Entries by Adam Strom
The Mother-Tongue: Bilingual Education Then and Now
By Natasha Karunaratne While it may seem like the education of immigrant children is newly controversial, the question of how to educate immigrant children has been an ongoing debate within the United States. At stake is the question about the best way to integrate newcomers to be a part of their new homeland? What do […]
Wong Kim Ark, the 14th Amendment and Birthright citizenship in the U.S.
Citizenship in the United States is granted not solely by ancestral lineage, but by jus soli, or birthright citizenship, as well. In other words, if you are born in the United States, you have a legal right to citizen regardless of your parents, and their citizenship status. That right was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme […]
Anti-German Sentiment in the United States
After the United States entered World War I in 1917, there was a wave of anti-German sentiment in the United States that coupled with pressure to assimilate entirely into U.S. society and culture. This brief excerpt from PBS’s American Experience’s The Great War introduces this history. PBS Learning Media includes suggestions for using […]
Educator Spotlight: Films to Educate Against Hate
Patrice O’Neill has been using storytelling to inspire people to stand up to hate and injustice way before storytelling became the next big thing. It was her documentary about the efforts of the people of Billings, Montana to push back against white supremacists that made “Not In Our Town” a rallying cry for inclusion. Her […]
Unexpected Unions: The Punjabi-Mexican Families of California
By Natasha Karunaratne Thanks to immigration laws and shared cultural experiences, an unexpected union occurred in California’s early 20th century with the union of over 300 families of Punjabi men and Mexican women. It began with Sikh men from the Punjab region of India migrating to America as early as 1890, finding jobs working for […]