by Liam Fortin

Introduction and Review of Existing Literature

The goal of this post is to examine the industries occupied by first generation immigrants in the United States during the latter half of the Industrial Revolution, as well as the differences in first generation immigrants’ industries with consideration to both region and sex. To understand such trends is crucial for a few reasons. By the end of the Second Industrial Revolution, on the eve of World War I, first generation immigrants and their children comprised 38.4 percent of the United States Population. (Jaher 1968, 81) In many of the larger cities alone, such as New York, Chicago, and Detroit, three-quarters of the population was composed of immigrants and their children. (Hirschmann 2009) The impetus for this post lies with the decided impact of first generation immigrants on the makeup of America and its workforce. Continue reading →

Introduction

The 2016 election laid bare the middle class’ frustration with its economic and demographic development. Middle class Americans no longer believe they embody the spirit of the American dream, but rather the government’s broken promises. But, who are America’s middle class? In this paper, I investigate the American middle class (AMC)’s composition and development from 1960 to 2010. I analyze four dimensions of middle class development: occupational, demographic, economic, and racial. Recent research on the AMC separates economic and demographic analysis from social and racial.  Economic analysis is limited to only “middle income” Americans, whose income is, according to Pew, between sixty-six and two-hundred percent of the median household’s (Pew Research Group 2015, n.p.). Social and racial analyses focus on middle class identity: lifestyles that Americans associate with the middle class. This project builds a foundation for research into the middle class as an identity and as an income bracket. My research is motivated by the following questions: Who are considered middle class in America? What measurable qualities exist to understand the AMC beyond income? What are the long term trends for the AMC along my dimensions of analysis?

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Introduction

Having recently overtaken Hispanics as the fastest-growing racial group in the United States, Asian-Americans are notable as a group not only for their socioeconomic success but also for their “foreignness” despite their nearly two-century-long history in America dating back to the late 1840s. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center analysis, fully 74% of Asian-American adults were born abroad, only half of which claimed to speak English “very well” (“The Rise of Asian Americans”). I will be investigating assimilation outcomes of Asian-Americans by studying their demographics from 1940 to 2000, a period encompassing the conflict with Japan during the Second World War, extensive military involvement in Korea and Vietnam, and the modern surge of immigration following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act which lifted national origin restrictions barring immigration from nearly all Asian countries.

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Introduction

The 1st and 2nd Great Migration are known as the two instances where African-Americans migrated from the South to other regions of the United States. The 1st Great Migration provided an unprecedented opportunity for African-Americans living in the South – the ability to finally escape agrarian employment by obtaining industrial employment from a skyrocketing demand for military products to assist the United States and the Allied forces in World War I (Grossman 1989, 13). Although given this opportunity initially in the 1^st Great Migration, between 1910 and 1920, about 430,000 African-Americans left the South (Gregory 2005, 15). A surprisingly low number for a new “lease-on-life.” The 2nd Great Migration, which was fueled by the more technologically advanced World War II, once again provided African-Americans with an opportunity to further the southern diaspora movement. With more economic opportunities as a result of the country still recovering from the after effects of the Great Depression, about 1.45 million African-Americans escaped their suppressive state in the South for a better life in the North and West (Ibid, 13).

Although these massive migrations are seen as major events in African-American history, a new movement has occurred since the 1970s. Labeled as the New Great Migration, African-Americans have begun to migrate to the South since the beginning of the 1970s. As William Frey note, “the region’s economic, amenity, and cultural ‘pull’ factors now outweigh the ‘push’ factors that predominated in past decades” (Frey 2004, 2). The two primary research question presented in this report is: What are the primary explanations that influenced African-Americans to return to the South, an area that is historically tied to the oppression and commoditization of African-Americans? Furthermore, what is the demographic make-up of African-Americans participating in the New Great Migration?

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Introduction

Discrimination has long been a part of the United States’ culture, a stain-like reminder of our nation’s past. From 1940-1990 government policy, location, and time period have all played major roles in both inciting and restraining the ongoing racist culture that has affected the lives of so many Americans. When President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act in 1944, he passed the first “race-neutral” piece of legislation for veterans in the United States (Turner and Bound 2002, 5). This bill was passed with the goal of easing the transition for veterans returning home from the Second World War in Europe. This legislation made it possible for tens of thousands of veterans to obtain undergraduate degrees by funding their college educations (Altschuler and Blumin 2009, 6). The government then extended this bill to Korean War veterans in 1952 and Vietnam veterans in 1966 and continued to provide the same aid for the various returning servicemen through this time period (Dortch 2016, 7).

While most Americans regard the GI Bill as an unqualified success, one question that arises about its triumph is whether veterans of all races experienced the positive impacts of the bill equally. Many Americans, including former President Bill Clinton, praise the Servicemen Readjustment Act for its long-lasting effects and its ability to not only help build better lives for veterans, but to also fuel the impressive economic growth of the second half of the 20th century (Altschuler and Blumin 2009).

“Passed in an era of entrenched racial prejudice,” this bill included nothing that would distinguish the race of the veterans it aided (Altschuler and Blumin 2009, 129). However, many historians have discovered that the vast majority of the Bill’s beneficiaries were white. This poses the query: was the so highly regarded GI Bill a discriminatory piece of legislation? If so, why, and once extended, did the bill continue to favor white veterans even after the civil rights movement? The purpose of this study is to discover the connection between race, location and the ability of the veterans to attain higher education through the aid provided by the GI Bill.

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Introduction

In his 1893 publication, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, Frederick Jackson Turner famously asserted that the American frontier had closed due to the population’s continual shift westward. In this assertion, Turner may have been expecting a story of settlement similar to that of the East – densely populated areas with little uninhabited land. However, the story of settlement in the West after 1890 is different. It features infrequent pockets of dense populations in large urban areas such as Denver and San Francisco, surrounded by vast frontier. While small farmers and homesteaders had traditionally typified those who settled in the frontier, they decreasingly comprised the region’s settlers as the trend of urbanization increased (the 1920 census first recorded that more Americans lived in urban areas than rural areas). Those who did remain in frontier areas had a changing demographic composition and used the land for a variety of reasons: big ranches and farms, agribusiness, resource extraction, water projects, and federal land holdings. Additionally, the frontier region became less imbalanced regarding sex, with a more equal distribution of females and males. These changes occurred as urban areas grew and changed tremendously during the 20^th century, offering greater economic opportunities and room for social mobility than frontier areas. This project will explore the demographics of the inhabitants of the American West during the years from 1900 to 2000. The dimensions of analysis I will explore are location (regarding migration and settlement), family (regarding size of families), industry, sex, metropolitan status, marital status, and race during the time period from 1900 to 2000. Trends in these areas are important to consider due to the central roles that the frontier and urbanization play in American history. While the American West did not take on the settlement pattern that Turner had suggested it would, it did experience large changes in demographic trends throughout the 20^th century that shaped it into today’s West.

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Introduction

The “white picket fence” has long been a symbol of American suburbanization. This trope, coupled with aerial images of Levittowns from history textbooks, have etched themselves into the minds of millions of American teenagers across the nation. They represent mid-century transformations in America—a glimpse of life outside of the cities that had spurred the nation’s economic growth at the turn of the twentieth century. In recent decades, American suburbanization has received a plethora of scholarly attention. Much of this academic treatment examines the phenomenon of “white flight,” or the migration of whites to the suburbs, and highlights the federal government’s role in promoting white suburbanization as well as its inherent discrimination against African-Americans and other minorities (Jackson 1985; Massey/Denton 1988). This study analyzes suburbanization in the United States from 1930-2010, and corroborates many of the themes espoused in the literature (Jackson 1985; Massey/Denton 1988; Kruse 2005). Over time, an increasing proportion of the U.S. population resided in metro areas. Growing numbers left cities for the comfort of the suburbs in the mid-to-late decades of the twentieth century. Although white flight was certainly not the sole reason for American suburbanization, when these results are quantified racially, white flight to suburban areas did exist on a significant scale. However, an increasing proportion of minorities, particularly Hispanic-Americans, are beginning to suburbanize. As the literature describes, African-Americans still suffer under the weight of residential segregation, and, with their options limited, remain highly concentrated in urban environments. The final portion of this post turns to Newark, New Jersey, a former industrial hub that is often cited as a characteristic example of twentieth century urban decay. My research found that no single factor can account for Newark’s deterioration. It did, however, experience white flight on a larger scale than the average American city. This precipitous decrease in the workforce, taken with the deterioration in the city’s manufacturing framework and the outsourcing of production to foreign labor, led to Newark’s degeneration. Although there has been significant research into suburbanization in the twentieth century, this study is unique because it compares trends in Newark to the greater United States, an area in need of modern statistical research. Continue reading →

Introduction:

The incarceration rate in the United States today is so high that it can only be described as a pattern of mass incarceration. Worse, this system of mass incarceration operates through structures of gendered and racial discrimination which unfairly target black men. Societal racism in the forms of federal policy and residential segregation produce and normalize this discrimination. However, racial ideologies and practices, as well as segregation, have differed geographically throughout United States history. I examine the racial dynamics of incarceration on a state level, asking how racism and segregation have intersected with the demographics of incarceration in the United States over the last 90 years. Since women make up such a small proportion of the prison population, I narrow my focus to the mass incarceration of men, specifically the disproportionate representation of black men in American prisons.
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INTRODUCTION

On August 17th, 1916, Congressman William Borah of Idaho explained, “we ought to have our fences up and be thoroughly prepared to protect those in this country who will be brought into competition with the hordes of people who will come here” (Statements of Borah et. al, 8/17/16, 9). Borah was launching arguments in support of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1917, which enforced a literacy test on incoming immigrants. Borah’s arguments for exclusion and closed borders closely mirror present-day arguments about immigration restriction. Indeed, immigration policies have long been the subject of intense debate in the United States. This blog post will take an in-depth look at the arguments used in defense of increased border restriction in the Immigration Restriction Acts of 1917 and 1924. An analysis of fact versus fiction in Congressional debates in 1917 and 1924 will serve as a reminder that xenophobia and fears of the “other” are a driving force behind immigration policy in the Untied States.

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