History assessment 4 questions excluding number 1 (1 and half page each)

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HIST1302Assessment2018-2019.pdf

HIST 1302

This assignment has several documents for you to read and view in order to answer the five

required questions. Please follow any formatting guidelines and minimum length requirements as

set by your professor. Please take your time to analyze these documents and submit thoughtful

arguments supported by the evidence these documents provide.

Documents:

1. Excerpt of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Hyphenated Americans” Speech (October 12, 1915)

2. Excerpt of “Shut the Door” Speech (April 9, 1924)

3. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” (February 1940)

4. LOOK Magazine’s “How to Spot a Communist” (March 1947)

5. Political Cartoon “You read books, eh?” (April 24, 1949)

6. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” Speech (February 9, 1950)

7. Excerpt of Port Huron Statement (June 15, 1962)

8. Black Panther Ten-Point Program (October 1966)

9. Caesar Chavez “Letter from Delano” (April 4, 1969)

10. Equal Rights Amendment (1972)

11. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (June 23, 1972)

12. George H.W. Bush on the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (July 26, 1990)

13. Maya Angelou “On the Pulse of the Morning” (January 20, 1993)

14. President-Elect Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (November 4, 2008)

Document 1: [excerpt] “Hyphenated Americans” Speech (1915)

Former President Theodore Roosevelt delivered the following speech to a meeting of the

Knights of Columbus in Carnegie Hall, New York City on October 12, 1915. With World

War I raging in Europe and across the globe, Roosevelt warned of the need for

preparedness amongst American citizens. Excerpts from this speech focus upon how

Roosevelt defined “Hyphenated Americans” and the importance of their

“Americanization” for the country’s strength and success in future conflicts.

FOUR centuries and a quarter have gone by since Columbus by discovering America opened the greatest era in

world history. Four centuries have passed since the Spaniards began that colonization on the main land which has

resulted in the growth of the nations of Latin-America. Three centuries have passed since, with the settlements on

the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts, the real history of what is now the United States began. All this we

ultimately owe to the action of an Italian seaman in the service of a Spanish King and a Spanish Queen. It is

eminently fitting that one of the largest and most influential social organizations of this great Republic, a Republic in

which the tongue is English, and the blood derived from many sources, should, in its name, commemorate the great

Italian. It is eminently fitting to make an address on Americanism before this society.

DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES

We of the United States need above all things to remember that, while we are by blood and culture kin to each of the

nations of Europe, we are also separate from each of them. We are a new and -distinct nationality. We are

developing our own distinctive culture and civilization, and the worth of this civilization will largely depend upon

our determination to keep it distinctively our own. Our sons and daughters should be educated here and not abroad.

We should freely take from every other nation whatever we can make of use, but we should adopt and develop to

our own peculiar needs what we thus take, and never be content merely to copy.

Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on

his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which

he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted

the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin

continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the

citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and/ political

life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows….

HYPHENATED AMERICANS

What is true of creed is no less true of nationality. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I

have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an

American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German

or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance

must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if

he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as

any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a

nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-

Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-

Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that

nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and

nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls

himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays

a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the

land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing

as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an

American and nothing else….

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish- American, or an English-American, is to be a

traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of

the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

PRINCIPLES OF AMERICANISM

Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we in practical fashion to secure the making of these principles part

of the very fiber of our national life? First and foremost let us all resolve that in this country hereafter we shall place

far less emphasis upon the question of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic can`t

succeed and won`t succeed in the tremendous international stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that

form of high-minded patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty before the question of individual rights.

This must be done in our family relations or the family will go to pieces….

What is true of the family, the foundation stone of our national life, is not less true of the entire superstructure. I am,

as you know, a most ardent believer in national preparedness against war as a means of securing that honorable and

self-respecting peace which is the only peace desired by all high-spirited people. But it is an absolute impossibility

to secure such preparedness in full and proper form if it is an isolated feature of our policy… But it is equally true

that there cannot be this preparation in advance for military strength unless there is a social basis of civil and social

life behind it. There must be social, economic, and military preparedness all alike, all harmoniously developed; and

above all there must be spiritual and mental preparedness….

RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS

We should meet this situation by on the one hand seeing that these immigrants get all their rights as American

citizens, and on the other hand insisting that they live up to their duties as American citizens. Any discrimination

against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel bitterness and

resentment during the very years when he should be preparing himself for American citizenship. If an immigrant is

not fit to become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come here. If he is fit, he should be given all the rights to

earn his own livelihood, and to better himself, that any man can have. Take such a matter as the illiteracy test; I

entirely agree with those who feel that many very excellent possible citizens would be barred improperly by an

illiteracy test. But why do you not admit aliens under a bond to learn to read and write within a certain time? It

would then be a duty to see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to read and write and that they were

deported if they failed to take advantage of the opportunity.

No man can be a good citizen if he is not at least in process of learning to speak the language of his fellow-citizens.

And an alien who remains here without learning to speak English for more than a certain number of years should at

the end of that time be treated as having refused to take the preliminary steps necessary to complete Americanization

and should be deported. But there should be no denial or limitation of the alien`s opportunity to work, to own

property, and to take advantage of civic opportunities. Special legislation should deal with the aliens who do not

come here to be made citizens. But the alien who comes here intending to become a citizen should be helped in

every way to advance himself, should be removed from every possible disadvantage, and in return should be

required under penalty of being sent back to the country from which he came, to prove that he is in good faith fitting

himself to be an American citizen.

PREPARATIVES TO PREPAREDNESS

Therefore, we should devote ourselves as a preparative to preparedness, alike in peace and war, to secure the three

elemental things: one, a common language, the English language; two, the increase in our social loyalty citizenship

absolutely undivided, a citizenship which acknowledges no flag except the flag of the United States and which

emphatically repudiates all duality of intention or national loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute effort for the

removal of industrial and social unrest, an effort which shall aim equally at securing every man his rights and to

make every man understand that unless he in good faith performs his duties he is not entitled to any rights at all.

The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped by

representatives of foreign governments, by foreign societies, by a press and institutions conducted in a foreign

language and in the interest of foreign governments, and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups, each

group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the country, we shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in the

future….

AMERICANIZATION

The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population no other kind can fight the battles

of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess

American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must

show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be

maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical

times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections,

and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The

immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of

the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure

such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel

that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of “Let alone” which we have hitherto

pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often

the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the

immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they

are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under

it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they

remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as

an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and

women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living

system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the

merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial

machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien

workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently

been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in

time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their

own foreign countries bring destruction to us... What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done

to us in the name of neutrality?

… I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Americanization, the fusing into one nation, a nation necessarily

different from all other nations, of all who come to our shores. Pay heed to the three principal essentials: (i) the need

of a common language, with a minimum amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a common civil standard, similar

ideals, beliefs, and customs symbolized by the oath of allegiance to America; and (3) the need of a high standard of

living, of reasonable equality of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In every great crisis in our history,

in the Revolution and in the Civil War, and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish war, all factions and races have been

forgotten in the common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and Catholic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of

German, descent have joined with a single-minded purpose to secure for the country what only can be achieved by

the resultant union of all patriotic citizens….

Even in the matter of national defense there is such a labyrinth of committees and counsels and advisors that there is

a tendency on the part of the average citizen to become confused and do nothing. I ask you to help strike the note

that shall unite our people. As a people we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip into the gulf of

measureless disaster. We must be strong in purpose for our own defense and bent on securing justice within our

borders. If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as

brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed or of those of one race against those of another race,

surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow. I ask

you here to-night and those like you to take a foremost part in the movement a young men`s movement for a greater

and better America in the future.

ONE AMERICA

All of us, no matter from what land our parents came, no matter in what way we may severally worship our Creator,

must stand shoulder to shoulder in a united America for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must

stand for a reign of equal justice to both big and small. We must insist on the maintenance of the American standard

of living. We must stand for an adequate national control which shall secure a better training of our young men in

time of peace, both for the work of peace and for the work of war. We must direct every national resource, material

and spiritual, to the task not of shirking difficulties, but of training our people to overcome difficulties. Our aim

must be, not to make life easy and soft, not to soften soul and body, but to fit us in virile fashion to do a great work

for all mankind. This great work can only be done by a mighty democracy, with these qualities of soul, guided by

those qualities of mind, which will both make it refuse to do injustice to any other nation, and also enable it to hold

its own against aggression by any other nation. In our relations with the outside world, we must abhor wrongdoing,

and disdain to commit it, and we must no less disdain the baseness of spirit which lamely submits to wrongdoing.

Finally and most important of all, we must strive for the establishment within our own borders of that stern and lofty

standard of personal and public neutrality which shall guarantee to each man his rights, and which shall insist in

return upon the full performance by each man of his duties both to his neighbor and to the great nation whose flag

must symbolize in the future as it has symbolized in the past the highest hopes of all mankind.

Document 2: [excerpt] “Shut the Door” Speech (1924)

As part of the debate over the Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the National Origins

Act), Senator Ellison DuRant Smith of South Carolina gave voice to many who supported

immigration restrictions as a means of preserving existing American resources.

It seems to me the point as to this measure—and I have been so impressed for several years—is that the time has

arrived when we should shut the door. We have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an experience just

a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our

borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot.

I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we have, and save

the resources of America for the natural increase of our population. We all know that one of the most prolific causes

of war is the desire for increased land ownership for the overflow of a congested population. We are increasing at

such a rate that in the natural course of things in a comparatively few years the landed resources, the natural

resources of the country, shall be taken up by the natural increase of our population. It seems to me the part of

wisdom now that we have throughout the length and breadth of continental America a population which is beginning

to encroach upon the reserve and virgin resources of the country to keep it in trust for the multiplying population of

the country.

I do not believe that political reasons should enter into the discussion of this very vital question. It is of greater

concern to us to maintain the institutions of America, to maintain the principles upon which this Government is

founded, than to develop and exploit the underdeveloped resources of the country. There are some things that are

dearer to us, fraught with more benefit to us, than the immediate development of the undeveloped resources of the

country. I believe that our particular ideas, social, moral, religious, and political, have demonstrated, by virtue of the

progress we have made and the character of people that we are, that we have the highest ideals of any member of the

human family or any nation. We have demonstrated the fact that the human family, certainty the predominant breed

in America, can govern themselves by a direct government of the people. If this Government shall fail, it shall fail

by virtue of the terrible law of inherited tendency….

I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a pure, unadulterated

American citizenship. I recognize that there is a dangerous lack of distinction between people of a certain nationality

and the breed of the dog. Who is an American? Is he an immigrant from Italy? Is he an immigrant from Germany? If

you were to go abroad and some one were to meet you and say, “I met a typical American,” what would flash into

your mind as a typical American, the typical representative of that new Nation? Would it be the son of an Italian

immigrant, the son of a German immigrant, the son of any of the breeds from the Orient, the son of the denizens of

Africa? We must not get our ethnological distinctions mixed up with out anthropological distinctions. It is the breed

of the dog in which I am interested. I would like for the Members of the Senate to read that book just recently

published by Madison Grant, The Passing of a Great Race. Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest

percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the greatest of any

nation in the Nordic breed. It is for the preservation of that splendid stock that has characterized us that I would

make this not an asylum for the oppressed of all countries, but a country to assimilate and perfect that splendid type

of manhood that has made America the foremost Nation in her progress and in her power, and yet the youngest of all

the nations. I myself believe that the preservation of her institutions depends upon us now taking counsel with our

condition and our experience during the last World War.

Without offense, but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and

let us breed pure American citizens and develop our own American resources. I am more in favor of that than I am

of our quota proposition. Of course, it may not meet the approbation of the Senate that we shall shut the door—

which I unqualifiedly and unreservedly believe to be our duty—and develop what we have, assimilate and digest

what we have into pure Americans, with American aspirations, and thoroughly familiar with the love of American

institutions, rather than the importation of any number of men from other countries. If we may not have that, then I

am in favor of putting the quota down to the lowest possible point, with every selective element in it that may be.

The great desideratum of modern times has been education not alone book knowledge, but that education which

enables men to think right, to think logically, to think truthfully, men equipped with power to appreciate the rapidly

developing conditions that are all about us, that have converted the world in the last 50 years into a brand new world

and made us masters of forces that are revolutionizing production. We want men not like dumb, driven cattle from

those nations where the progressive thought of the times has scarcely made a beginning and where they see men as

mere machines; we want men who have an appreciation of the responsibility brought about by the manifestation of

the power of that individual. We have not that in this country to-day. We have men here to-day who are selfishly

utilizing the enormous forces discovered by genius, and if we are not careful as statesmen, if we are not careful in

our legislation, these very masters of the tremendous forces that have been made available to us will bring us under

their domination and control by virtue of the power they have in multiplying their wealth.

We are struggling to-day against the organized forces of man’s brain multiplied a million times by materialized

thought in the form of steam and electricity as applied in the everyday affairs of man. We have enough in this

country to engage the brain of every lover of his country in solving the problems of a democratic government in the

midst of the imperial power that genius is discovering and placing in the hands of man. We have population enough

to-day without throwing wide our doors and jeopardizing the interests of this country by pouring into it men who

willingly become the slaves of those who employ them in manipulating these forces of nature, and they few reap the

enormous benefits that accrue therefrom.

We ought to Americanize not only our population but our forces. We ought to Americanize our factories and our

vast material resources, so that we can make each contribute to the other and have an abundance for us under the

form of the government laid down by our fathers.

The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Harris] has introduced an amendment to shut the door. It is not a question of politics.

It is a question of maintaining that which has made you and me the beneficiaries of the greatest hope that ever

burned in the human breast for the most splendid future that ever stood before mankind, where the boy in the gutter

can look with confidence to the seat of the Presidency of the United States; where the boy in the gutter can look

forward to the time when, paying the price of a proper citizen, he may fill a seat in this hall; where the boy to-day

poverty-stricken, standing in the midst of all the splendid opportunities of America, should have and, please God, if

we do our duty, will have an opportunity to enjoy the marvelous wealth that the genius and brain of our country is

making possible for us all.

We do not want to tangle the skein of America’s progress by those who imperfectly understand the genius of our

Government and the opportunities that lie about us. Let up keep what we have, protect what we have, make what we

have the realization of the dream of those who wrote the Constitution.

I am more concerned about that than I am about whether a new railroad shall be built or whether there shall be

diversified farming next year or whether a certain coal mine shall be mined. I would rather see American citizenship

refined to the last degree in all that makes America what we hope it will be than to develop the resources of America

at the expense of the citizenship of our country. The time has come when we should shut the door and keep what we

have for what we hope our own people to be.

Document 3: “This Land Is Your Land” (1940)

Born in Oklahoma in 1912, Woody Guthrie would become one of the foremost voices of

American folk music. Guthrie wrote “God Blessed America for Me” in February 1940 as a

response to Irving Berlin’s song “God Bless America” which he viewed as elitist and not

reflective of the America that he knew. Over time, the song evolved and was renamed “This

Land is Your Land.”

This Land Is Your Land

Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land This land is my land

From California to the New York island;

From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,

I saw above me that endless skyway:

I saw below me that golden valley:

This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;

And all around me a voice was sounding:

This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,

As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:

This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

Document 4: LOOK Magazine “How to spot a Communist” (1947)

Intended to warn Americans about the perceived threat of communist activities in the

United States, Leo Cherne’s “How to spot a Communist” was published in Look

Magazine’s Spring 1947 edition.

The real Communist is not a liberal or a progressive. He believes in Russia first and a Soviet America. He accepts

the doctrines of dictatorship as practiced in Russia. And he is prepared to use a dictator’s tactics of lies and violence

to realize his ambitions.

Because the whole Communist apparatus is geared to secrecy, it is not always easy to determine just who is a

Communist. But whether he is a Party card-holder or a fellow traveler, the American Communist is not like other

Americans. To the Communist, everything – his country, his job, his family – take second place to his party duty.

Even his sex life is synchronised with the obligations of the [communist] cause…

There is no simple definition of an American Communist. However, certain general classifications can be set up.

And if either a person or an organization falls within most of these classifications, that person or organization can be

said to be following the Communists’ lead. These classifications include:

1. The belief that the war waged by Great Britain and her allies during the period from August 1939 to June 1941

(the period of the war before Russia was invaded) was an “imperialistic” war and a game of power politics.

2. The support of a foreign policy which agrees always with that followed by Soviet Russia, and which changes as

the USSR policy changes.

3. The argument that any foreign or domestic policy which does not fit the Communist plan is advanced for ulterior

motives and is not in the best interests of either the people or world peace.

4. The practice of criticising only American, British and Chinese policies, and never criticising Soviet policies.

5. Continually receiving favorable publicity in such Communist publications as the Daily Worker and the New

Masses.

6. Continually appearing as sponsor or co-worker of such known Communist-front groups as the Committee to Win

the Peace, the Civil Rights Congress, the National Negro Congress and other groups which can be described as

Communist inspired because they within the classifications set forth here.

7. Continually charging critics with being “fascists,” no matter whether the criticism comes from liberals,

conservatives, reactionaries or those who really are fascists.

8. Arguing for a class society by pitting one group against another; and putting special privileges ahead of

community needs as, for example, claiming that labor has privileges but has no responsibilities in dealing with

management.

9. Declaring that capitalism and democracy are “decadent” because some injustices exist under those systems.

Of course, actual membership [of a communist party] is 100 per cent proof, but this kind of proof is difficult to

obtain. These are the five basic layers that the Communists rely on for their strength:

1. The Party member, who openly or secretly holds a membership card.

2. The fellow-traveler, who is not a Party member but who is carefully trained to follow the Communist policy.

3. The sympathiser, who may disagree with some polices, but who is in general agreement with Communist

objectives.

4. The opportunist, who is unconcerned with Party goals or tactics but who believes… that the party can be used to

his own advantage.

5. The muddled liberal, who despite deep disagreement with the Communist Party’s ultimate goals, co-operates

with Party members in front organizations.

How not to be a sucker for a ‘left hook’

Most Americans want to help a good cause, but don’t want to help Communists hiding behind a good-cause label.

Here are tips:

1. Check credentials: Before you join or help a group, find out if it opposed Britain’s “imperialistic” war and favored

isolationism before Russia was invaded in 1941; if it supported the “people’s” war after Russia was invaded; if it

now favors the veto as used by Russia in the UN.

2. Signing petitions… are you getting your name on a Communist list?

3. Contributing money… check carefully, you may be paying a Communist.

4. On the escalator… is your support of one group involving you in causes you didn’t know about? Check all

affiliations.

5. Resolutions… does the group you support suddenly endorse other groups you know nothing about?

6. Politics… is your non-partisan group endorsing candidates? Who are they?

7. Speakers… who are the outsiders invited to address your meetings?

8. Fly-by-night issues… does your group support policies also supported by the Communist Party, and then forget

those policies as soon as the Party line changes?

9. Double standard… is it sensitive about American policy in China and British policy in Palestine, but quiet about

Russian policy in Iran, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria?

10. Literature… does literature handed out at meetings endorse Party causes?

11. Social life… are you urged to buy tickets to other groups’ events? You may be contributing to other causes.

12. Demonstrations and conferences… does the local group which was set up to study the cost of living, for

example, send delegates to conferences which pass resolutions on atomic energy control?

13. Membership… watch who joins and who resigns. Harold Ickes recently resigned from the Independent Citizens

Committee of the Arts and Sciences; Marion Hargrove quit the Duncan-Paris Post of the American Legion and the

National Committee to Win the Peace.

Document 5: “You read books, eh?” by Herbert Block (1949)

One of the most renowned political cartoonists in modern American History, Herb Block

published this editorial cartoon in the Washington Post on April 24, 1949. This cartoon was

produced as a response to the growing anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s

that became known as the Second Red Scare.

Document 6: “Enemies from Within” speech (1950)

Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s rose to political prominence on the waves of anti-Communist

hysteria sweeping America during the early years of the Cold War. McCarthy utilized this speech honoring

Abraham Lincoln’s birthday in Wheeling, West Virginia on February 9, 1950 to launch a full scale attack

upon President Truman’s administration for harboring Communists within the State Department.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight as we celebrate the one hundred forty-first birthday of one of the greatest men in

American history, I would like to be able to talk about what a glorious day today is in the history of the world. As

we celebrate the birth of this man who with his whole heart and soul hated war, I would like to be able to speak of

peace in our time—of war being outlawed—and of world-wide disarmament. These would be truly appropriate

things to be able to mention as we celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.

Five years after a world war has been won, men’s hearts should anticipate a long peace—and men’s minds should be

free from the heavy weight that comes with war. But this is not such a period—for this is not a period of peace. This

is a time of “the cold war.” This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile armed

camps—a time of a great armament race.

Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel

it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of

Europe itself.

The one encouraging thing is that the “mad moment” has not yet arrived for the firing of the gun or the exploding of

the bomb which will set civilization about the final task of destroying itself. There is still a hope for peace if we

finally decide that no longer can we safely blind our eyes and close our ears to those facts which are shaping up

more and more clearly . . . and that is that we are now engaged in a show-down fight . . . not the usual war between

nations for land areas or other material gains, but a war between two diametrically opposed ideologies.

The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political,

gentlemen, it is moral. For instance, the Marxian idea of confiscating the land and factories and running the entire

economy as a single enterprise is momentous. Likewise, Lenin’s invention of the one-party police state as a way to

make Marx’s idea work is hardly less momentous.

Stalin’s resolute putting across of these two ideas, of course, did much to divide the world. With only these

differences, however, the east and the west could most certainly still live in peace.

The real, basic difference, however, lies in the religion of immoralism . . . invented by Marx, preached feverishly by

Lenin, and carried to unimaginable extremes by Stalin. This religion of immoralism, if the Red half of the world

triumphs—and well it may, gentlemen—this religion of immoralism will more deeply wound and damage mankind

than any conceivable economic or political system.

Karl Marx dismissed God as a hoax, and Lenin and Stalin have added in clear-cut, unmistakable language their

resolve that no nation, no people who believe in a god, can exist side by side with their communistic state.

Karl Marx, for example, expelled people from his Communist Party for mentioning such things as love, justice,

humanity or morality. He called this “soulful ravings” and “sloppy sentimentality.” . . .

Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern

champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are

truly down.

Lest there be any doubt that the time has been chosen, let us go directly to the leader of communism today—Joseph

Stalin. Here is what he said—not back in 1928, not before the war, not during the war—but 2 years after the last war

was ended: “To think that the Communist revolution can be carried out peacefully, within the framework of a

Christian democracy, means one has either gone out of one’s mind and lost all normal understanding, or has grossly

and openly repudiated the Communist revolution.” . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there by

anyone who fails to realize that the Communist world has said the time is now? . . . that this is the time for the show-

down between the democratic Christian world and the communistic atheistic world?

Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long.

Six years ago, . . . there was within the Soviet orbit, 180,000,000 people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there

were in the world at that time, roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only six years later, there are 800,000,000

people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia—an increase of over 400 percent. On our side, the figure has

shrunk to around 500,000,000. In other words, in less than six years, the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favor

to 8 to 5 against us.

This indicates the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of

our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from

without, but rather because of enemies from within.” . . .

The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has

sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well

by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who have been traitorous to this

Nation, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer . . . the

finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give.

This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their

mouths are the ones who have been most traitorous. . . .

I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being

members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State

Department. . . .

As you know, very recently the Secretary of State proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been

considered as the most abominable of all crimes—being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great

trust—high treason. . . .

He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of

twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency

in government.

Document 7: [excerpt] Port Huron Statement (1962)

This political manifesto, largely crafted by University of Michigan student Tom Hayden,

was the product of a five-day national convention of the Students for a Democratic Society

(S.D.S.) held on June 11-15, 1962. With this document, the SDS described what they

perceived as the major problems within American Society and called for solutions through

“participatory democracy.”

Port Huron Statement

Introduction: Agenda for a Generation

We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking

uncomfortably to the world we inherit.

When we were kids the United States was the wealthiest and strongest country in the world; the only one with the

atom bomb, the least scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United Nations that we thought would distribute

Western influence throughout the world. Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the

people--these American values we found god, principles by which we could live as men. Many of us began maturing

in complacency.

As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the permeating and

victimizing fact of human degradation, symbolized by the Southern struggle against racial bigotry, compelled most

of us from silence to activism. Second, the enclosing fact of the Cold War, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb,

brought awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly

because of our common peril, might die at any time. We might deliberately ignore, or avoid, or fail to feel all other

human problems, but not these two, for these were too immediate and crushing in their impact, too challenging in

the demand that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.

While these and other problems either directly oppressed us or rankled our consciences and became our own

subjective concerns, we began to see complicated and disturbing paradoxes in our surrounding America. The

declaration "all men are created equal..." rang hollow before the facts of Negro life in the South and the big cities of

the North. The proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military

investments in the Cold War status quo.

We witnessed, and continue to witness, other paradoxes. With nuclear energy whole cities can easily be powered,

yet the dominant nation-states seem more likely to unleash destruction greater than that incurred in all wars of

human history… Although mankind desperately needs revolutionary leadership, America rests in national stalemate,

its goals ambiguous and tradition-bound instead of informed and clear, its democratic system apathetic and

manipulated rather than "of, by, and for the people."

Not only did tarnish appear on our image of American virtue, not only did disillusion occur when the hypocrisy of

American ideals was discovered, but we began to sense that what we had originally seen as the American Golden

Age was actually the decline of an era. The worldwide outbreak of revolution against colonialism and imperialism,

the entrenchment of totalitarian states, the menace of war, overpopulation, international disorder, supertechnology--

these trends were testing the tenacity of our own commitment to democracy and freedom and our abilities to

visualize their application to a world in upheaval.

Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a

minority--the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally

functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox; we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message

of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians,

beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through," beneath the stagnation of those who have closed

their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed

the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well….

The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them,

is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today. On such a basis do we

offer this document of our convictions and analysis: as an effort in understanding and changing the conditions of

humanity in the late twentieth century, an effort rooted in the ancient, still unfulfilled conception of man attaining

determining influence over his circumstances of life.

Values

Making values explicit--an initial task in establishing alternatives--is an activity that has been devalued and

corrupted. The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities--"free world," "people's democracies"--

reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles. But neither

has our experience in the universities brought us moral enlightenment. Our professors and administrators sacrifice

controversy to public relations; their curriculums change more slowly than the living events of the world; their skills

and silence are purchased by investors in the arms race; passion is called unscholastic. The questions we might want

raised--what is really important? can we live in a different and better way? if we wanted to change society, how

would we do it?--are not thought to be questions of a "fruitful, empirical nature," and thus are brushed aside.

Unlike youth in other countries we are used to moral leadership being exercised and moral dimensions being

clarified by our elders. But today, for us, not even the liberal and socialist preachments of the past seem adequate to

the forms of the present... It has been said that our liberal and socialist predecessors were plagued by vision without

program, while our own generation is plagued by program without vision. All around us there is astute grasp of

method, technique--the committee, the ad hoc group, the lobbyist, the hard and soft sell, the make, the projected

image--but, if pressed critically, such expertise in incompetent to explain its implicit ideals….

Theoretic chaos has replaced the idealistic thinking of old--and, unable to reconstitute theoretic order, men have

condemned idealism itself. Doubt has replaced hopefulness--and men act out a defeatism that is labeled realistic.

The decline of utopia and hope is in fact one of the defining features of social life today…. To be idealistic is to be

considered apocalyptic, deluded. To have no serious aspirations, on the contrary, is to be "tough-minded."

In suggesting social goals and values, therefore, we are aware of entering a sphere of some disrepute. Perhaps

matured by the past, we have no formulas, no closed theories--but that does not mean values are beyond discussion

and tentative determination. A first task of any social movement is to convince people that the search for orienting

theories and the creation of human values is complex but worthwhile. We are aware that to avoid platitudes we must

analyze the concrete conditions of social order. But to direct such an analysis we must use the guideposts of basic

principles. Our own social values involve conceptions of human beings, human relationships, and social systems.

We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love. In

affirming these principles we are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the twentieth

century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs. We

oppose the depersonalization that reduces human being to the status of things--if anything, the brutalities of the

twentieth century teach that means and ends are intimately related, that vague appeals to "posterity" cannot justify

the mutilations of the present. We oppose, too, the doctrine of human incompetence because it rests essentially on

the modern fact that men have been "competently" manipulated into incompetence--we see little reason why men

cannot meet with increasing the skill the complexities and responsibilities of their situation, if society is organized

not for minority, but for majority, participation in decision-making.

….The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with

finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic; a quality of mind not compulsively driven by a sense of

powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but

one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts

of personal history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved; one with an intuitive

awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn….

Human relationships should involve fraternity and honesty. Human interdependence is contemporary fact; human

brotherhood must be willed, however, as a condition of future survival and as the most appropriate form of social

relations….

We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstance by power and uniqueness rooted in love,

reflectiveness, reason, and creativity. As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual

participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the

quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media

for their common participation.

In a participatory democracy, the political life would be based in several root principles: that decision-making of

basic social consequence be carried on by public groupings; that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively

creating an acceptable pattern of social relations; that politics has the function of bringing people out of isolation and

into community, thus being a necessary, though not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life; that the

political order should serve to clarify problems in a way instrumental to their solution; it should provide outlets for

the expression of personal grievance and aspiration; opposing views should be organized so as to illuminate choices

and facilitate the attainment of goals; channels should be commonly available to relate men to knowledge and to

power so that private problems--from bad recreation facilities to personal alienation--are formulated as general

issues.

The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles: that work should involve incentives worthier than

money or survival. It should be educative, not stultifying; creative, not mechanical; self-directed, not manipulated,

encouraging independence, a respect for others, a sense of dignity, and a willingness to accept social responsibility,

since it is this experience that has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and individual ethics; that the economic

experience is so personally decisive that the individual must share in its full determination; that the economy itself is

of such social importance that its major resources and means of production should be open to democratic

participation and subject to democratic social regulation.

Like the political and economic ones, major social institutions--cultural, educational, rehabilitative, and others--

should be generally organized with the well-being and dignity of man as the essential measure of success. In social

change or interchange, we find violence to be abhorrent because it requires generally the transformation of the

target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate. It is imperative that the

means of violence be abolished and the institutions--local, national, international--that encourage non-violence as a

condition of conflict be developed.

These are our central values, in skeletal form. It remains vital to understand their denial or attainment in the context

of the modern world.

The Students

In the last few years, thousands of American students demonstrated that they at least felt the urgency of the times.

They moved actively and directly against racial injustices, the threat of war, violations of individual rights of

conscience, and, less frequently, against economic manipulation….The significance of these scattered movements

lies not in their success or failure in gaining objectives--at least, not yet.... The significance is in the fact that

students are breaking the crust of apathy and overcoming the inner alienation that remain the defining characteristics

of American college life.

If student movements for change are still rarities on the campus scene, what is commonplace there? The real

campus, the familiar campus, is a place of private people, engaged in their notorious "inner emigration." It is a place

of commitment to business-as-usual, getting ahead, playing it cool. It is a place of mass affirmation of the Twist, but

mass reluctance toward the controversial public stance. Rules are accepted as "inevitable," bureaucracy as "just

circumstances," irrelevance as "scholarship," selflessness as "martyrdom," politics as "just another way to make

people, and an unprofitable one, too."

Almost no students value activity as citizens. Passive in public, they are hardly more idealistic in arranging their

private lives: Gallup concludes they will settle for "low success, and won't risk high failure." There is not much

willingness to take risks (not even in business), no setting of dangerous goals, no real conception of personal identity

except one manufactured in the image of others, no real urge for personal fulfillment except to be almost as

successful as the very successful people. Attention is being paid to social status (the quality of shirt collars, meeting

people, getting wives or husbands, making solid contacts for later on); much, too, is paid to academic status (grades,

honors, the med school rat race). But neglected generally is real intellectual status, the personal cultivation of the

mind….

The academic life contains reinforcing counterparts to the way in which extracurricular life is organized. The

academic world is founded on a teacher-student relations analogous to the parent-child relation which characterizes

in loco parentis. Further, academia includes a radical separation of the student from the material of study. That

which is studies, the social reality, is "objectified" to sterility, dividing the student from life--just as he is restrained

in active involvement by the deans controlling student government. The specialization of function and knowledge,

admittedly necessary to our complex technological and social structure, has produced an exaggerated

compartmentalization of study and understanding. This has contributed to an overly parochial view, by faculty, of

the role of its research and scholarship; to a discontinuous and truncated understanding, by students, of the

surrounding social order; and to a loss of personal attachment, by nearly all, to the worth of study as a humanistic

enterprise.

There is, finally, the cumbersome academic bureaucracy extending throughout the academic as well as the

extracurricular structures, contributing to the sense of outer complexity and inner powerlessness that transforms the

honest searching of many students to a ratification of convention and, worse, to a numbness to present and future

catastrophes. The size and financing systems of the university enhance the permanent trusteeship of the

administrative bureaucracy, their power leading to a shift within the university toward the value standards of

business and the administrative mentality. Huge foundations and other private financial interests shape the under

financed colleges and universities, making them not only more commercial, but less disposed to diagnose society

critically, less open to dissent. Many social and physical scientists, neglecting the liberating heritage of higher

learning, develop "human relations" or "morale-producing" techniques for the corporate economy, while others

exercise their intellectual skills to accelerate the arms race.

Tragically, the university could serve as a significant source of social criticism and an initiator of new modes and

molders of attitudes. But the actual intellectual effect of the college experience is hardly distinguishable from that of

any other communications channel--say, a television set--passing on the stock truths of the day. Students leave

college somewhat more "tolerant" than when they arrived, but basically unchallenged in their values and political

orientations. With administrators ordering the institution, and faculty the curriculum, the student learns by his

isolation to accept elite rule within the university, which prepares him to accept later forms of minority control. The

real function of the educational system--as opposed to its more rhetorical function of "searching for truth"--is to

impart the key information and styles that will help the student get by, modestly but comfortably, in the big society

beyond.

The Society Beyond

Look beyond the campus, to America itself. That student life is more intellectual, and perhaps more comfortable,

does not obscure the fact that the fundamental qualities of life on the campus reflect the habits of society at large.

The fraternity president is seen at the junior manager levels; the sorority queen has gone to Grosse Pointe; the

serious poet burns for a place, any place, to work; the once-serious and never-serious poets work at the advertising

agencies. The desperation of people threatened by forces about which they know little and of which they can say

less; the cheerful emptiness of people "giving up" all hope of changing things; the faceless ones polled by Gallup

who listed "international affairs" fourteenth on their list of "problems" but who also expected thermonuclear war in

the next few years; in these and other forms, Americans are in withdrawal from public life, from any collective

effort at directing their own affairs.

Some regard these national doldrums as a sign of healthy approval of the established order--but is it approval by

consent or manipulated acquiescence? Others declare that the people are withdrawn because compelling issues are

fast disappearing--perhaps there are fewer bread lines in America, but is Jim Crow gone, is there enough work and

work more fulfilling, is world war a diminishing threat, and what of the revolutionary new peoples? Still others

think the national quietude is a necessary consequence of the need for elites to resolve complex and specialized

problems of modern industrial society--but then, why should business elites help decide foreign policy, and who

controls the elites anyway, and are they solving mankind's problems? Others, finally, shrug knowingly and announce

that full democracy never worked anywhere in the past--but why lump qualitatively different civilizations together,

and how can a social order work well if its best thinkers are skeptics, and is man really doomed forever to the

domination of today?...

The apathy here is, first, subjective--the felt powerlessness of ordinary people, the resignation before the enormity of

events. But subjective apathy is encouraged by the objective American situation--the actual structural separation of

people from power, from relevant knowledge, from pinnacles of decision-making. Just as the university influences

the student way of life, so do major social institutions create the circumstances in which the isolated citizen will try

hopelessly to understand his world and himself.

The very isolation of the individual--from power and community and ability to aspire--means the rise of a

democracy without publics. With the great mass of people structurally remote and psychologically hesitant with

respect to democratic institutions, those institutions themselves attenuate and become, in the fashion of the vicious

circle, progressively less accessible to those few who aspire to serious participation in social affairs. The vital

democratic connection between community and leadership, between the mass and the several elites, has been so

wrenched and perverted that disastrous policies go unchallenged time and again....

The University and Social Change

There is perhaps little reason to be optimistic about the above analysis. True, the Dixiecrat-GOP coalition is the

weakest point in the dominating complex of corporate, military, and political power. But the civil rights, peace, and

student movements are too poor and socially slighted, and the labor movement too quiescent, to be counted with

enthusiasm. From where else can power and vision be summoned? We believe that the universities are an

overlooked seat of influence.

First, the university is located in a permanent position of social influence. It's educational function makes it

indispensable and automatically makes it a crucial institution in the formation of social attitudes. Second, in an

unbelievably complicated world, it is the central institution for organizing, evaluating and transmitting knowledge.

Third, the extent to which academic resources presently are used to buttress immoral social practice is revealed,

first, by the extent to which defense contracts make the universities engineers of the arms race. Too, the use of

modern social science as a manipulative tool reveals itself in the "human relations" consultants to the modern

corporations, who introduce trivial sops to give laborers feelings of "participation" or "belonging," while actually

deluding them in order to further exploit their labor. And, of course, the use of motivational research is already

infamous as a manipulative aspect of American politics. But these social uses of the universities' resources also

demonstrate the unchangeable reliance by men of power on the men and storehouses of knowledge: this makes the

university functionally tied to society in new ways, revealing new potentialities, new levers for change. Fourth, the

university is the only mainstream institution that is open to participation by individuals of nearly any viewpoint.

These, at least, are facts, no matter how dull the teaching, how paternalistic the rules, how irrelevant the research

that goes on. Social relevance, the accessibility to knowledge, and internal openness--these together make the

university a potential base and agency in a movement of social change.

1. Any new left in America must be, in large measure, a left with real intellectual skills, committed to deliberativeness, honesty, reflection as working tools. The university permits the political life to be an

adjunct to the academic one, and action to be informed by reason.

2. A new left must be distributed in significant social roles throughout the country. The universities are distributed in such a manner.

3. A new left must consist of younger people who matured in the postwar world, and partially be directed to the recruitment of younger people. The university is an obvious beginning point.

4. A new left must include liberals and socialists, the former for their relevance, the latter for their sense of thoroughgoing reforms in the system. The university is a more sensible place than a political party for these

two traditions to begin to discuss their differences and look for political synthesis.

5. A new left must start controversy across the land, if national policies and national apathy are to be reversed. The ideal university is a community of controversy, within itself and in its effects on communities beyond.

6. A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the

political, social, and economic sources of their private troubles, and organize to change society. In a time of

supposed prosperity, moral complacency, and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching

stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve

uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of

these activities.

But we need not indulge in illusions: the university system cannot complete a movement of ordinary people making

demands for a better life. From its schools and colleges across the nation, a militant left might awaken its allies, and

by beginning the process towards peace, civil rights, and labor struggles, reinsert theory and idealism where too

often reign confusion and political barter. The power of students and faculty united is not only potential; it has

shown its actuality in the South, and in the reform movements of the North.

The bridge to political power, though, will be build through genuine cooperation, locally, nationally, and

internationally, between a new left of young people and an awakening community of allies. In each community we

must look within the university and act with confidence that we can be powerful, but we must look outwards to the

less exotic but more lasting struggles for justice.

To turn these mythic possibilities into realities will involve national efforts at university reform by an alliance of

students and faculty. They must wrest control of the educational process from the administrative bureaucracy. They

must make fraternal and functional contact with allies in labor, civil rights, and other liberal forces outside the

campus. They must import major public issues into the curriculum--research and teaching on problems of war and

peace is an outstanding example. They must make debate and controversy, not dull pedantic cant, the common style

for educational life. They must consciously build a base for their assault upon the loci of power.

As students for a democratic society, we are committed to stimulating this kind of social movement, this kind of

vision and program in campus and community across the country. If we appear to seek the unattainable, as it has

been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable.

Document 8: Black Panther’s Ten-Point Program (1966)

Drafted by the founders of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in

1966, the Ten-Point Program appeared in the second issue of their weekly newspaper,

Black Panther, on May 15, 1967. With this document the authors intended to plainly state

the cause and purpose of the Black Panther Party.

Black Panther Party Platform and Program

What We Want

What We Believe

1 . We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2 . We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed

income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of

production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community

can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3 . We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and

two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of

black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The

Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million

Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million black people; therefore, we feel that

this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the

land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent

housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want

education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have

knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else .

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that

does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being

victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the

racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are

dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to

the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should

arm themselves for self-defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a

fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people

from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials.

The 14th Amendment of the U.S . Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person

from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this

the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have

been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black

community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective,

a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial

subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their

national destiny.

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 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 a 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 shown,

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 unsurpations, 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.

Document 9: Caesar Chavez’s “Letter from Delano” (1969)

Born in Arizona in 1927, Caesar Chavez became one of the foremost labor leaders and civil

rights activists for Mexican-Americans. Chavez’s leadership of what would become the

United Farm Workers of America (UFW) turned the Delano Grape Strike (begun in 1965)

from a local protest into a nationwide consumer boycott of non-union grapes that did not

end until the 1970 with the table-grape growers of California finally reaching a collective

bargaining agreement with the UFW.

Good Friday 1969

E.L. Barr, Jr., President

California Grape and Tree Fruit League

717 Market St., San Francisco, California

Dear Mr. Barr:

I am sad to hear about your accusations in the press that our union movement and table grape boycott have been

successful because we have used violence and terror tactics. If what you say is true, I have been a failure and should

withdraw from the struggle; but you are left with the awesome moral responsibility, before God and man, to come

forward with whatever information you have so that corrective action can begin at once. If for any reason you fail to

come forth to substantiate your charges, then you must be held responsible for committing violence against us, albeit

violence of the tongue. I am convinced that you as a human being did not mean what you said but rather acted

hastily under pressure from the public relations firm that has been hired to try to counteract the tremendous moral

force of our movement. How many times we ourselves have felt the need to lash out in anger and bitterness.

Today on Good Friday 1969 we remember the life and the sacrifice of Martin Luther King, Jr., who gave himself

totally to the nonviolent struggle for peace and justice. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” Dr. King describes

better than I could our hopes for the strike and boycott: “Injustice must be exposed, with all the tensions its exposure

creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” For our part I admit

that we have seized upon every tactic and strategy consistent with the morality of our cause to expose that injustice

and thus to heighten the sensitivity of the American conscience so that farm workers will have without bloodshed

their own union and the dignity of bargaining with their agribusiness employers. By lying about the nature of our

movement, Mr. Barr, you are working against nonviolent social change. Unwittingly perhaps, you may unleash that

other force which our union by discipline and deed, censure and education has sought to avoid, that panacea

shortcut, that senseless violence which honors no color, class or neighborhood.

You must understand –I must make you understand –that our membership and the hopes and aspirations of the

hundreds of thousands of the poor and dispossessed that have been raised on our account are, above all, human

beings, no better and no worse than any other cross-section of human society; we are not saints because we are poor,

but by the same measure neither are we immoral. We are men and women who have suffered and endured much,

and not only because of our abject poverty but because we have been kept poor. The colors of our skins, the

languages of our cultural and native origins, the lack of formal education, the exclusion from the democratic

process, the numbers of our men slain in recent wars –all these burdens generation after generation have sought to

demoralize us, to break our human spirit. But God knows that we are not beasts of burden, agricultural implements,

or rented slaves; we are men. And mark this well, Mr. Barr, we are men locked in a death struggle against man’s

inhumanity to man in the industry that you represent. And this struggle itself gives meaning to our life and ennobles

our dying.

As your industry has experienced, our strikers here in Delano and those who represent us throughout the world are

well trained for this struggle. They have been under the gun, they have been kicked and beaten and herded by dogs,

they have been cursed and ridiculed, they have been stripped and chained and jailed, they have been sprayed with

the poisons used in the vineyards; but they have been taught not to lie down and die nor to flee in shame, but to

resist with every ounce of human endurance and spirit. To resist not with retaliation in kind but to overcome with

love and compassion, with ingenuity and creativity, with hard work and longer hours, with stamina and patient

tenacity, with truth and public appeal, with friends and allies, with nobility and discipline, with politics and law, and

with prayer and fasting. They were not trained in a month or even a year; after all, this new harvest season will mark

our fourth full year of strike and even now we continue to plan and prepare for the years to come. Time

accomplishes for the poor what money does for the rich.

This is not to pretend that we have everywhere been successful enough or that we have not made mistakes. And

while we do not belittle or underestimate our adversaries –for they are the rich and the powerful and they possess the

land –we are not afraid nor do we cringe from the confrontation. We welcome it! We have planned for it! We know

that our cause is just, that history is a story of social revolution, and that the poor shall inherit the land.

Once again, I appeal to you as the representative of your industry and as a man. I ask you to recognize and bargain

with our union before the economic pressure of the boycott and strike takes an irrevocable toll; but if not, I ask you

to at least sit down with us to discuss the safeguards necessary to keep our historical struggle free of violence. I

make this appeal because as one of the leaders of our nonviolent movement, I know and accept my responsibility for

preventing, if possible, the destruction of human life and property. For these reasons, and knowing of Gandhi’s

admonition that fasting is the last resort in place of the sword, during a most critical time in our movement last

February 1968 I undertook a 25-day fast. I repeat to you the principle enunciated to the membership at the start of

the fast: if to build our union required the deliberate taking of life, either the life of a grower or his child, or the life

of a farm worker or his child, then I choose not to see the union built.

Mr. Barr, let me be painfully honest with you. You must understand these things. We advocate militant nonviolence

as our means for social revolution and to achieve justice for our people, but we are not blind or deaf to the desperate

and moody winds of human frustration, impatience and rage that blow among us. Gandhi himself admitted that if his

only choice were cowardice or violence, he would choose violence. Men are not angels, and time and tide wait for

no man. Precisely because of these powerful human emotions, we have tried to involve masses of people in their

own struggle. Participation and self-determination remain the best experience of freedom, and free men instinctively

prefer democratic change and even protect the rights guaranteed to seek it. Only the enslaved in despair have need of

violent overthrow.

This letter does not express all that is in my heart, Mr. Barr. But if it says nothing else it says that we do not hate you

or rejoice to see your industry destroyed; we hate the agribusiness system that seeks to keep us enslaved, and we

shall overcome and change it not by retaliation or bloodshed but by a determined nonviolent struggle carried on by

those masses of farm workers who intend to be free and human.

Sincerely yours,

Cesar E. Chavez

United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Delano, CA

Document 10: Equal Rights Amendment (1972)

Originally drafted by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, this proposed amendment was first

introduced in Congress in 1921, but did not get approved until 1972. Despite initial

widespread, bipartisan support, conservative opposition to the amendment grew rapidly.

Even with Congress extending the deadline for ratification until June 30, 1982, the

amendment ultimately failed to be ratified by three-fourths of the States.

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 208

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to equal rights for men and women.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-

thirds of each House concurring therein), That The following article is proposed as an amendment to the

Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when

ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by

the Congress:

‘‘SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State

on account of sex.

‘‘SECTION 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this

article.

‘‘SECTION 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.’’

Document 11: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972

Signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon on June 23, 1972, Title IX of the Education

Amendments of 1972 has become one of the most important pieces of modern educational

legislation in the United States. Per the Department of Justice, “Title IX applies, with a few

specific exceptions, to all aspects of federally funded education programs or activities. In

addition to traditional educational institutions such as colleges, universities, and

elementary and secondary schools, Title IX also applies to any education or training

program operated by a recipient of federal financial assistance.”

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be

denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity

receiving federal financial assistance.

Document 12: [excerpt] Remarks of President George H.W. Bush at the

signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)

Signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on July 26, 1990, the American with

Disabilities Act is one of the most comprehensive civil rights bills ever passed in the United

States.

Evan, thank you so much. And welcome to every one of you, out there in this splendid scene of hope, spread across

the South Lawn of the White House. I want to salute the Members of the United States Congress, the House and the

Senate who are with us today -- active participants in making this day come true. This is, indeed, an incredible day --

especially for the thousands of people across the Nation who have given so much of their time, their vision, and their

courage to see this act become a reality.

You know, I started trying to put together a list of all the people who should be mentioned today. But when the list

started looking a little longer than the Senate testimony for the bill, I decided I better give up, or that we'd never get

out of here before sunset….

This is an immensely important day, a day that belongs to all of you. Everywhere I look, I see people who have

dedicated themselves to making sure that this day would come to pass: my friends from Congress, as I say, who

worked so diligently with the best interest of all at heart, Democrats and Republicans; members of this

administration -- and I'm pleased to see so many top officials and members of my Cabinet here today who brought

their caring and expertise to this fight; and then, the organizations -- so many dedicated organizations for people

with disabilities, who gave their time and their strength; and perhaps most of all, everyone out there and others –

across the breadth of this nation are 43 million Americans with disabilities. You have made this happen. All of you

have made this happen. To all of you, I just want to say your triumph is that your bill will now be law, and that this

day belongs to you. On behalf of our nation, thank you very, very much.

Three weeks ago we celebrated our nation's Independence Day. Today we're here to rejoice in and celebrate another

``independence day,'' one that is long overdue. With today's signing of the landmark Americans for Disabilities Act,

every man, woman, and child with a disability can now pass through once-closed doors into a bright new era of

equality, independence, and freedom. As I look around at all these joyous faces, I remember clearly how many years

of dedicated commitment have gone into making this historic new civil rights act a reality. It's been the work of a

true coalition, a strong and inspiring coalition of people who have shared both a dream and a passionate

determination to make that dream come true. It's been a coalition in the finest spirit -- a joining of Democrats and

Republicans, of the legislative and the executive branches, of Federal and State agencies, of public officials and

private citizens, of people with disabilities and without.

This historic act is the world's first comprehensive declaration of equality for people with disabilities -- the first. Its

passage has made the United States the international leader on this human rights issue. Already, leaders of several

other countries, including Sweden, Japan, the Soviet Union, and all 12 members of the EEC, have announced that

they hope to enact now similar legislation.

Our success with this act proves that we are keeping faith with the spirit of our courageous forefathers who wrote in

the Declaration of Independence: ``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.'' These words have been our guide for more than two

centuries as we've labored to form our more perfect union. But tragically, for too many Americans, the blessings of

liberty have been limited or even denied. The Civil Rights Act of '64 took a bold step towards righting that wrong.

But the stark fact remained that people with disabilities were still victims of segregation and discrimination, and this

was intolerable. Today's legislation brings us closer to that day when no Americans will ever again be deprived of

their basic guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This act is powerful in its simplicity. It will ensure that people with disabilities are given the basic guarantees for

which they have worked so long and so hard: independence, freedom of choice, control of their lives, the

opportunity to blend fully and equally into the rich mosaic of the American mainstream. Legally, it will provide our

disabled community with a powerful expansion of protections and then basic civil rights. It will guarantee fair and

just access to the fruits of American life which we all must be able to enjoy. And then, specifically, first the ADA

ensures that employers covered by the act cannot discriminate against qualified individuals with disabilities. Second,

the ADA ensures access to public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, and offices. And

third, the ADA ensures expanded access to transportation services. And fourth, the ADA ensures equivalent

telephone services for people with speech or hearing impediments.

These provisions mean so much to so many. To one brave girl in particular, they will mean the world. Lisa Carl, a

young Washington State woman with cerebral palsy, who I'm told is with us today, now will always be admitted to

her hometown theater. Lisa, you might not have been welcome at your theater, but I'll tell you -- welcome to the

White House. We're glad you're here. The ADA is a dramatic renewal not only for those with disabilities but for all

of us, because along with the precious privilege of being an American comes a sacred duty to ensure that every other

American's rights are also guaranteed.

Together, we must remove the physical barriers we have created and the social barriers that we have accepted. For

ours will never be a truly prosperous nation until all within it prosper. For inspiration, we need look no further than

our own neighbors. With us in that wonderful crowd out there are people representing 18 of the daily Points of Light

that I've named for their extraordinary involvement with the disabled community. We applaud you and your shining

example. Thank you for your leadership for all that are here today….

I also want to say a special word to our friends in the business community. You have in your hands the key to the

success of this act, for you can unlock a splendid resource of untapped human potential that, when freed, will enrich

us all. I know there have been concerns that the ADA may be vague or costly, or may lead endlessly to litigation.

But I want to reassure you right now that my administration and the United States Congress have carefully crafted

this Act. We've all been determined to ensure that it gives flexibility, particularly in terms of the timetable of

implementation, and we've been committed to containing the costs that may be incurred.

This act does something important for American business, though -- and remember this: You've called for new

sources of workers. Well, many of our fellow citizens with disabilities are unemployed. They want to work, and they

can work, and this is a tremendous pool of people. And remember, this is a tremendous pool of people who will

bring to jobs diversity, loyalty, proven low turnover rate, and only one request: the chance to prove themselves. And

when you add together Federal, State, local, and private funds, it costs almost $200 billion annually to support

Americans with disabilities -- in effect, to keep them dependent. Well, when given the opportunity to be

independent, they will move proudly into the economic mainstream of American life, and that's what this legislation

is all about.

Our problems are large, but our unified heart is larger. Our challenges are great, but our will is greater. And in our

America, the most generous, optimistic nation on the face of the Earth, we must not and will not rest until every man

and woman with a dream has the means to achieve it.

And today, America welcomes into the mainstream of life all of our fellow citizens with disabilities. We embrace

you for your abilities and for your disabilities, for our similarities and indeed for our differences, for your past

courage and your future dreams. Last year, we celebrated a victory of international freedom. Even the strongest

person couldn't scale the Berlin Wall to gain the elusive promise of independence that lay just beyond. And so,

together we rejoiced when that barrier fell.

And now I sign legislation which takes a sledgehammer to another wall, one which has for too many generations

separated Americans with disabilities from the freedom they could glimpse, but not grasp. Once again, we rejoice as

this barrier falls for claiming together we will not accept, we will not excuse, we will not tolerate discrimination in

America.

With, again, great thanks to the Members of the United States Senate, leaders of whom are here today, and those

who worked so tirelessly for this legislation on both sides of the aisles. And to those Members of the House of

Representatives with us here today, Democrats and Republicans as well, I salute you. And on your behalf, as well as

the behalf of this entire country, I now lift my pen to sign this Americans with Disabilities Act and say: Let the

shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. God bless you all.

Document 13: Maya Angelou “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993)

The following poem was delivered by Maya Angelou as part of President William Jefferson

“Bill” Clinton’s First Inauguration on January 20, 1993. Maya Angelou is widely regarded

as one of the foremost African-American voices in literature, particularly her

groundbreaking autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1969.

On The Pulse Of Morning A Rock, A River, A Tree

Hosts to species long since departed,

Mark the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens

Of their sojourn here

On our planet floor,

Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom

Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow.

I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than

The angels, have crouched too long in

The bruising darkness,

Have lain too long

Face down in ignorance.

Your mouths spelling words

Armed for slaughter.

The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,

But do not hide your face.

Across the wall of the world,

A river sings a beautiful song,

Come rest here by my side.

Each of you a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.

Your armed struggles for profit

Have left collars of waste upon

My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.

Yet, today I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more.

Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs

The Creator gave to me when I

And the tree and stone were one.

Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow

And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.

The river sings and sings on.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing river and the wise rock.

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,

The African and Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the tree.

Today, the first and last of every tree

Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.

Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.

Each of you, descendant of some passed on

Traveller, has been paid for.

You, who gave me my first name,

You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,

You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,

Then forced on bloody feet,

Left me to the employment of other seekers-

Desperate for gain, starving for gold.

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,

Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the tree planted by the river,

Which will not be moved.

I, the rock, I the river, I the tree

I am yours- your passages have been paid.

Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need

For this bright morning dawning for you.

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,

Need not be lived again.

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you.

Give birth again

To the dream.

Women, children, men,

Take it into the palms of your hands.

Mold it into the shape of your most

Private need. Sculpt it into

The image of your most public self.

Lift up your hearts.

Each new hour holds new chances

For new beginnings.

Do not be wedded forever

To fear, yoked eternally

To brutishness.

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

Here, on the pulse of this fine day

You may have the courage

To look up and out upon me,

The rock, the river, the tree, your country.

No less to Midas than the mendicant.

No less to you now than the mastodon then.

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister's eyes,

Into your brother's face, your country

And say simply

Very simply

With hope

Good morning.

Document 14: President-Elect Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (2008)

There was no denying the historical magnitude of the Presidential Election of 2008.

Speaking at a rally of an estimated 240,000 people at Grant Park in Chicago on November

4, 2008, President-Elect Barack Obama reflected upon the moment and

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Sen. McCain.

Sen. McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Gov. Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady Michelle Obama.

Sasha and Malia I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best -- the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.

You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder

and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those -- to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America -- the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "We Shall Overcome." Yes we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Defining who an American is and what rights they have has been a central question since the

United States founding. While the 14th Amendment, ratified during the Reconstruction Era,

formally defined citizenship many of those who claimed the rights associated with it found those

opportunities expanding and contracting with the tides of war, the upheavals of economic and

political transformations, as well as the evolution of American society and culture. These

documents reflect the struggles and opportunities inherent in both the exclusivity and inclusivity

of American citizenship which remains a designation very much a work in progress.

Based upon your reading of these selected primary documents and incorporating such

secondary sources as your textbook and lecture notes, I would like you to answer the

following 5 Questions. Please provide specific examples from these documents that support

your arguments.

1) Why do the authors of Document 1 and Document 2 believe it is necessary to strictly define Americans, and promote efforts to assimilate, or “Americanize,” immigrants in the United

States? How do President Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Smith’s arguments differ? Do you

find their arguments persuasive? Why or why not? Based upon Document 3, how might Woody

Guthrie respond to each of those proposals?

2) In examining Document 4 and Document 6, how did the onset of the Cold War redefine what it meant to be an American? What role do these documents suggest loyal citizens play in

waging war against Communism? In examining the political cartoon (Document 5), how does

the artist critique the “anti-subversive” efforts that took place during the Second Red Scare? In

what ways does the McCarthy era continue to influence American society?

3) The turbulent 1960s saw numerous attempts to identify the root problems within American society and the role of citizens in resolving them. In examining Document 7, Document 8, and

Document 9, what common problems are identified within American society? What are some of

the differences? What role did each of these documents suggest Americans should play in

achieving social justice? Are their arguments persuasive? Why or why not?

4) The last several decades of the Twentieth Century saw the emergence of new groups of Americans claiming rights as citizens. To what extent does the failure of the Equal Rights

Amendment (Document 10) to be ratified, but the signing of Title IX (Document 11) into law,

signal about the changing role and rights of women in modern America? After reading President

George H.W. Bush’s remarks (Document 12), why do you believe it took so long for the country

to acknowledge and protect the rights of the disabled?

5) How does Maya Angelou’s inauguration poem (Document 13) reflect upon the identity of “hyphenated Americans” by the early 1990s? In reading Document 14, how does President-

Elect Barack Obama define Americanism? Looking back over documents 1-13, did his election,

as the first person of color to become President of the United States, resolve the questions and

crises surrounding the definition of an American citizen? In a post-9/11 world, has America

progressed in its inclusiveness? Why or why not?