...City Life for Immigrants 1900-1950 Aditya Thapliyal GGSIP University Abstract Since the turn of the 20th century and over the next few decades, over 15 Million immigrants landed at United States. This number was as much as the total immigrants which arrived in 40 years prior to that. Most of the immigrants were coming from different countries compared to the immigrants from past few years and most of the new immigrants came from Non-English speaking countries like Russia, Poland and Italy which had different culture from United States. Due to these differences of languages and culture immigrants found it difficult in adjust to the Lifestyle. Cities went on to be overcrowded by immigrants as most of them were looking for jobs and it was easier to find work in cities where natives were unwilling to take up jobs which they found unfit for themselves. With the passage of time immigrants were able to improve their condition as authorities also started to place new immigrants within populous cities. According to reports by 1910, 75% of the population of New York City were either first generation immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Due to limited income most of the immigrants started to settle in affordable apartments and mass tenement where living conditions were quite uncomfortable. Rooms were as small as 10 feet had no windows and people living had to harbour inconvenient living conditions which were defiled, soggy and had dreadful odour. This experience had a lasting...
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...In the 1950’s, there was a large rise in Arab nationalism that “led to the emigration of tens and thousands of Armenians from Islamic countries throughout the Middle East.” (Armenian Immigration) During this time of “increasing Arab and Turkish nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism and socialism”, Armenians living in the middle east had no safety at all. (Lehman, Jeffrey) At the time, “700,000 Armenians immigrated to Europe or the United States.” (Lehman, Jeffrey) Krikor, an Armenian who resided in Aleppo, Syria, stayed in Syria for four years and had to rebuilt it twice because bombs had hit his home two times. “His wife had shrapnel lodged in her leg and chest after a bomb tore down their neighbor’s house but the family refused to leave their home in the city’s Armenian Quarter.” Then a bomb almost took his best friend and his family from and three days post the bomb he packed “he packed his wife and two daughters into a tac and fled for Lebanon.” (Collard, Rebecca) Those Armenian immigrants from the mid 1950’s and Krikor from present day both had no choice but to immigrate out of their homes because of violence and persecution toward them and those around them. Mr. Barin, an Armenian immigrant whom I interviewed, lived in Turkey in the 1960’s which was not ideal because “there were still lots of turkish terrorist trying to kill Armenians” and he too later found refuge in America because America provided him a better life. (Mr....
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...children can inherit a greater quality of life than we were subjected to. James Truslow popularized the phrase “American Dream” in his book Epic of America, published in 1931. Truslow stated that the American Dream is, “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement… [A] dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” In essence, the American Dream is the philosophy of upward mobility. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without being limited by class, religion, race, or ethnicity. Since it’s origin, this idea of the American Dream has not coincided with the American reality shown through the segregation of class, race and ethnicity, unhappiness in the home, and the failure of public education. Immigrants during the Industrial Revolution were exposed to unjust treatment and stifled growth in society, women in the 1950s faced an identity crisis spawning from the materialized idea of perfection, and at the turn of the century public education showed poor performance on the worldwide scale. The industrial revolution marked a turning point in the history of the United States of America, impacting every aspect of daily life and making America a player on the world...
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...EBSCOhost 7/2/13 12:23 PM Record: 1 Title: The American Family. Authors: Coontz, Stephanie Source: Life. Nov99, Vol. 22 Issue 12, p79. 4p. 1 Color Photograph, 3 Black and White Photographs. Document Type: Article Subject Terms: *SOCIAL problems *TWENTIETH century *FAMILIES *HISTORY SOCIAL conditions Geographic Terms: UNITED States Abstract: Discusses the similarities in family life and social problems in the United States in the beginning of the 20th century through November 1999. Improvements regarding childhood mortality, education, child labor, and women's rights; Why the 1950s are regarded so highly in history as a standard for family values despite the actual poverty rate, women's oppression and race relation problems. INSET: American Mirror by Sora Song. Full Text Word Count: 3077 ISSN: 00243019 Accession Number: 2377451 Database: Academic Search Premier Section: SOCIETY THE AMERICAN FAMILY New research about an old institution challenges the conventional wisdom that the family today is worse off than in the past. As the century comes to an end, many observers fear for the future of America's families. Our divorce rate is the highest in the world, and the percentage of unmarried women is significantly higher than in 1960. Educated women are having fewer babies, while immigrant children flood the schools, demanding to be taught in their native language. Harvard University reports that only 4 percent of its applicants can write a proper sentence. There's an epidemic...
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...wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” (Emma Lazarus). As the United States were built from immigrants looking for a better life and throughout the U.S history waves of immigrants from people who come from the same country or have similar religion, such as the European countries and a wave of immigrants from Asia. With each new influx of immigration they had to deal with unfair treatment from people already residing in the United States. Mary Paik and her family left Korea to leave the harsh life that Korea...
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...mainly a nation of small farms. By 1900, it was a nation of growing cities, of coal, steel, and of engines and fast communications. Though living standards generally rose, millions of industrial workers lived in crowded, unsanitary slums.In the north, industrial violence was common and occurred on numerous occasions. The most violent confrontation between labor and employers was probably the Great Railway Strike of 1877. The nation had been in the grip of a severe depression for four years. During that time, the railroads had decreased the wages of railway workers by 20 percent. Many trainmen complained that they could not support their families adequately, and there was little that the trainmen could do about the wage decreases. At that time, unions were weak and workers feared going on strike; there were too many unemployed men who might take their jobs. Some workers secretly formed a Trainmen's Union to oppose the railroads. In the last quarter of the century, the textile, metal, and machinery industries equaled the railroads in size. In 1870, the typical iron and steel firm employed fewer than 100 workers. Thirty years later, the force was four times as large. By 1900, more than 1,000 factories had work forces ranging from 500 to 1,000 workers. From 1860 to 1900 some 15 million immigrants from southern and eastern Europe came to the United States in search of a better life, and most of them settled in the north and northeast. With big cities and factories came big business and...
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...centuries, the paesani of Roseto worked in the marble quarries in the surrounding hills, or cultivated the fields in the terraced valley below, walking four and five miles down the mountain in the morning and then making the long journey back up the hill at night. It was a hard life. The townsfolk were barely literate and desperately poor and without much hope for economic betterment — until word reached Roseto at the end of the nineteenth century of the land of opportunity across the ocean. In January of 1882, a group of eleven Rosetans — ten men and one boy — set sail for New York. They spent their first night in America sleeping on the floor of a tavern on Mulberry Street, in Manhattan's Little Italy. Then they ventured west, ending up finding jobs in a slate quarry ninety miles west of the city in Bangor, Pennsylvania. The following year, fifteen Rosetans left Italy for America, and several members of that group ended up in Bangor as well, joining their compatriots in the slate quarry. Those immigrants, in turn, sent word back to Roseto about the promise of the New World, and soon one group of Rosetans after another packed up their bags and headed for Pennsylvania, until the initial stream of immigrants became a flood. In 1894 alone, some twelve hundred Rosetans applied for passports to America, leaving entire streets of their old village abandoned. The Rosetans began buying land on a rocky hillside, connected to Bangor only by a steep, rutted wagon path. They built closely...
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...Islam initiated in Arabia in the early 600s. Their place has fluctuated with irregular social, economic, and political situations. Even though Islam considers men and women as honorable equals in the eye of God, women have not had equivalent access to several regions of Islamic existence. This research paper will discuss Islam, Early Historical Background, Women in Islamic Society, Women in the Qur’an, Religious Life, Women Covering, Financial Matters, Financial obligations, Education, Modern Debate on the Status of Women in Islam, and U.S. Muslim Women Islam The Arabic word “Islam” means submission – in a religious situation, it indicates the submission to the will of God. Islam’s prophet is Muhammad, who acknowledged the initial revelation from God through the angel Gabriel in about 610 C.E. Muslim thinking consist of the oneness of God; the angels formed by Him; the prophets through whom His revelations were pass to humankind; the Day of Judgment and individual responsibility; God’s entire power over human fate in life and in death; the commands of the Quran; and the devotional services of prayer, fasting, aims giving, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca. Islam practices that the only God is Allah, and that is a crime to make additional possessions or people equivalent to Allah or admiring them, worshipping them, or putting unsuitable attempt and desire into achieving them. Other events that are severely prohibited contains...
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...Sociology & Family Theorizing and Researching 1. Structural Theories a) Materialism & Conflict theory Marx & Engles -changes in family lives reflect material change (ex, the mode of production, industrialization) macro-micro focus -power differences characterize society at all levels (ex, capitalism creates: exploitation of men in the workforce; oppression of women b) Political Economy -assumes the power of the one class over another (social control), capitalist relations of production -a more concentrated focus on how economic and political processes shape society and history and therefore family, families c) Structural Functionalism Parsons & Bales -the social institution of the family - family is seen as a function, and different parts of society helps it move along -the nuclear family performs functions -they saw the families as a main faction, economic support, these functions that happen in nuclear families include economic support -equilibrium, all parts help it work as a whole -hierarchical generations and role specialization within families produces harmony -the different roles that men and women take on, allows the family be a harmony -parsons and bales, gendered perspective on families, families having instrumental roles such as achieving income, feed the family, cloth the family, this would be men 2. Symbolic Interactionism Mead & Cooley - individuals create their own family realities through micro level interactions -from...
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...Turning the tide of the Civil War to the Union side allowed for President Lincoln to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, thus setting all slaves in the rebellious Southern states free. This was the first step towards African Americans entering society as free individuals. Furthermore, the Reconstruction era proved to be both a time of heightened equality and a time of intense racism and persecution for African Americans. Although the Reconstruction Period in America, from 1865 to 1900, was focused primarily on incorporating African Americans into society as equal citizens, this idea was soon altered as Southern white Democrats regained control and Jim Crow Laws were being passed. Despite the fact that African Americans experienced brief...
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...Renaissance From 1920 until about 1930 an unprecedented outburst of activity among African-Americans occurred in all field of art. Beginning as a series of literary discussions in the lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village) and upper Manhattan (Harlem) sections of New York City, this African-American cultural movement became known as “The New Negro Movement’’ and later as the Harlem Renaissance. More than a literary movement and more than a social revolt against racism, the Harlem Renaissance exalted the unique culture of African- Americans and redefined African-Americans were encouraged to celebrate their heritage and to become “The New Negro,” a term coined in 1925 by sociologist and critic Alain LeRoy Locke. One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." One of the factors contributing to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance was the great migration of African-Americans to northern cities (such as New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) between 1919 and 1926. In his influential book The New Negro (1925), Locke described the northward migration of blacks as "something like a spiritual emancipation." In the 1920's African-Americans seemed to have passed through some rite of...
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...music of black African origin characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century”. How ironic is that. The Harlem Renaissance embodied all of the cultural aspect of jazz by including instruments and performers who drew audiences from all over to hear the amazing tunes. One of famous musicians that played an important role in the cultural aspect of the Harlem Renaissance is a guy who represented the Jazz lifestyle is not only a poet and musician, but a strong and social activist leader; Langston Mercer Hughes. Poems that were written during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960 are such as: “What Happens to a Dream Deferred”? , or “Like a Raisin in the Sun”. African Americans related to poems like that because it described the hardships in life that everyone could relate to and gave tremendous impact on the movement. Another famous well known artist in this time was non other than Duke Ellington. Being that he was an African American composer, pianist and band leader of a jazz orchestra he was instantly boosted to fame at a night club called Cotton Club. Afterwards he and his team became regulars there in the year of 1927. Black writers and poets were also recognized and during this time of...
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...economy. The new industries improved the economy because the country was able to exploit its natural resources to produce steel, chemicals, glass and machinery. These products became the foundation of an enormous boom in consumer goods. Telephones, radios, vacuum cleaners and washing machines were produced on a mass scale, making them cheaper so more people could buy them. New industries used sophisticated sales and marketing techniques to get people to buy their goods; this caused mass nationwide advertising and shaped the way marketing works today. The most important of these new booming industries is the motor car industry: The motor car had been developed in the 1980s and from 1919 to 1929 there was an increase of 15 million cars sold. In 1900 only 4000 cars were made, car production was revolutionised by Henry ford: in 1913 he set up the first moving production line in the world, in a giant shed in Detroit.. The increasing mass of this industry meant that the rich got richer quick and the poor only got a tiny amount more compared to the upper classes which is one reason why some groups in the 1920s were better off than others. However older industries and continued unemployment had a negative impact on the economy and caused there to be a larger gap between the lower and middle/upper classes. The coal, leather and textiles industries did not benefit much from the boom. Coal suffered due to technological advancements in the oil and electricity industries. Leather and textiles...
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...pass his success on to his two sons becomes his main focus. Miller’s life during the preparation of Death of a Salesman provides the spark and inspiration needed to pen a literary classic. Almost five decades later, Death of a Salesman’s themes is still relevant in today’s society. Arthur Asher Miller was born October 17, 1915 in Harlem, New York City. Miller was the son of Isadora and Augustus Miller, Polish Jewish immigrants who settled in Harlem in the early 1900’s. Arthur’s father owned a successful women’s clothing manufacturing company that employed hundreds of people. Although he was a figure of wealth and prominence in the community the Wall Street Crash of 1929 left the successful family in a financial struggle. They relocated to a section in Brooklyn known as Gravesend. There Miller delivered bread to help the family maintain. In 1932 he graduated Abraham Lincoln High School. After high school miller enrolled at the University of Michigan. He worked several small jobs to pay for his college tuition. He first majored in journalism, taking up freelance writing for the Michigan Daily. While he served as a reporter and night editor he penned his first play, No Villain. After receiving the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain, Miller changed his major to English and began seriously considering a career as a playwright. Miller would soon enroll in a playwright seminar where he would meet his mentor and life-long friend Professor Kenneth Rowe. Rowe would highlight the construction...
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...Asian Americans in the Workplace An In-Depth Analysis of Korean Americans 11/19/2007 Table of Contents Introduction 3 History of Korean Immigration to the United States 4 Values and Customs 10 Demographical Profile 16 The ‘Bamboo Ceiling’: Barriers in the Workplace 22 A Personal Interview: A Different Side to the Story 26 Conclusion 27 References 28 Introduction The term “Asian American” has a rich history in the United States. It refers to a person of Asian ancestry who also obtains American citizenship. The term was originally used by the Census Bureau to clarify and distinguish the government’s equal opportunity programs and measurements. Also, the term “Asian American” was used by anti-war activists during the 1960s instead of using the “Oriental” which was perceived as more derogatory and demeaning. This phrase was finally popularized into mainstream academic usage in the 1970s, and is now the accepted term for government and academic research (Dacin and Hitt, 1997). Although this term allows for economists, sociologists, and statisticians to breakdown the different cultural groups found within the United States, one can delve much further into the evolution of the people we categorize as “Asian American.” In the following pages, we will attempt to explain our research findings on the evolution of one innergroup of Asian Americans within the United States, the Korean Americans. The issues raised will include: 1. An extensive overview of...
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