HIST 2154 - Minorities in US History (OER): Module 6: "Fighting for America": War and Resistance, 1920-1970

World War II

• Navajo Code Talkers' Dictionary

American Indian Movement (Native American Rights)

• Do Not Refuse Us: Martha Sara, 1969
• Native Americans Occupy Alcatraz, 1969

Topic 2: African American Voices in the Mid-Twentieth Century

1920s/1930s

• Marcus Garvey, Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, 1921
• Alain Locke on "The New Negro," 1925
• Amateur Night in Harlem, 1938

World War II

• A Phillip Randolph and Franklin Roosevelt on Racial Discrimination in the Defense Industry, 1941
• “The Call to Negro America to March on Washington, 1941
• "The Double V Campaign"
• “99^th Celebrates Combat Anniversary: Wins 8 Fights in One Day in Anzio Battle” (Tuskegee Airmen) 
• Photograph: The Tuskegee Airmen, 1941

Civil Rights Movement

• “A Definite and Imperative Need for Legislation Against Discrimination,” 1954
• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
• Rosa Parks on Life in Montgomery, Alabama,1956-1958
• “Part of the Government Activity”: Testimony from an African-American Taxpayer Unable to Vote in Alabama,1958
• “Bigger Than a Hamburger” by Ella Baker, 1960
• Report of the First Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,1960
• Virginia Durr-Letter re: Freedom Riders in Montgomery, 1961
• Fannie Lou Hamer: Testimony at the Democratic National Convention, 1964
• SNCC Bulletin: Information on Today’s Brutality in Selma, 1965
• Civil Rights Movement Documents: Selma Alabama and the March to Montgomery, 1963-1965
• Stokely Carmichael Speech on Black Power, 1966.
• Civil Rights Movement: Reports & Letters From the Field
• Oral History Interview with John Lewis, 1973. 
• DPLA Document Set (Images): Activism in the US 

Topic 3: Women’s Voices in the Mid-Twentieth Century

1920s/1930s

• Now We Can Begin, 1920
• A Flapper's Appeal to Parents, 1922

World War II

• The Role of American Women in Wartime (Speech by Clare Booth Luce), 1942
• Letter from Dorothy Avery, 1943

Second Wave Feminism & the Equal Rights Amendment

• Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, Excerpt and Letters to the Author, 1963
• National Organization of Women's "Statement of Purpose," 1966
• Statement by Hon. Shirley Chisholm Representative about Equal Rights Amendment, 1970
• Gloria Steinem Delineates American Gender Myths during ERA Hearings, 1970.
• (Audio) Phyllis Schlafly, opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment, speaking about women’s role in society, 1972.
• Barbara Charline Jordan 1976 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, 1976
• DPLA Document Set (Images): Activism in the US 

Topic 4: Latinx Voices in the Mid-Twentieth Century

1920s/1930s

• "I'd Rather Not Be on Relief," 1938

World War II

• Carlos E. Castaneda Testifies on Job Discrimination Against Mexican Americans in War Defense Industries, 1945
• "Pachucos in the Making": Roots of the Zoot

Brown Power/Chicano Movement

• Juanita Garcia on Migrant Labor, 1952
• Hernandez v. Texas, 1954
• Proclamation of the Delano Grape Workers, 1969
• “The Cycle of Poverty”: Mexican-American Migrant Farmworkers Testify before Congress
• "From Rumble to Revolution: The Young Lords; Gangs and Revolution," Ramparts,  1970

Topic 5: Asian American Voices in the Mid-Twentieth Century

World War II

• Tosh Yasutake and Mitsuye May Yamada Discuss Tosh’s Decision to Join U.S. Army (442^nd) and Visiting Their Father at a U.S. Department of Justice Incarceration Camp
• Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga on Japanese Internment, 1942
• Three letters between a Chinese-­American husband and wife, 1946 - 1948
• A letter from Kenji Okuda to Norio Higano from Camp Harmony about his feelings on internment on Memorial Day, 1942.
• Children in Internment Camps
• DPLA Document Set: Japanese Internment

Asian American Movement

• “The Emergence of Yellow Power in America” Excerpt. Amy Uyematsu.
• The Advent and Origins of the Asian American Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Personal Perspective

Crash Course US History [CC-BY-SA]

• The Roaring 20s
• The Great Depression
• The New Deal
• World War II, Part 1
• World War II, Part 2
• The Cold War
• Civil Rights and the 1950s
• The 1960s in America

Crash Course Black American History [CC-BY-SA]

• The Red Summer of 1919
• Arts & Letters of the Harlem Renaissance
• The Great Depression

Black History in Two Minutes [Licensing/Use Statement]

• Mamie Till Mobley
• School Integration
• Jackie Robinson
• The Red Summer
• John Lewis
• Henrietta Lacks
• Ella Baker
• The Tuskegee Study
• Civil Rights Movement
• Harlem Renaissance
• The Double V Campaign of World War II
• The Birth of the Black Panthers
• Malcolm X
• Shirley Chisholm
• The Tulsa Massacre

Other

• Sex Discrimination [Crash Course Government, CC-BY]

The American Yawp Textbook [CC-BY-SA]

• The American Yawp, Chapter 22
• The American Yawp, Chapter 23
• The American Yawp, Chapter 24
• The American Yawp, Chapter 25
• The American Yawp, Chapter 26
• The American Yawp, Chapter 27
• The American Yawp, Chapter 28

African American History Textbook [CC-BY-SA]

• Great Migration, World War I, Great Depression, pp. 206-231
• African Americans and World War II, pp. 232-239
• African Americans and the Civil Rights Movement, pp. 240-270

Women & the American Story [Licensing & Use Statement]

• The Jazz Age
• The Great Depression
• World War II
• Post-War
• Cold War Beginnings
• Growing Tensions
• Feminism & the Backlash

New World Encyclopedia [CC-BY-SA]

• Japanese American Internment

The Conversation [CC-BY-ND]

• 100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, lessons from my grandfather
• African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home
• The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority’ to the ‘Chinese virus’
• Allison Davis: Forgotten black scholar studied – and faced – structural racism in 1940s America
• The hidden history of black nationalist women’s political activism
• The untold stories of women in the 1967 Detroit rebellion and its aftermath
• Rosie the Riveters discovered a wartime California dream
• The police beating that opened America’s eyes to Jim Crow’s brutality
• Harris isn’t actually the first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States.
• How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America
• Trailblazing women who broke into engineering in the 1970s reflect on what’s changed – and what hasn’t
• The Brown v. Board of Education case didn’t start how you think it did
• In a state wrought with racial tension, Jackie Robinson suited up for his first spring training game
• Repatriating the archives: Lumbee scholars find their people and bring them home
• A quest to reconstruct Baltimore’s American Indian ‘reservation’

The Lowdown [Licensing & Statement]

• The Summer of Rage: Lessons from the Race Riots in Detroit and Newark 50 Years Ago
• The Case for Loving: The Supreme Court Legalized Interracial Marriage Just 50 Years Ago

Other

• American Indian Movement [MNopedia, CC-BY-SA]
• Chicano Civil Rights Movement [Library of Congress, Public Domain]

• Online
• Face to Face

• Concept Knowledge Self Assessment (Pre/Post)
• Discussion Options
• Study Guide

Stanford History Education Group (SHEG)
requires free account to download teaching materials

• Mexican Migrants in the 1930s
• Japanese American Incarceration
• Ansel Adams at Manzanar
• Zoot Suit Riots
• NAACP Letters
• Public Housing
• Women in the 1950s
• Little Rock Nine
• Montgomery Bus Boycott
• JFK and Civil Rights
• Equal Rights Amendment

History Matters (HM)

• Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry
• Jackie Robinson, Civil Rights Advocate

National Archives: Docs Teach [Public Domain] 

• Analyzing Jackie Robinson's White House Letter

Other

• Japanese Internment: Fear Itself [Library of Congress, Public Domain]
• Native Words, Native Warriors [NMAI, CC-0]

Native American Voices 

• What strategies did Native Americans adopt to fight segregation and discrimination?  How was this movement similar to other anti-discrimination movements, and in what ways was it different? 

African American Voices 

• What role did African Americans play in World War II? How did that drive the civil rights activism of the next 25 years? 

• What strategies did African Americans adopt to fight segregation and discrimination?  How were the civil rights and black power movements similar and in what ways were they different? 

• How and why did the civil rights movement influence other minority freedom/rights movements?  What lessons from the civil rights movement are most instructive to us today? 

Women’s Voices 

• How were the lives of women changing from 1920-1950? What progress was made after the ratification of the 19th Amendment? What kinds of discrimination remained? 

• What strategies did women adopt to fight discrimination?  How was this movement similar to other anti-discrimination movements, and in what ways was it different? 

• This struggle for women’s rights has often been characterized by a pattern of activism & backlash. What does that mean in this? What were activists pushing for? Why did opponents resist that activism? What was the outcome for legislation like the Equal Rights Amendment? 

Latinx Voices 

• What kinds of discrimination did Latinx Americans face between 1930 and 1960? 
  What role did the Grape Pickers’ Strike play in the emergence of the Brown Power/Chicano Movement? 

• What strategies did Latinx Americans adopt to fight segregation and discrimination?  How was this movement similar to other anti-discrimination movements, and in what ways was it different? 

Asian America Voices 

• What kinds of discrimination did Asian Americans face during World War II? Why? 

• What strategies did Asian American Indians adopt to fight segregation and discrimination?  How was this movement similar to other anti-discrimination movements, and in what ways was it different? 

Synthesis Questions 

• How did wartime conditions, both in the service and on the home front shed light on the injustices and restrictions minorities faced?   

• Were any minorities able to use the war to advance themselves politically, socially, and/or culturally?  Who and how? 

• List and explain one example that suggests U.S. progress promoting or protecting minorities during this era and one example that suggests there has not been any progress up to this era.  What do these reveal about the process of improving mistakes and shortcomings of the U.S.?  How is this instructive to us today? 

• Compare and contrast the various struggles for equal rights that characterized this period. What did they have in common? How did they differ?