa and Michigan and occasionally wrote for the antislavery newspaper The Liberator. She participated in an 1858 protest against capital punishment led by Anthony and Frederick Douglass and in an 1859 petition drive for New York women’s right to vote. In May 1863, Colman was one of the secretaries at the Women’s National Loyal League, which conducted the largest petition drive in U.S. history at that point, with 400,000 signatures, to promote a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. In 1864 and 1865, Colman worked at a Black orphan asylum in Washington, D.C., and taught and served as a superintendent in schools in Washington and Arlington, Virginia, to help former slaves. Colman arranged a meeting between Sojourner Truth and President Abraham Lincoln on Oct. 29, 1864, and accompanied Truth.
About 1870, Colman joined her sister in Syracuse. “During this time, Colman wholeheartedly embraced freethought, a philosophical viewpoint that opinions or beliefs should be based on science, logic and reason, and should not be derived from religion, authority, government or dogma,” the blog says. She spoke often at conventions and wrote columns for a freethought journal as well as writing her memoir.
The Price of Silence – The Forgotten Story of New Jersey’s Enslaved People
“New Jersey is known as the Garden State,” says author Beverly Mills in the two-part documentary The Price of Silence. “We’re known for our blueberries. We’re known for our corn. We’re known for our peaches. But we’re not known for the slaves that were here tilling the soil. We’re not known for the whole history of slavery connected to New Jersey and how slavery was the underpinning of much of the wealth of New Jersey.” Enslavement was prolific from the very founding of New Jersey in the 1600s as a colony and eventual manufacturing hub that supplied the Southern states with leather goods and other products. Its eye on production and profit created a demand for the cost-effective services of the enslaved, a demand that only grew as New Jersey developed into a major maritime port. What’s more, white slave owners at the time could receive the equivalent of land rebates based upon the number of enslaved working their land. “New Jersey was the last Northern state to even attempt to abolish slavery,” says Linda Caldwell Epps, Ph.D. and CEO of 1804 Consultants, in the film. Mills reports New Jersey “was probably the Northern state with the strongest sympathies towards the South. Because it was the Southern-most Northern state, it had a lucrative trade policy with the Southern states.” She remembers “I never learned about this in school. … If anything, we were taught to feel shame. And today…I feel nothing but pride and I feel empowered.”
Part one of the documentary, “The Forgotten Story of New Jersey’s Enslaved People,” begins the series with the stunning fact that by the time New Jersey started the slow process of abolishing slavery in 1804, the state had 12,000 men, women, and children in bondage. The film reveals that New Jersey depended profoundly on enslaved people to drive agricultural and economic growth, was sympathetic to the South, and was the last of the Northeastern states to eliminate this heinous practice. https://www.pbs.org/video/price-of-silence-izsgr1/
Part two, “The Lasting Impact of Slavery in New Jersey,” continues with New Jersey’s history of bondage and expounds on the fact that the African American community is still feeling the effects of slavery today due to disparities with the White community in median income, criminal justice, and healthcare.
Part three, “The Search for Freedom in New Jersey,” examines the Black community’s Great Migration from the Jim Crow South to Newark, New Jersey, during the early years of the 20th century and tells the story through the eyes of descendants of individuals who made the Great Migration North and found life here to be a far cry from what they had hoped for.
By telling these fascinating stories through the eyes of descendants of slavery and individuals who have lived through the heartbreaking events depicted in the films, the audience will most certainly be captivated and inspired to learn more.
The Hidden History of Slavery in New York
The Hidden History of Slavery in New York is an Emmy award-winning 30-minute documentary produced by Larry Epstein and narrated by Richard French, a student at Rye Country Day School. The film features EJI founder Bryan Stevenson. Larry Epstein, an Emmy award-winning journalist and documentary writer/producer, is available to speak at schools and colleges. He can be contacted at larryep13@gmail.com. The Hidden History of Slavery in New York is available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUzlcZXBHAM
Harlem Urban Civil Rights Museum
The museum is set to open in Fall 2026 in an approximately 20,000-square-foot space within the Urban Justice League’s new 400,000-square-foot Manhattan headquarters at 117 West 125th St., across the street from the Studio Museum. The Urban Civil Rights Museum in Harlem presents the history of the Northern civil rights movement. It is a cultural institution that educates, inspires, and activates visitors through powerful storytelling, cultural engagement, and collective action. Rooted in history and in Harlem, it stands as a local anchor and a global destination for learning, reflection, and empowerment.
Morven house in Princeton, NJ was home to Richard Stockon one the New Jersey’s signers of the Declaration of Independence and five early governors of New Jersey. Morven house’s current exhibit as part of the national celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence is Five Independent Souls highlighting the lives of the five men from New Jersey who voted for independence including Richard Stockon. As wealthy lawyers, the first two generations of Stocktons at Morven enslaved men, women, and children on site. At the expense of the enslaved, the Stocktons lived a comfortable lifestyle and increased their wealth with forced labor. Like other signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton held people in bondage while signing a document that declared “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.” The rhetoric of revolutionary America—freedom, equality, and liberty—was inescapably intertwined with the practice of slavery. In 1804, the State of New Jersey passed an act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, making it the last northern state to do so. Records indicate that by the time the third generation of Stocktons took ownership of Morven in 1840, enslaved people no longer lived on the property. At first, they were replaced by free African Americans, and then eventually by immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Morven house’s permanent exhibition is “Historic Morven: A Window into America’s Past.”
NY State Parks Launches ‘Enslavement to Freedom 1627-1827-2027’ Initiative
In 2027, New York State will recognize the 200th anniversary of the end of legalized slavery in the state (1827) and the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans enslaved in the former New Netherland colony (1627). The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation is working with partners across the state to share new research and resources that explore early Black American history in New York as part of its “Enslavement to Freedom: 1627-1827-2027” initiative. Collaborations include exhibition displays with the Office of General Services, educational resources with ConsidertheSourceNY.org, events and programs, and traveling exhibitions available for non-profit and educational organizations throughout the state. During this multi-year interpretive initiative, State Parks and relevant state historic sites are planning will develop exhibits, public programs, and other educational resources. These are expected to explore New York’s history with the institution of slavery and a pivotal period of transition for the Black community in early New York. It provides better context and understanding for later historic movements, like abolition and the Underground Railroad. State Parks is also inviting educational and nonprofit organizations to host one or more of the four available traveling banner exhibitions:
1) Poisonous Seeds: The Dutch and the Institution of Slavery in New York
2) Redefining the Family: One Descendant’s Journey into History
3) Another Face of War: Enslaved and Free Blacks in the Revolution and
4) Many and Varied Hands: The Work and Labor of the Enslaved.
Compact enough to be displayed in various environments, the traveling exhibitions tell stories from the past that center Black experience. “Enslavement to Freedom: 1627-1827-2027” resources and activities are expected to continue to be developed and shared with the public over the next several years. For up-to-date information about this and other Black history initiatives at State Parks, including how to request the “Enslavement to Freedom” traveling banner exhibitions, visit this website.
Manhattan’s Merchant’s House was an UGRR Safehouse
The Merchant House (https://merchantshouse.org/) at 29 East Fourth Street in New York City is a 19th century brick and marble landmark rowhouse that is now a museum. It was built in 1832 by hatter and merchant Joseph Brewster and sold to the Tredwell family three years later. An Underground Railroad safe space was recently discovered underneath the drawers of a second floor built-in dresser. A cut in the floorboards leads to an enclosed space about 2ft by 2ft with a ladder down to the ground floor. Brewster was a leading New York City abolitionist. There is evidence that he signed at least two antislavery petitions and played a prominent role in three antislavery churches. When a church was being constructed on Rivington Street, he had builders include a false floor there as well.
A Protest History of the United States(Beacon Press, 2025) by Gloria J. Browne-Marshall
The book chronicles the history of protest and resistance in America, from Indigenous peoples’ resistance to colonization through modern movements like Black Lives Matter and climate activism. It highlights both known and forgotten figures and movements. Drawing on legal documents, archives, and personal accounts to show how dissent has shaped the nation, it argues that protest is a vital force for change. It is part of Beacon’s ReVisioning History series. Browne-Marshall expands the definition of protest beyond traditional marches and rallies. Acts of resistance include journalism, legal battles, boycotts, everyday defiance, and more. There are sections on abolitionist John Brown, who was executed for initiating the 1859 slave revolt at Harpers Ferry; labor organizer Mother Jones, who fought for the enforcement of the 8-hour workday; and civil rights activist Daisy Bates, who played a leading role in the 1957 Little Rock school integration crisis. Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a writer, educator, legal advocate, and playwright. She is a professor of Constitutional Law and African Studies at John Jay College (CUNY). Her books include She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power, The Voting Rights War, and Race, Law, and American Society.
New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide (New York: The History Press, 2025) by David Felsen (Reprinted from New York Almanack, December 10, 2025)
“New York City got its first monument of a real Black American in 1946 when the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx dedicated a bronze bust to Booker T. Washington,” David Felsen, a history teacher at Avenues: The World School, writes in the introduction to New York City Monuments of Black Americans: A History and Guide (History Press, 2025). He believes n“Behind every first is a story of triumph over adversity and exclusion.” A 2021 study of the nation’s monuments found that 50% of the top 50 most memorialized people enslaved other people and that only 10% of the top 50 most memorialized people are Black/Indigenous. Just six percent of the Top 50 nationwide are women. It wasn’t until 2007 that the city dedicated its first monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. “At this time, when the media and academics were paying so much attention to problematic Confederate monuments and the white men on them, it seemed too little attention was being paid to the representation of Black people in monuments,” writes Felsen. “As a history teacher living in New York City, I began to wonder how many monuments of Black Americans there were in the city. Who was the first Black American honored, and when did it happen? Who were the artists, activists and civic leaders behind these monuments? Why did they get made? And what could they teach us about New York history, Black history, art history and American history?” According to Felsen, the first Black American represented on a monument in New York City is “a nameless, shoeless former slave help[ing] a Union widow to find her husband’s grave in the South” at the base of the 1876 Civil War Soldiers’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. Felsen’s new guide identifies and tells the stories of thirty statues and monuments of Black Americans in the city. It includes maps, and photos and a detailed history of each. This book provides a refreshing take on a subject that has been on the minds of many Americans.
Black Legacy: A History of New York’s African Americans(Seven Stories Press, New Edition, 2026)
by William Loren Katz
Discover the complete Black history of New York — from 1609 to the present — by the award-winning author of Breaking the Chains and Black Indians. For readers 12 and up. Includes a new intro and last chapter with insights on modern-day movements like Black Lives Matter, plus 50+ historical maps, illustrations, and photos. Essential for NY teachers, librarians and teens. From the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam in 1609, to the Harlem Renaissance, to the impact of Black Lives Matter, here is a concise and newly updated history of Black Americans in New York for readers 12 and up. Black Legacy reasserts the essential work of teacher and historian William Loren Katz, who was committed to documenting and uplifting the stories of Black Americans’ courage and creativity, resilience and rebellion, especially for younger readers. A new introduction by award-winning journalist Herb Boyd gives context to Katz’s “full tableau of Black accomplishments and aspirations,” and a new chapter by historian Alan Singer and social studies teacher Imani Hinson brings the book up to the present day, considering the changing economic, cultural and political influences on Black New Yorkers. Black Legacy includes Black politicians and poets, abolitionists and athletes and activists, and the first Black children to attend public schools; Sojourner Truth, Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and others who fought for Black freedom; Shirley Chisholm, Madame C.J. Walker, NY’s first Black mayor David Dinkins and many other businesspeople and politicians who brought dignity through their work toward equality; and the Black history of Seneca Village and Weeksville, the Savoy and Cotton clubs of the Jazz Age, Harlem Hospital where Martin Luther King Jr. nearly died, the African burial site at Trinity Church, and so much more. Written with economy and flair, Black Legacy is a fascinating read, a necessary teaching tool, and a great addition to the literature of the Black history of New York and of America. According to Haley Pessin, co-editor of Voices of a People’s History of the United States in the 21st Century: Documents of Hope and Resistance, “Dispelling the myth of Northern progressivism, Katz offers a far more compelling account of the bravery and perseverance through which Black people resisted their own subjugation and, in so doing, indelibly altered New York history. Katz reminds us that New York history is Black history, and Black history is the history of New York. This is a book that should be read by all New Yorkers.”
The Power of Quiet Courage(North Carolina Office of Archives, 2025) by Amy Nathan and Sarah Keys Evans; Illustrated by Jermaine Powell Sarah Keys Evans wasn’t a person anyone thought would spend a night in a jail cell or change the world. But trouble came Sarah’s way in 1952 at a North Carolina bus station. Dressed in her Women’s Army Corps uniform, she was arrested for not moving to the back of a bus, three years before it happened to another Black woman, Rosa Parks. Sarah Keys Evans: The Power of Quiet Courage tells how Sarah stood up for what’s right and helped end that kind of unfairness. Others have now honored her by creating a monument that calls her a “Trailblazer for Justice.” Deborah Menkart wrote, “Sarah Key Evans’ story, along with many others who protested racism on public transportation in the 19th and 20th centuries, are omitted from most history books. Thankfully, Amy Nathan and Evans have broken that silence in a beautifully written book for upper elementary students. Readers learn that standing up for justice requires years’ worth of determination, patience, and courage. Evans was brave when she righteously refused to move on the bus, but there would have been no legal victory were it not for her continued bravery to pursue the case, to face lies about her actions, and to testify at hearings. As the book also makes clear, Evans’ family and attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree provided crucial support. Evans’s story will inspire readers and offer a roadmap of the pitfalls and possibilities when pursuing justice.”
The Sewards of New York: A Biography of a Leading American Political Family (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press) by Thomas Slaughter
The Sewards of New Yorkshines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century. Through recently discovered family correspondence, Thomas P. Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War. William Henry Seward, the family’s most prominent member, was a state senator, governor, U.S. senator, and Secretary of State. Henry, as his family knew him, was often absent from their Auburn, NY, home, serving in Albany or Washington, DC, and remained connected to the family through the long letters numbering in the thousands that they exchanged. These writings reveal Henry as a son, brother, husband, and father, as much as they show him as a politician and statesman. His wife Frances is the hub around which this family story revolves. Slaughter explores the extended Auburn family during a half century of profound change in American homes, marriage, and childrearing. With an eye for the provocative and revealing, Slaughter takes us behind the curtain of the early Victorian era’s private sphere. The Sewards of New York paints a rich portrait of an extraordinary family that played a key role in nineteenth-century New York and national politics.
Women, Immigrants, and the Working-Class Battle in Little Falls, New York: The Textile Strike of 1912-1913 (New York: Algora Publishing) by J.N. Cheney
J.N. Cheney recounts the political and cultural origins that created the conditions for the strike including factors such as immigration law and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. It carefully considers the plight of the primarily working-class immigrant women from Eastern and Southern Europe (mostly Italy, Poland and Slovakia) and their pursuit of better wages and improved working and living conditions.
The book details the horrific conditions they endured including dangerous, unsanitary factories, rampant tuberculosis, and dilapidated tenement housing, which were courageously exposed by nurse, social reformer, and suffragist M. Helen Schloss. When the workers in two Little Falls mills organized to improve their conditions with the help of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party of America, they were met with a brutal campaign of repression. This new research exposes the police violence, the suppression of free speech by local authorities, and the hostile media coverage that sought to demonize the strikers as dangerous agitators.
Jamie’s Decisions (TrueFiktion) by Joe Visconti
The graphic novel follows Jamie, a skilled laborer and formerly enslaved person in Virginia who found refuge in Syracuse, New York. His world is shattered when the federal government passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the U.S. Marshals capture his formerly enslaved friend, Jerry, under the law. Now, Jamie must decide whether to put his own freedom at risk to help the community save Jerry. This graphic novel focuses on the Jerry Rescue, an event that happened in Syracuse on October 1, 1851. A group of abolitionists forcibly liberated William “Jerry” Henry from U.S. custody after he was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Jamie’s Decisions explores the Jerry Rescue and the Syracuse abolitionist movement to highlight how community members – sometimes with different motives – can come together to seek justice for all.
Sag Harbor in the Revolution (Sag Harbor Museum) edited by Zachary Studenroth
Have you heard of the Battle of Sag Harbor, the heroic raid on the British fort that still lies beneath our feet in the Old Burying Ground? Or of the mass exodus to Connecticut from Sag Harbor in September 1776, when local residents escaped the British occupation? Or do you know how our village rebuilt its economy after the Revolutionary War? These and many other questions will be answered in “Sag Harbor in the Revolution,” a book that the Museum is publishing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Thirteen authors, all distinguished historians or specialists in their fields, have been brought together to contribute new research on the subject of Sag Harbor’s role in the American Revolution.
Until the Last Gun is Silent (New York: Viking, 2026) by Matthew Delmont
The book is sub-titled “A Story of Patriotism, The Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America’s Soul.” While over 300,000 African American young men and women were serving in Vietnam, African Americans stateside played an important role in the anti-war movement, despite facing severe criticism in the media, by government officials, and by prominent leaders of civil rights groups. Anti-war activists included the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Medal of Honor recipient Dwight “Skip” Johnson. Much of the book focuses on Coretta Scott King, who the author credits with convincing her husband to support the anti-war movement, and Johnson’s family and friends, who fought to have him receive full honors and his family to receive full benefits. Matthew Delmont is a Professor of History at Dartmouth College.
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (Chicago University Press, 2024) by Seth Rockman.
Rockman uses the exchange of products between the North and South to present a fuller picture of slavery as a national institution with economic ties binding different regions of the country. Examples include cloth and shoes manufactured in Massachusetts worn by enslaved Africans on Southern cotton plantations, tools like axes, hoes, and shovels manufactured in the North for sale to Southern planters, slave-produced commodities marketed by Northern companies, and a Northern ship construction industry building vessels to transport cotton to European markets. Seth Rockman is a Professor of History at Brown University.
Stitching Freedom: A True Story of Injustice, Defiance, and Hope in Angola Prison (New York: One Signal, 2025) by Gary Tyler with Ellen Bravo
This book is the memoir of Gary Tyler, written with the assistance of Ellen Bravo, an anti-racist activist involved in campaigns for fair trials and prison reform. In 1975, seventeen-year-old Gary Tyler was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the notorious Angola Prison in Louisiana. Tyler, who is African American, was convicted of the murder of a white teenager by an all-white jury. His case was picked up by Amnesty International, and he was recommended for parole three times; each time the Governor of Louisiana rejected the recommendation. He spent four decades in prison for a crime he did not commit until he was released in 2016. While in prison Tyler took up quilting to remain sane, hence the book’s title Stitching Freedom.
Capitalism: A Global History (New York: Penguin 2025) by Sven Beckert
The text of this book is 1,087 pages. The total book with references, footnotes, and index is 1,325 pages. It is too heavy to hold so you can only read from it if it is positioned on your desk. For global history teachers, it acts more as a reference encyclopedia rather than a book, but it is an incredibly valuable reference. Beckert argues that no phenomenon has shaped human history as powerfully as capitalism. He believes capitalism shapes every facet of human existence including work, leisure, politics, values, and self-definition. Rather than centering the history of capitalism in Western Europe, Beckert examines islands of capitalism emerging all over the world starting about 1,000 AD with the development of trading centers, markets, and long distance merchants. The book starts at the port of Aden on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula and ends as globalization transforms rural, previously isolated regions of Southeast Asia. Along the way we learn how capitalism reshapes the world with the conquest of the Americas, the trans-Atlantic trade in human beings and slave-produced commodities, the Industrial Revolution, and a “neo-liberal age” of unfettered borders and instantaneous electronic transfers of capital around the globe. Key to the development of capitalism is the alliance of producers and traders with states that facilitate commerce and industry. This massive work draws on archives from six continents and countless countries. Sven Beckert is a Professor of History at Harvard University.
PBS and Ken Burns have a new three-part series on the legacy of 19th century American philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau and his 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience,” which inspired activists including Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The website includes a seven minute video and excerpts from the well-known essay.
Parts 1–2 work well as paired reading and analysis. Part 3 is designed for longer written responses or small-group discussion. Part 4 may be assigned as a take-home shot essay prompt. This worksheet is designed to serve as the capstone activity for a civil rights unit.
ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today)
Part 1
Thoreau & the Origins of Civil Disobedience
CONTEXT: In 1846, Henry David Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax, was arrested, and spent a night in jail. He opposed both slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), which he saw as an unjust war designed to expand slavery itself. His 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” became the philosophical foundation for mass movements around the world.
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?… Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. – Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was still a more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. – Henry David Thoreau, regarding his night in jail
Questions: 1. Thoreau argues that “the true place for a just man” under an unjust government is prison. What does he mean? How can accepting imprisonment represent freedom rather than defeat?
2. Thoreau was upset not just with the federal government, but with Massachusetts (his home state), a state that claimed to oppose slavery but still collected taxes that funded it. What does his critique of complicity tell us about moral responsibility in a democracy? Is paying taxes that fund an unjust policy the same as supporting it?
3. Reportedly, when Thoreau was in jail, his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson visited him and asked “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, what are you doing out there?” What argument is Thoreau making in this exchange? Why does he consider Emerson’s freedom to be a kind of imprisonment for his friend?
Part 2
Four Movements Comparing Civil Disobedience in Practice
REFERENCE TABLE: Use the comparison table and the core principles card to ground your analysis. Return to both as you work through each question.
Movement
Act of Disobedience
Unjust Law Targeted
Scale
Outcome
Henry David Thoreau 1846 United States
Refused to pay state tax; accepted one night in jail
Fugitive Slave Act; tax support of an unjust war
Individual
Essay “Civil Disobedience” (1849); philosophical foundation for all later movements
Mahatma Gandhi 1930 British India
Led 240-mile Salt March; thousands deliberately violated British salt law
British colonial salt monopoly
Mass Movement
Exposed colonial injustice globally; accelerated Indian independence (1947)
Martin Luther King, Jr. 1955–1968 United States
Sit-ins, marches, boycotts; Letter from Birmingham Jail written while imprisoned
Jim Crow segregation laws throughout the South
Mass Movement
Civil Rights Act (1964); Voting Rights Act (1965)
ADAPT Disability Rights Activists; 1990 United States
60 protesters crawled up 83 Capitol steps; arrested
Inaccessible built environment; no federal disability civil rights law
Organized movement
ADA signed July 26, 1990 four months after the Capitol Crawl
Thoreau’s Four Core Principles of Civil Disobedience
1. Break the unjust law publicly; The act itself is the argument made visible
2. Accept the legal consequences willingly; Punishment demonstrates the law’s injustice
3. Use sacrifice to awaken public conscience; Suffering must be made meaningful, not merely endured
4. Force systemic change through moral pressure; The goal is transformation of law or policy
Questions:
1. What core principles of civil disobedience remained unchanged across all four movements from Thoreau (1846) to the Capitol Crawl (1990)? Identify at least two that appear in every case and explain why those specific principles are essential to the strategy of Civil Disobedience.
2. Thoreau’s act was individual. Gandhi turned the principle into a mass movement. King organized city-wide boycotts, sit-ins, and marches. ADAPT mobilized a coordinated national campaign. What did each movement gain by expanding from individual to collective action? What did it risk losing? 3. Is individual civil disobedience one person refusing, accepting arrest, making a point politically effective on its own? Or does it require mass participation to force change? Explain your response.
Part 3
Conditions for Success: What Made Each Movement Effective?
ANALYTICAL FRAME: Effective civil disobedience does not operate in a vacuum. Timing, media coverage, public response, government reaction, and the clarity of the injustice being demonstrated all shape whether a movement succeeds or fails. Use the reading and the comparison table to analyze what specific conditions made each movement’s disobedience effective.
ANALYTICAL QUESTION COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS:
Compare the outcomes of at least two of the four movements identified above.
1. How did specific conditions, timing, public response, media attention, and government reaction make each form of civil disobedience effective?
2. Why did Thoreau’s individual act produce an essay rather than immediate political change? Why did the Capitol Crawl produce the ADA within four months?
3. Each of the four movements used protesters’ own bodies to make injustice visible: Thoreau in a jail cell, Gandhi marching to the sea, King’s marchers facing police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham, disability activists crawling up the U.S. Capitol steps. Why is using the body itself as the instrument of protest so powerful? What does it communicate that speeches and petitions cannot?
4. King wrote in the ̈Letter from Birmingham Jail ̈ that direct action “creates such a crisis and fosters such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” How did each action or movement succeed in forcing confrontation?
Part 4
Synthesis: The Legacy of Civil Disobedience
CORE SYNTHESIS QUESTION: Thoreau, Gandhi, King, and ADAPT activists all believed that breaking an unjust law openly, accepting punishment willingly, and making injustice visible could lead to changing unjust laws. Their success proves that civil disobedience works under specific conditions. What are those conditions?
PERSONAL REFLECTION: Is there an issue today for you which civil disobedience: breaking a law publicly and accepting the consequences willingly would be justified? What would be required before you made your move?
Excerpts from Thoreau’s Essay on “Civil Disobedience.”
Excerpt 1: Thoreau Believed there is a Moral Obligation to Resist Unjust Laws
“He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist. How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also. All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is
most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.”
Excerpt 2: Thoreau Rejected a Moral Obligation to Obey Authority
“[William] Paley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the “Duty of Submission to Civil Government,” resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say that “so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God… that the established government be obeyed, —and no longer. This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other.” Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.”
Note: William Paley was an 18th century British philosopher and theologian who argued that people had a duty to submit to government authority.
Excerpt 3: Thoreau Argued Against Waiting for Reforms that Might Never Happen
“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?”
Excerpt 4: Thoreau Advocated for Nonviolent Resistance
“One would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate, penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again. If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth, — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
Excerpt 5: Thoreau Condemned the State’s Resistance to Change
As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not bear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is any change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body. I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Excerpt 6: Thoreau Believed in the Power of Truth and the Individual
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable, ground, where the State places those who are not with her, but against her – the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, “But what shall I do?” my answer is, “If you really wish to do anything, resign your office.” When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man’s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.”
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.
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.
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.
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)
[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”
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
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.
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
[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.
[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)
[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.
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.
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 inPower : Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World. Abingdon, Oxon ; Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2018.
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.
[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.
[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 inPower : Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World. (Abingdon, Oxon: 2018), 96.
[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.
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).
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 Anniversaryof theDeclaration of Independence
Prepared by Fabrizio Caruso and Sofia Sanchez
Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776)
Remember the Ladies by Abigail Adams (1776)
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Preamble to the United States Constitution (1787)
Declaration of the Rights of Man, August 26, (1789)
Celebrating the Declaration of Independence by John Q. Adams (1821)
Speech on the Oregon Bill by John C. Calhoun (1848)
Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
What to the Slave is the Fourth of July by Frederick Douglass (1852)
Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln (1863)
Thirteenth Amendment (1865)
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1883)
Release from Woodstock Jail by Eugene V. Debs (1895)
Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
Four Freedoms Speech by Franklin Roosevelt (1941)
The Struggle for Human Rights by Eleanor Roosevelt (1948)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Declaration of Conscience by Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1950)
Farewell Address by Dwight D. Eisenhower (1961)
Nation’s Space Effort by John F. Kennedy (1962)
I Have a dream by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
Civil Rights Act (1964)
Bicentennial Ceremony by Gerald R. Ford (1976)
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.
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:
How does Paine compare America to a child? How does this compare to the situation of America wanting independence?
Why is Great Britain protecting America, according to Paine?
What happens to America whenever Great Britain is at war? Why?
According to Paine, who is the king of America?
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.
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:
What is Abigail Adams asking of John Adams?
What does Abigail Adams believe of all men?
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.
“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:
What are the three “unalienable Rights” Thomas Jefferson identifies?
According to Jefferson, what must the people do if a government fails to safeguard these unalienable Rights?
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.
“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:
What is the importance of the first three words of the Constitution?
List the six goals outlined in the Constitution.
Why was it important for the United States to write the Constitution after the Articles of Confederation?
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.
“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:
According to the preamble, what is the purpose of this declaration?
In the context of the French Revolution, why is the wording of “equal in rights” significant?
Discuss the extent in which this declaration compares to the Declaration of Independence?
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.”
“…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:
What does John Quincy Adams say the Declaration of Independence was the “first” declaration to do?
Why does Adams call the American Revolution a “resistance,” not a “rebellion?”
Why does Adams call the Declaration a “beacon on the summit of the mountain?”
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.
“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:
What does Senator Calhoun say about the phrase “all men are created equal?”
According to Calhoun, how should the government’s role be limited?
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.
“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:
What other document is the introduction to the Declaration of Sentiments modeled after?
What is the purpose of this excerpt of the Declaration of Sentiments?
List two of the grievances that the authors included.
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.
“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:
What words does Douglass use that show he does not align with free Americans?
How is the fourth of July different for enslaved people and free people? Use one example from the text.
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.
“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:
According to Lincoln, what is the “proposition” that the nation was founded on?
What is this civil war “testing?”
What is Lincoln’s tone throughout the speech? Use at least two pieces of textual evidence to support your response.
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.
“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.
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:
How does Emma Lazarus describe the Statue of Liberty in the poem? Use one line from the text that supports your answer.
What group of people might lines 10-14 be referring to? How do you know?
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.
“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:
What ideas is Debs referencing when he says “the spirit of ‘76 still survives?”
What rights does Debs claim the government has taken away from him and/or denied?
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.
“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:
What did the nineteenth amendment accomplish?
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.
“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:
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?
What are the four freedoms FDR lists in this speech?
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.
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:
What are the basic human rights that Eleanor Roosevelt claims are “simple and easily understood”?
What does Roosevelt say makes freedom secure?
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.
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:
Identify three (3) rights that are guaranteed by the UDHR.
According to Article 2, what kinds of “distinctions” are prohibited from deny people their rights?
Which phrases of ideas in the UDHR connect to the Declaration of Independence?
How does the UDHR expand on the phrase “all men are created equal?”
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.
“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.
“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.
“…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.
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:
Why does President Kennedy say it is important to “set sail on this new sea?”
What justification does President Kennedy give that the United States should be the first nation to conquer space?
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.
“…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:
How does Dr. King describe the current situation of African Americans in 1963?
Why does Dr. King call 1963 “not an end, but a beginning?”
What founding document does Dr. King reference in this speech? Why does he reference this document?
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.
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:
What era of history led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
What does Title I of the Civil Rights Act pertain to?
What caused Title I to be necessary?
What is the goal of Title II?
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.
“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:
What role does President Ford say the Constitution has in relation to the Declaration?
Why does President Ford say it is important to read the grievances listed against King George III in the Declaration?
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”.
…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:
Why does Amanda Gorman urge readers to look towards the future?
What does Gorman believe that being an American includes?
What is the overall tone of the poem? Cite two quotes that support your answer.
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