In 1907, Congress formed the Dillingham Commission to investigate the origins and effects of the massive wave of immigration then underway. The Commission compiled a variety of data about immigrants and their children. This chart shows the percentage…

In 1907, Congress formed the Dillingham Commission to investigate the origins and effects of the massive wave of immigration then underway. The Commission compiled a variety of data about immigrants and their children. This chart shows the percentage…

In this activity, students work with quantitative data (charts, graphs, and tables) from the 1910 census and the 1911 Dillingham Commission Report to understand the lives of immigrants in the Ellis Island era. The activity includes an option designed…

In this game, students are assigned different immigrant identities and advance based on their access to economic opportunity and religious, political, and social liberties at different times in U.S. history.

This essay introduces Manhattan's Five Points neighborhood and the people who lived there.

This political cartoon from 1880 depicts the Irish as "the one element that won't mix" in America's melting pot of immigrants. Clutching a green flag and dagger, the Irishman is characterized as a violent proponent of Irish nationalism. His sash…

This call for unity was written in Ireland by Irish and American abolitionists in the summer of 1841. The petition was eventually signed by 60,000 Irish men and women. Catholic abolitionists in Ireland wanted their countrymen in America to draw…

A selection of marriage records transcribed from the original marriage certificates of the Church of the Transfiguration located in Lower Manhattan in present-day Chinatown.

This sample of account records from Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank provides evidence about the lives of immigrants living in New York City during the mid-nineteenth century. All account holders included in this sample lived in the Five Points…

The Five Points Mission grew out of several Protestant missionary organizations that aimed to improve conditions in the Five Points. At first they attempted to convert residents from Catholicism; later the Mission obtained pledges from Five Pointers…