In this 30 minute interview, Howard Zinn summarizes The Other Civil War and why it matters today. Definately worth a listen.

There are two sides to American immigration: the first is a story of economic benefit and promise; the other is a report of economic harm and despair.

The two “stories” stand in stark contrast with each other. Nevertheless, they define the two prisms by which immigrants are viewed. What is interesting is that the tension between the views is a constant component of our nation’s history. Whether the immigrants came in by a sailing ship in 1790 or 1840, a steamer in 1900, or an airplane in 2004; whether they were German, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Italians, east European Jews, Cubans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Russians, or Hispanics; the same two perspectives inform the immigration debate.

Read on from two Ball State professors

What a dilemma! Who should be let in?

Grapple with these hypotheticals

Now imagine the difficulties in developing and implemeting a blanket Immigration and Naturalization Policy!

The Prompt: The symbiotic relationship between the growing immigrant population and big city party machines during the Gilded Age was mutually beneficial. Assess the validity of this statement.

Feel free to refer to your DBQ Tips Sheet

Immigration and Political Machines DBQ

In case you missed class, here are my lecture notes

Here are the class discussion questions

Zinn was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, and flew bombing missions for the United States in World War II, an experience he now points to in shaping his opposition to war. In 1956, he became a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, which he participated in as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  When he was fired in 1963 for insubordination related to his protest work, he moved to Boston University, where he became a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

He is perhaps best known for A People’s History of the United States, which presents American history through the eyes of those he feels are outside of the political and economic establishment.

Here is an autobiographical clip from YouTube

Chapter 10: The Other Civil War with Response Questions

In his autobiography, You Can’t Stay Neutral on a Moving Train, Zinn said, “From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.” RIP.

The Basics: The Rise of Industrial Capitalism

Crash Course on Marxism

Notes from Bruce Laurie’s book, Artisans into Workers: Labor in 19^th Century America. University of Illinois Press, 1989:

• From Household to Factory
• Movement Culture and Received Culture
• Free & Radical Labor
• Why There is No Socialism in the USA