Background Essay on the 1968 Latino Student Walkouts
Social Movements
This short essay describes the social, political, and educational climate that resulted in the 1968 Los Angeles walkouts.
American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
Sources: Vicki Ruiz, <em>From Out of the Shadows: From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America</em> (Oxford, 1999); George Sanchez, <em>Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945</em> (Oxford, 1995); and F. Arturo Rosales, <em>Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</em> (Arte Publico Press, 1997).
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2008
Copyright American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning
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English
Article/Essay
Postwar America (1946-1975)
"Latino Student Walkouts: In 35 Years, What Has Changed?"
Civil Rights and Citizenship
Social Movements
<p>Professor and author Carlos Muñoz, Jr. describes his participation in the 1968 Los Angeles walkouts and the aftermath. He then explores the current inequalities in education and calls for a new wave of student activism and protest.</p>
Carlos Muñoz
Carlos Muñoz Jr., "Latino Student Walkouts: In 35 Years, What Has Changed?" 1 April 2003, from <em>Teaching Tolerance</em>, www.tolerance.org.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2003
Used by permission of the author.
English
Article/Essay
Postwar America (1946-1975)
"Our Challenge is to Keep Willie's Memory Alive"
Civil Rights and Citizenship
Social Movements
William (Willie) Velásquez founded the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) in 1974. The son of a butcher from San Antonio, Texas, he spent his adult life as a community organizer and political activist. Inspired by the African-American civil rights movement, he sought to inform and empower Mexican Americans about the democratic process. In the interview below, Antonio Gonzalez, who took over as president of SVREP after Velásquez's death in 1988, spoke with a reporter about Velásquez's mission and legacy.
Joe Nick Patoski
Joe Nick Patoski, "Our Challenges Is to Keep Willie's Memory Alive," 2004 from <em>Voices of Civil Rights</em>, http://www.voicesofcivilrights.org/civil3_gonzalez.html.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2004
English
Article/Essay
Contemporary US (1976 to the present)
Angelina Grimke Argues for Women's Political Rights
Civil Rights and Citizenship
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
In this letter Angelina Grimke, abolitionist and women's rights advocate, argues for the right of propertied women to participate in government through petitions despite their lack of enfranchisement. This letter was a part of a series of essays that Grimke publicly addressed to Catherine Beecher. Beecher strongly supported female education, but believed that women's proper place was in the home, as wives and mothers, rather than in the public sphere.
Angelina Grimke
Angelina Grimke, <em> Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism</em> (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 111-113; from Paul Lauter, ed. <em>Heath Anthology of American Literature</em>, vol. B, 5th ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 2089.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1837
English
Article/Essay
Antebellum America (1816-1860)
"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"
Slavery and Abolition
Social Movements
This medallion was created by Josiah Wedgwood, a British ceramics maker and abolitionist, around 1787. The image of the kneeling slave in chains asking "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" became an international symbol of the abolitionist movement. The image was widely reproduced during the late eighteenth century, appearing on crockery, snuffboxes, and jewelry, becoming a fashionable accessory among English abolitionists. Benjamin Franklin, who received a set of the medallions while serving as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, wrote of the image's effectiveness that it was "equal to that of the best written Pamphlet, in procuring favour to those oppressed People."
Josiah Wedgwood
William Hackwood, <em>Medallion</em>, after 1786, tinted stoneware, 1 1/4 x 1 1/4 in. (3.2 x 3.2 cm), Brooklyn Museum, http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/2586.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1786 (Circa)
Used by permission of the Brooklyn Museum.
English
Artifact
Revolution and New Nation (1751-1815)
A Reformer Deplores the Poverty Caused by Industrial Progress
Social Movements
Work
Henry George was a reformer and utopian whose 1886 New York City mayoral campaign as the Workingman's Party candidate had the makings of a popular uprising. Although George finished second, behind Democrat Abram S. Hewitt and ahead of Republican Teddy Roosevelt, the campaign sent shockwaves around the established political and financial order, and electrified workers with its broad alliance of socialists, unions, Irish and German immigrants, and radical Catholics. In <em>Progress and Poverty</em>, his most famous work, George outlined the great disparities between wealth and want that defined his era and proposed a solution: a "Single Tax" on land that George believed would provide enough revenue to offset the social imbalances that produced poverty. Although George's solution has largely been forgotten, his legacy as one of the Gilded Age's most passionate reformers lives on.
Henry George
Henry George, <em>Progress and Poverty</em> (San Francisco: W.M. Hinton & Co., 1879); from Leon Fink, ed., <em>Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era</em> (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001): 20-22.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1879
English
Book
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
<em>Freedom's Daughters</em> (Excerpt)
Gender and Sexuality
Social Movements
Lynne Olson's <em>Freedom's Daughters</em> shines light on the often-overlooked role that women played in the civil rights movement. In the preface to her book, Olson sketches some brief biographies of a few of the outstanding female civil rights leaders and activists, notes the intersection between the civil rights and women's movements, and sets out to rectify what she characterizes as the omission of women from most historical and journalistic accounts of the era.
Lynne Olson
Lynne Olson, <em>Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970</em> (New York: Scribner, 2002) 13-17.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
2002
English
Book
Postwar America (1946-1975)
"The Fight for Educational Reform": Chicano Youth Demand Change
Social Movements
In this chapter from <em>Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</em> F. Arturo Rosales explains the environment from which this Chicano youth movement developed and the tactics used by this student movement to bring about educational reform during the 1960s and early 1970s.
F. Arturo Rosales
F. Arturo Rosales, <em>Chicano: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</em> (Arte Publico Press, 1997), 174-195
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1997
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English
Book
Postwar America (1946-1975)
<em>Harper's Weekly</em> Mocks the Theories of Henry George
Social Movements
In this political cartoon from <em>Harper's Weekly</em>, the theories of Henry George, the Workingman's Party candidate for Mayor of New York, are depicted as leading to mob violence and misrule. With a caption featuring a quote from George (taken out of context) that refers to the horrors of the French Revolution, the cartoonist suggests that the discrepancies between the "theory" and "practice" of reformers like George will likewise lead to violent excess on the part of the "undesirable elements" the poor and immigrant workers whose votes the George campaign sought.
Unknown
"Reform-By George," <em>Harper's Weekly</em>, 23 October 1886; from <em>HarpWeek</em>, Cartoon of the Day, http://www.harpweek.com/09Cartoon/BrowseByDateCartoon.asp?Month=Octoberandamp;Date=23.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1886
English
Cartoon
Industrialization and Expansion (1877-1913)
African-American Women Threaten a Bus Boycott in Montgomery
Civil Rights and Citizenship
Social Movements
This letter from the Women's Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, threatens a bus boycott by the city's African Americans if demands for fair treatment are not met.
Jo Ann Robinson
Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., <em>The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader</em> (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 44-45; also from <em>Historical Thinking Matters</em>, http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/inquiry.php?sourceID=19&page=inquiry&moduleID=5&tab=resources.
American Social History Project / Center for Media and Learning
1954
1835, 1836
English
Diary/Letter
Postwar America (1946-1975)