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Essay Instructions: Choose one (1) Native American tribe residing within the continental United States (Lower 48 states) at the time of first European contact. Research various aspect of the chosen tribe?s culture or history.

Topics that need to be researched include but are not limited to:

Describing what is known of the tribe?s pre-Columbian history, including settlement dates and any known cultural details.
Describing the cultural and religious beliefs of the chosen tribe.
Describing the tribe?s history after contact, including major events and armed conflicts that may have been important to the history of the tribe in the present day.
Explaining the history of at least one historical figure of the chosen tribe and events surrounding that individual?s life.

References:

Diversity and Change in American Society

From the founding of the 13 English colonies to the present-day United States, the ways in which various cultures, peoples, ethnicities, and belief systems were incorporated has been a central theme in American history. As the history of the United States progressed, American society became more diverse, with each subsequent culture or ethnicity contributing to America?s overall development and cultural distinctiveness; however, such contributions were not voluntary.

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of such diversity is demonstrated in the various reasons for the founding of the 13 original colonies. Some colonies, like Virginia, were founded by royally chartered companies for economic reasons. Others, like Georgia, were founded for political reasons to act as a border to stop Spanish expansion. Others still were founded principally to provide a refuge for religious factions that were being persecuted elsewhere. For instance, the colony of Rhode Island was established by Roger Williams, after having been expelled from Massachusetts due to religious differences in 1636. By 1663, a royal charter was granted that officially established the colony as a model for religious tolerance. Soon, the colony became a sanctuary for disparate religious groups that often experienced discrimination or outright intolerance. Baptists, Quakers, Calvinists, and Jews soon found safe harbor in Rhode Island. Other colonies, such as Pennsylvania, were also established specifically for issues concerning religious tolerance. Pennsylvania was established explicitly to provide Quakers a refuge to settle through William Penn, a prominent English Quaker. Pennsylvania eventually became home to many religious groups seeking freedom to worship freely without government suppression. Both Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have provisions in the state charters providing for limits on governmental authority and religious liberty. Later, the very ideas of limited governmental liberty became monumental to the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Though the United States of America was founded upon concepts concerning social, economic and political freedom, such freedoms were usually restricted to a relatively small group of people, typically of Northern or Western European descent. People of African descent, Native Americans, and others not associated with countries immediately coming from Northern or Western Europe were often viewed through prejudicial lenses and considered incapable of American citizenship. As time passed, disenfranchised people were incorporated as full members of American society, largely due to enormous sacrifices and courage on the part of extraordinary individuals.



Article
Article: Cultures in America
Question 1: What varieties of pathways into the United States were pursued by European immigrants?

Answer 1:

Northern and Western Europeans were similar to the dominant group in both racial and religious characteristics and also shared similar cultural values including adherence to the principles of a democratic form of government and a Protestant work ethic that stresses hard work, rugged individualism, and discipline. These immigrants came from similarly developed countries and therefore tended to be more skilled, have more economic resources, and possess more education than other immigrant groups. Their dispersion throughout the Midwest not only reduced their visibility but the degree of competition with already established dominant groups. All of these factors paved the way for a relatively smooth and successful integration and attainment of equality compared to racial minority groups created by conquest and colonization.

Immigrant laborers from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe experienced much less ease of assimilation because their cultural background was less compatible with the industrializing, capitalistic, individualistic, Protestant, Anglo-American culture of the United States. These immigrant laborers were mostly peasants who came with fewer resources and were from rural, small village cultures that emphasized family and kin over individualism. As a result, this group experienced greater levels of rejection, ethnic and religious prejudice, and discrimination, which led to barriers to upward mobility.

Conversely, Eastern European Jewish immigrants were mostly fleeing religious persecution. Unlike the previous immigrant laborer groups who were young and single sojourners and economic refugees, Jewish immigrants arrived as family units whose intention was permanent settlement and citizenship. These groups settled in the urban areas between Boston and Philadelphia or in the Midwest, relying on a thriving urban economy for their livelihoods. Capitalizing on their urban skills and residential concentration, they created enclaves (or dense networks of commercial, financial, and social cooperation) that proved an effective means from which to integrate into American society.

Question 2: What is the "American Dilemma," and what are some examples of the ways in which it is instantiated socially?

Answer 2:

A sociologist named Gunnar Myrdal coined the phrase the "American Dilemma" (Gunnar Myrdal, n.d.). The concept, which he was describing in American society, was based on the fact that a celebrated democratic society could deny the basic rights and freedoms to an entire category of people. An example of this would of course be our historic treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans.



Reference

Gunnar Myrdal (1898?1987). (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2008, from The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics Web site: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Myrdal.html



Question 3: How was the contact situation of African-Americans different from American Indians or Mexican Americans?

Answer 3:

"The Noel hypothesis states: If two or more groups come together in a contact situation characterized by ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power, then some form of racial or ethnic stratification will result" (Healey, 2006, p. 163). Only African-Americans fit all three conditions under a system of slavery not shared by the other two groups while competition centering on control of the land pressed American Indians into a paternalistic relationship with the dominant group (Healey, 2006). Mexican Americans' competition over land and labor was what forced them into minority group status.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). The development of dominant-minority group relations in Preindustrial America: The origins of slavery. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Sage Publications Web site: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/13173_Chapter3.pdf

Question 4: What role might prejudice and racism have played in the creation of slavery?

Answer 4:

Slavery emerged as an attempt to meet a labor supply problem. Therefore, slavery can best be understood in terms of the plantation elite using power differentials and a paternalistic system to reinforce and rationalize a system that consigned one group to minority status and exploitation. As the abolitionist movement challenged the collective social conscience of America and the Industrial Revolution brought a shift to competitive group relations, prejudice and racism became the means through which apologists for the system of slavery could justify, rationalize, and ensure the survival of certain aspects of a paternalistic system soon to be dismantled.



Question 5: What is the difference between de jure segregation and de facto segregation?

Answer 5:

De jure segregation refers to a system of rigid competitive race relations that followed the Reconstruction Period at the end of the Civil War. This system lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s and was characterized by legislation that mandated racial separation and inequality. De facto segregation, in contrast, is a system of racial separation and inequality that seems to result from the voluntary choices of individuals as to where to live, study, and work. This is a thinly veiled form of segregation that continues up to the present.

De jure segregation ended as a result of several social, political, economic, and legal processes. First, mechanization and modernization of agriculture in the South brought profound change to a subsistence technology that was labor intensive, required maintenance of a powerless workforce, and promoted the rigid competitive system of group relations known as Jim Crow segregation. Second, newfound mobility to northern states and urbanized areas facilitated voter registration and subsequent political changes necessary for a new social agenda. A third factor was the civil rights movement with its successful challenge to the laws of racial segregation, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and legislature that promoted racial equality, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Question 6: How did the response to segregation lead to changes in American race relations?

Answer 6:

In response to segregation, African-Americans "voted with their feet" and moved north during the Great Migration. In the North, many aspects of African-American culture flourished, including African-American literature, poetry, art, and music. In addition, African-American communities developed a separate institutional life centered on family, church, and community from which a black middle class emerged (Healey, 2006). It was within this newfound freedom that African-Americans developed the political and economic resources from which effective leadership and the origins of Black protest emerged. As a result of African-Americans being on the vanguard of protest activity, these changes brought about by class-based affirmative action have certainly increased life-changing opportunities and made profound changes in the structural fabric of America's institutions so as to negotiate more equitable and positive race relations in America.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Question 7: What was the central strategy and main effects of the civil rights movement?

Answer 7:

The principle of nonviolent direct action was the primary method used by the civil rights movement to defeat de jure segregation. Based on a philosophy of nonviolent protest, it used different tactics as required by different situations (Healey, 2006). These included sit-ins at segregated public facilities, protest marches, demonstrations, prayer meetings, voter registration drives, and economic boycotts such as the one spearheaded in December of 1955 by Rosa Park's arrest for violating Montgomery, Alabama's local bus segregation ordinance.

By passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress banned discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, national origin, or gender in publicly owned facilities or programs that received federal aid (Civil Rights Act, 2007). The Voting Rights Act, which followed in 1965, called for the same voting registration standards to be applied in federal, state, and local elections (Voting Rights Act, 2007). By banning the literacy test, whites-only primaries, and other methods used to prevent African-Americans from registering to vote, this law and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought profound changes to dominant-minority relations, further dismantled Jim Crow segregation, and promoted black political power.

References

Civil Rights Act (1964). (2007). Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Historical Documents in United States History Web site: http://www.historicaldocuments.com/CivilRightsAct1964.htm



Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Voting Rights Act of 1965. (2007). Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Historical Documents in United States History Web site: http://www.historicaldocuments.com/VotingRightsActof1965.htm

Question 8: What is the culture of poverty theory's perspective on the cycle of poverty and its solution?

Answer 8:

The culture of poverty theory attributes the problem of urban poverty to what it sees as negative characteristics of the poor. These include a sense of fatalism, or feeling that one's destiny is beyond one's control, a present orientation characterized by instant gratification rather than a future orientation, and the lack of hard work and discipline essential for economic success. It also identifies violence, high rates of alcoholism, and female-headed families as structural weaknesses that are the source rather than the result of poverty. In a culture of poverty perspective, the solution to African-American urban poverty lies in making significant changes to "poor cultural values" to make them more consistent with traditional, white, middle-class values.

Question 9: What are the differences between American Indian tribes and the dominant society?

Answer 9:

Several cultural differences between American Indians and the dominant society have affected the dynamics between these two groups. These include the importance placed on groups (extended family, clans, etc.) versus individualism, cooperation versus competition, and living in harmony versus exploiting the natural world. The concept of private property, prominent in Anglo-American culture, was notably absent in American Indian cultures (Healey, 2006). Notions of owning, selling, or buying of property were therefore foreign to them and placed them at a disadvantage in protecting their landholdings when dealing with land titles, deeds, contracts, and other Western legal concepts. Furthermore, power differentials paved the way to coercive Americanization and forged a paternalistic, dominant-minority relationship between these two groups.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Question 10: What goals and methods characterize the self-determination efforts of American Indian activism?

Answer 10:

The goals of the American Indian protest movement are complementary in that they seek to strike a balance between assimilation and pluralism. This has forced them to establish common ground among themselves in the form of a generic American Indian culture. Successful protest, therefore, has required fluency in English, training in law, familiarity with the legislative formulation and execution of public policy, and skill in dealing with bureaucracies. Furthermore, in their struggle to improve their socioeconomic status, American Indians have turned their focus to the socioeconomic development of their reservations by

capitalizing on natural resources.
using the freedom from state regulations and taxes on their reservations to attract industry and jobs.
promoting gaming establishments and other profitable operations that benefit tribal members in a variety of ways.


Article
Contributors to American Culture I
Contributors to American Culture I

Perhaps no other people more profoundly exemplify the transition from an excluded population to full equality and citizenship that African-Americans. African-Americans, initially excluded from American citizenship, came to significantly influence the development of U.S. society. Unlike other people of the United States, African-Americans began their history in the Americas as slaves. However, the innate tension between the institution of slavery and the ideals of the American Revolution is one of the central themes of American history. Despite the legacy of slavery and the discrimination that followed for generations afterward, important contributions were made to America?s cultural and political development.

Culturally, African-Americans contributed greatly to many aspects of American society. Political writings, such as those of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, and W.E.B. Dubois, chronicled African-American political struggles and showcased the various approaches utilized by African-Americans in their struggle for equality and civil rights. These early works of the 19th and early 20th centuries eventually laid the intellectual, moral, and political groundwork that leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X used during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to eventually gain political equality for African-Americans, which also extended to other disenfranchised groups.

In other areas of American culture, African-American influence on music trends in America is ubiquitous. From the earliest forms of enslaved American spiritual music came more modern and easily identifiable forms like blues and jazz. Originating in the ?deep south? in the late 1800s, blues influenced many forms of other music in the 20th century, including jazz, country, and rock n? roll.

African-Americans have deeply influenced modern professional sports. Serving as a microcosm for American society at large, increasingly greater minority participation in professional sports throughout the latter portion of the 20th century can be viewed as a symbol for an increasingly integrated society in the contemporary United States.

Despite the many academic and cultural influences that African-Americans had on American society, perhaps the most important contribution comes in the form of political legacy. More than any other people in the United States, African-Americans demonstrated the potential of the American political system, and American society in general, to transform from a society in which slavery was accepted and common to one in which all forms of political and civil discrimination are considered intolerable.





Activity
A Study of Negro Artists
A Study of Negro Artists
http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/negroArtists.html



Article
Contributors to American Culture II
Contributors to American Culture II

Eastern and Southern Europeans

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Eastern and Southern Europeans added to the diversity and history of the United States. The people from these regions came to the United States for many of the same reasons as their Western European predecessors. Often fleeing socially hostile and economically unstable states, many came to the United States seeking a better life. Others, like the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, immigrated for religious freedoms as well as economic opportunity. Most of the immigrants of this period arrived at the Eastern coast of the United States and tended to settle in urban areas, where they provided much of the source for the ever-expanding labor needs of the American industrial revolution. Though often initially rejected by more established elements of American society, the immigrants of Southern and Eastern Europe assimilated rapidly into American culture within a few generations.

Unlike immigrants from Europe or Africa, Latino presence in North America predates the presence of any other old world group in the new world. Latino presence in the United States slowly expanded with the borders of the country. As the United States defeated a weakened Spanish Empire and assumed possession of Florida in 1819, Hispanic presence within the borders of the United States grew significantly. However, it was not until the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Mexican-American War (1846?1848) that the Latino presence grew substantially. Later, during the Spanish-American war (1898), Latino presence expanded with the acquisition of Puerto Rico from Spain. Today, Latinos constitute the most rapidly growing demographic in the United States, with increasingly significant influence in local, state, and federal elections.

Native Americans

The indigenous people of North America are a diverse population within themselves. Often divided into Eastern tribes and Western tribes, Native Americans inhabited the continent for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, with the oldest human remains in North America dating 12,000?14,000 years old. Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River are often divided into two major regions. The Northeastern Woodland region consisted of major tribes such as the Algonquin, Iroquois, Fox, Sauk, Miami, Shawnee, Huron, Mohawk, and Mohegan tribes. Typically subsisting on a mixture of horticultural practices, the gathering of naturally occurring edible resources and hunting, Woodland tribes often lived in permanent and semipermanent agricultural villages organized according to matrilineal clans. Spiritual beliefs varied, often widely, according to region.

The Southeastern region also consists of many tribes; however, the most commonly referenced tribes are often referred to as the five civilized tribes, known independently as the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole peoples. Tribes in this region often lived in permanent villages frequently along rivers and were principally focused on agriculture.

Indigenous peoples whose traditional homelands existed west of the Mississippi are often divided into six principle regions known as the Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, Plateau, California, and Northwest Coastal tribes. The Plains region of the United States is home to some of the most well-known tribes in North America. Tribes such as the Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Pawnee in these regions consisted primarily of hunter-gatherer societies living nomadic lifestyles. However, tribes residing in the Pacific Northwest and California often lived in permanent and semipermanent villages, subsisting off the abundant resources of these regions. The Great Basin and Plateau regions also harbored tribes that were usually nomadic and represented well-known tribes such as the Ute and the Nez Perce, respectively. The Southwest harbored cultures that lay claim the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America. This region is home to tribes such as the Pueblo, who are sedentary and agricultural, and the Apache and Navaho, who were nomadic.

With the conquest of North America by Western European countries and the subsequent expansion of the United States government, the indigenous populations of North America rapidly declined, reaching a low of 400,00 in 1900. However, as of 2009, the Native American population expanded to over 2.4 million people in the United States. Accompanying the growth in the size of the Native American population is a resurgence of interest in recording and codifying Native American histories and revival in Native American cultural practices.

The coverage of aforementioned cultures is meant to serve only as a very brief introduction to the diverse cultural heritage of America. In no way is this introduction meant to be an exhaustive examination of the people and cultures within the United States or the spirit with which the diverse peoples of America influence American society. The variety of cultures from Africa, Asia, Asia Minor, the Middle East, the Near East, the South Pacific islands, the Caribbean islands, South America, Central America, and indigenous groups of Alaska and Hawaii as well as the cultural influences experienced through global communications are intertwined in the fabric of the ongoing development of the United States.



Activity
American Mosaic or Melting Pot
Answer the following questions:

Question 1: The concept of the ?melting pot? was first introduced in 1908 by a playwright ____________.

Isreal Zangwill
Irving Berlin
Ruth Hale
Oscar Wilde
The correct answer is Isreal Zangwill. His play?s helped in popularize the term in American culture.

Question 2: Think about your heritage, your neighborhood or even your religious background. Does your experience more closely resemble a mosaic or a melting pot?

There is no right or wrong answer. Because the United States is so culturally diverse, you could answer either way. For some, their experience of American life is more like a mosaic where they embrace their unique heritage and culture while being a part of the greater whole. Others, through their experiences, may more closely identify with the concept of a unified and blended culture.


Resource Links
First Nations Histories
(http://www.tolatsga.org/Compacts.html)
This site provides links to information about several Native American tribes.

U.S. Westward Expansion
(http://www.besthistorysites.net/USHistory_WestwardExpansion.shtml)
This site provides links to several events the impacted westward expansion in the U.S.

United States History Map
(http://www.learner.org/interactives/historymap/indians.html)
This site provides an interactive map indicating the approximate location of several Native American tribes.

Tecumseh/Shawnee Prophet's Town
(http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=28646)
This site provides information about historical markers of the Shawnee tribe in Ohio in addition to other links about Native American tribes.

Ethnic America
(http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/ethnic_am.cfm)
This site provides information about various ethnic cultures and their part in U.S. History.

Immigration and Ethnic Heritage
(http://www.loc.gov/topics/content.php?subcat=16)
This site discusses the immigration of various cultures to the U.S.

Essay Instructions: Writer requested: amber111

In 1908, playwright Israel Zangwill referred to America as a melting pot. Zangwill?s concept of the United States as a country where people of all cultures and nations are free to come and contribute to a common American culture remains a popular concept?even more than a century after its introduction.

More recently, the concept of the American mosaic asserts that American society consist not of melting pot in which people and cultures mix together to form a larger American culture, but as a mosaic in which ethnic groups come to the United States and coexist with other groups but maintain significant cultural and social distinctions among themselves.

Post a discussion that explores these themes by demonstrating how various cultures and ethnicities have contributed to modern American history and culture. Select one (1) ethnic group, and include the following in your discussion:

Explain a specific contribution this group made to American society or culture.
Evaluate the concepts of the melting pot and the American mosaic.
Which concept more accurately reflects the experiences of various cultural groups in America? Support your assertion.

References:
Diversity and Change in American Society

From the founding of the 13 English colonies to the present-day United States, the ways in which various cultures, peoples, ethnicities, and belief systems were incorporated has been a central theme in American history. As the history of the United States progressed, American society became more diverse, with each subsequent culture or ethnicity contributing to America?s overall development and cultural distinctiveness; however, such contributions were not voluntary.

Perhaps one of the earliest examples of such diversity is demonstrated in the various reasons for the founding of the 13 original colonies. Some colonies, like Virginia, were founded by royally chartered companies for economic reasons. Others, like Georgia, were founded for political reasons to act as a border to stop Spanish expansion. Others still were founded principally to provide a refuge for religious factions that were being persecuted elsewhere. For instance, the colony of Rhode Island was established by Roger Williams, after having been expelled from Massachusetts due to religious differences in 1636. By 1663, a royal charter was granted that officially established the colony as a model for religious tolerance. Soon, the colony became a sanctuary for disparate religious groups that often experienced discrimination or outright intolerance. Baptists, Quakers, Calvinists, and Jews soon found safe harbor in Rhode Island. Other colonies, such as Pennsylvania, were also established specifically for issues concerning religious tolerance. Pennsylvania was established explicitly to provide Quakers a refuge to settle through William Penn, a prominent English Quaker. Pennsylvania eventually became home to many religious groups seeking freedom to worship freely without government suppression. Both Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have provisions in the state charters providing for limits on governmental authority and religious liberty. Later, the very ideas of limited governmental liberty became monumental to the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Though the United States of America was founded upon concepts concerning social, economic and political freedom, such freedoms were usually restricted to a relatively small group of people, typically of Northern or Western European descent. People of African descent, Native Americans, and others not associated with countries immediately coming from Northern or Western Europe were often viewed through prejudicial lenses and considered incapable of American citizenship. As time passed, disenfranchised people were incorporated as full members of American society, largely due to enormous sacrifices and courage on the part of extraordinary individuals.



Article
Article: Cultures in America
Question 1: What varieties of pathways into the United States were pursued by European immigrants?

Answer 1:

Northern and Western Europeans were similar to the dominant group in both racial and religious characteristics and also shared similar cultural values including adherence to the principles of a democratic form of government and a Protestant work ethic that stresses hard work, rugged individualism, and discipline. These immigrants came from similarly developed countries and therefore tended to be more skilled, have more economic resources, and possess more education than other immigrant groups. Their dispersion throughout the Midwest not only reduced their visibility but the degree of competition with already established dominant groups. All of these factors paved the way for a relatively smooth and successful integration and attainment of equality compared to racial minority groups created by conquest and colonization.

Immigrant laborers from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe experienced much less ease of assimilation because their cultural background was less compatible with the industrializing, capitalistic, individualistic, Protestant, Anglo-American culture of the United States. These immigrant laborers were mostly peasants who came with fewer resources and were from rural, small village cultures that emphasized family and kin over individualism. As a result, this group experienced greater levels of rejection, ethnic and religious prejudice, and discrimination, which led to barriers to upward mobility.

Conversely, Eastern European Jewish immigrants were mostly fleeing religious persecution. Unlike the previous immigrant laborer groups who were young and single sojourners and economic refugees, Jewish immigrants arrived as family units whose intention was permanent settlement and citizenship. These groups settled in the urban areas between Boston and Philadelphia or in the Midwest, relying on a thriving urban economy for their livelihoods. Capitalizing on their urban skills and residential concentration, they created enclaves (or dense networks of commercial, financial, and social cooperation) that proved an effective means from which to integrate into American society.

Question 2: What is the "American Dilemma," and what are some examples of the ways in which it is instantiated socially?

Answer 2:

A sociologist named Gunnar Myrdal coined the phrase the "American Dilemma" (Gunnar Myrdal, n.d.). The concept, which he was describing in American society, was based on the fact that a celebrated democratic society could deny the basic rights and freedoms to an entire category of people. An example of this would of course be our historic treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans.



Reference

Gunnar Myrdal (1898?1987). (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2008, from The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics Web site: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Myrdal.html



Question 3: How was the contact situation of African-Americans different from American Indians or Mexican Americans?

Answer 3:

"The Noel hypothesis states: If two or more groups come together in a contact situation characterized by ethnocentrism, competition, and a differential in power, then some form of racial or ethnic stratification will result" (Healey, 2006, p. 163). Only African-Americans fit all three conditions under a system of slavery not shared by the other two groups while competition centering on control of the land pressed American Indians into a paternalistic relationship with the dominant group (Healey, 2006). Mexican Americans' competition over land and labor was what forced them into minority group status.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). The development of dominant-minority group relations in Preindustrial America: The origins of slavery. Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Sage Publications Web site: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/13173_Chapter3.pdf

Question 4: What role might prejudice and racism have played in the creation of slavery?

Answer 4:

Slavery emerged as an attempt to meet a labor supply problem. Therefore, slavery can best be understood in terms of the plantation elite using power differentials and a paternalistic system to reinforce and rationalize a system that consigned one group to minority status and exploitation. As the abolitionist movement challenged the collective social conscience of America and the Industrial Revolution brought a shift to competitive group relations, prejudice and racism became the means through which apologists for the system of slavery could justify, rationalize, and ensure the survival of certain aspects of a paternalistic system soon to be dismantled.



Question 5: What is the difference between de jure segregation and de facto segregation?

Answer 5:

De jure segregation refers to a system of rigid competitive race relations that followed the Reconstruction Period at the end of the Civil War. This system lasted from the 1880s until the 1960s and was characterized by legislation that mandated racial separation and inequality. De facto segregation, in contrast, is a system of racial separation and inequality that seems to result from the voluntary choices of individuals as to where to live, study, and work. This is a thinly veiled form of segregation that continues up to the present.

De jure segregation ended as a result of several social, political, economic, and legal processes. First, mechanization and modernization of agriculture in the South brought profound change to a subsistence technology that was labor intensive, required maintenance of a powerless workforce, and promoted the rigid competitive system of group relations known as Jim Crow segregation. Second, newfound mobility to northern states and urbanized areas facilitated voter registration and subsequent political changes necessary for a new social agenda. A third factor was the civil rights movement with its successful challenge to the laws of racial segregation, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and legislature that promoted racial equality, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Question 6: How did the response to segregation lead to changes in American race relations?

Answer 6:

In response to segregation, African-Americans "voted with their feet" and moved north during the Great Migration. In the North, many aspects of African-American culture flourished, including African-American literature, poetry, art, and music. In addition, African-American communities developed a separate institutional life centered on family, church, and community from which a black middle class emerged (Healey, 2006). It was within this newfound freedom that African-Americans developed the political and economic resources from which effective leadership and the origins of Black protest emerged. As a result of African-Americans being on the vanguard of protest activity, these changes brought about by class-based affirmative action have certainly increased life-changing opportunities and made profound changes in the structural fabric of America's institutions so as to negotiate more equitable and positive race relations in America.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Question 7: What was the central strategy and main effects of the civil rights movement?

Answer 7:

The principle of nonviolent direct action was the primary method used by the civil rights movement to defeat de jure segregation. Based on a philosophy of nonviolent protest, it used different tactics as required by different situations (Healey, 2006). These included sit-ins at segregated public facilities, protest marches, demonstrations, prayer meetings, voter registration drives, and economic boycotts such as the one spearheaded in December of 1955 by Rosa Park's arrest for violating Montgomery, Alabama's local bus segregation ordinance.

By passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress banned discrimination on the grounds of race, color, religion, national origin, or gender in publicly owned facilities or programs that received federal aid (Civil Rights Act, 2007). The Voting Rights Act, which followed in 1965, called for the same voting registration standards to be applied in federal, state, and local elections (Voting Rights Act, 2007). By banning the literacy test, whites-only primaries, and other methods used to prevent African-Americans from registering to vote, this law and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought profound changes to dominant-minority relations, further dismantled Jim Crow segregation, and promoted black political power.

References

Civil Rights Act (1964). (2007). Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Historical Documents in United States History Web site: http://www.historicaldocuments.com/CivilRightsAct1964.htm



Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Voting Rights Act of 1965. (2007). Retrieved April 8, 2008, from Historical Documents in United States History Web site: http://www.historicaldocuments.com/VotingRightsActof1965.htm

Question 8: What is the culture of poverty theory's perspective on the cycle of poverty and its solution?

Answer 8:

The culture of poverty theory attributes the problem of urban poverty to what it sees as negative characteristics of the poor. These include a sense of fatalism, or feeling that one's destiny is beyond one's control, a present orientation characterized by instant gratification rather than a future orientation, and the lack of hard work and discipline essential for economic success. It also identifies violence, high rates of alcoholism, and female-headed families as structural weaknesses that are the source rather than the result of poverty. In a culture of poverty perspective, the solution to African-American urban poverty lies in making significant changes to "poor cultural values" to make them more consistent with traditional, white, middle-class values.

Question 9: What are the differences between American Indian tribes and the dominant society?

Answer 9:

Several cultural differences between American Indians and the dominant society have affected the dynamics between these two groups. These include the importance placed on groups (extended family, clans, etc.) versus individualism, cooperation versus competition, and living in harmony versus exploiting the natural world. The concept of private property, prominent in Anglo-American culture, was notably absent in American Indian cultures (Healey, 2006). Notions of owning, selling, or buying of property were therefore foreign to them and placed them at a disadvantage in protecting their landholdings when dealing with land titles, deeds, contracts, and other Western legal concepts. Furthermore, power differentials paved the way to coercive Americanization and forged a paternalistic, dominant-minority relationship between these two groups.

Reference

Healey, J. F. (2006). Race, ethnicity, gender, and class: The sociology of group conflict and change (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Question 10: What goals and methods characterize the self-determination efforts of American Indian activism?

Answer 10:

The goals of the American Indian protest movement are complementary in that they seek to strike a balance between assimilation and pluralism. This has forced them to establish common ground among themselves in the form of a generic American Indian culture. Successful protest, therefore, has required fluency in English, training in law, familiarity with the legislative formulation and execution of public policy, and skill in dealing with bureaucracies. Furthermore, in their struggle to improve their socioeconomic status, American Indians have turned their focus to the socioeconomic development of their reservations by

capitalizing on natural resources.
using the freedom from state regulations and taxes on their reservations to attract industry and jobs.
promoting gaming establishments and other profitable operations that benefit tribal members in a variety of ways.


Article
Contributors to American Culture I
Contributors to American Culture I

Perhaps no other people more profoundly exemplify the transition from an excluded population to full equality and citizenship that African-Americans. African-Americans, initially excluded from American citizenship, came to significantly influence the development of U.S. society. Unlike other people of the United States, African-Americans began their history in the Americas as slaves. However, the innate tension between the institution of slavery and the ideals of the American Revolution is one of the central themes of American history. Despite the legacy of slavery and the discrimination that followed for generations afterward, important contributions were made to America?s cultural and political development.

Culturally, African-Americans contributed greatly to many aspects of American society. Political writings, such as those of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglas, and W.E.B. Dubois, chronicled African-American political struggles and showcased the various approaches utilized by African-Americans in their struggle for equality and civil rights. These early works of the 19th and early 20th centuries eventually laid the intellectual, moral, and political groundwork that leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X used during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s to eventually gain political equality for African-Americans, which also extended to other disenfranchised groups.

In other areas of American culture, African-American influence on music trends in America is ubiquitous. From the earliest forms of enslaved American spiritual music came more modern and easily identifiable forms like blues and jazz. Originating in the ?deep south? in the late 1800s, blues influenced many forms of other music in the 20th century, including jazz, country, and rock n? roll.

African-Americans have deeply influenced modern professional sports. Serving as a microcosm for American society at large, increasingly greater minority participation in professional sports throughout the latter portion of the 20th century can be viewed as a symbol for an increasingly integrated society in the contemporary United States.

Despite the many academic and cultural influences that African-Americans had on American society, perhaps the most important contribution comes in the form of political legacy. More than any other people in the United States, African-Americans demonstrated the potential of the American political system, and American society in general, to transform from a society in which slavery was accepted and common to one in which all forms of political and civil discrimination are considered intolerable.





Activity
A Study of Negro Artists
A Study of Negro Artists
http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/negroArtists.html



Article
Contributors to American Culture II
Contributors to American Culture II

Eastern and Southern Europeans

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Eastern and Southern Europeans added to the diversity and history of the United States. The people from these regions came to the United States for many of the same reasons as their Western European predecessors. Often fleeing socially hostile and economically unstable states, many came to the United States seeking a better life. Others, like the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, immigrated for religious freedoms as well as economic opportunity. Most of the immigrants of this period arrived at the Eastern coast of the United States and tended to settle in urban areas, where they provided much of the source for the ever-expanding labor needs of the American industrial revolution. Though often initially rejected by more established elements of American society, the immigrants of Southern and Eastern Europe assimilated rapidly into American culture within a few generations.

Unlike immigrants from Europe or Africa, Latino presence in North America predates the presence of any other old world group in the new world. Latino presence in the United States slowly expanded with the borders of the country. As the United States defeated a weakened Spanish Empire and assumed possession of Florida in 1819, Hispanic presence within the borders of the United States grew significantly. However, it was not until the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the Mexican-American War (1846?1848) that the Latino presence grew substantially. Later, during the Spanish-American war (1898), Latino presence expanded with the acquisition of Puerto Rico from Spain. Today, Latinos constitute the most rapidly growing demographic in the United States, with increasingly significant influence in local, state, and federal elections.

Native Americans

The indigenous people of North America are a diverse population within themselves. Often divided into Eastern tribes and Western tribes, Native Americans inhabited the continent for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, with the oldest human remains in North America dating 12,000?14,000 years old. Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River are often divided into two major regions. The Northeastern Woodland region consisted of major tribes such as the Algonquin, Iroquois, Fox, Sauk, Miami, Shawnee, Huron, Mohawk, and Mohegan tribes. Typically subsisting on a mixture of horticultural practices, the gathering of naturally occurring edible resources and hunting, Woodland tribes often lived in permanent and semipermanent agricultural villages organized according to matrilineal clans. Spiritual beliefs varied, often widely, according to region.

The Southeastern region also consists of many tribes; however, the most commonly referenced tribes are often referred to as the five civilized tribes, known independently as the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole peoples. Tribes in this region often lived in permanent villages frequently along rivers and were principally focused on agriculture.

Indigenous peoples whose traditional homelands existed west of the Mississippi are often divided into six principle regions known as the Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, Plateau, California, and Northwest Coastal tribes. The Plains region of the United States is home to some of the most well-known tribes in North America. Tribes such as the Lakota (Sioux), Cheyenne, Blackfeet, and Pawnee in these regions consisted primarily of hunter-gatherer societies living nomadic lifestyles. However, tribes residing in the Pacific Northwest and California often lived in permanent and semipermanent villages, subsisting off the abundant resources of these regions. The Great Basin and Plateau regions also harbored tribes that were usually nomadic and represented well-known tribes such as the Ute and the Nez Perce, respectively. The Southwest harbored cultures that lay claim the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America. This region is home to tribes such as the Pueblo, who are sedentary and agricultural, and the Apache and Navaho, who were nomadic.

With the conquest of North America by Western European countries and the subsequent expansion of the United States government, the indigenous populations of North America rapidly declined, reaching a low of 400,00 in 1900. However, as of 2009, the Native American population expanded to over 2.4 million people in the United States. Accompanying the growth in the size of the Native American population is a resurgence of interest in recording and codifying Native American histories and revival in Native American cultural practices.

The coverage of aforementioned cultures is meant to serve only as a very brief introduction to the diverse cultural heritage of America. In no way is this introduction meant to be an exhaustive examination of the people and cultures within the United States or the spirit with which the diverse peoples of America influence American society. The variety of cultures from Africa, Asia, Asia Minor, the Middle East, the Near East, the South Pacific islands, the Caribbean islands, South America, Central America, and indigenous groups of Alaska and Hawaii as well as the cultural influences experienced through global communications are intertwined in the fabric of the ongoing development of the United States.



Activity
American Mosaic or Melting Pot
Answer the following questions:

Question 1: The concept of the ?melting pot? was first introduced in 1908 by a playwright ____________.

Isreal Zangwill
Irving Berlin
Ruth Hale
Oscar Wilde
The correct answer is Isreal Zangwill. His play?s helped in popularize the term in American culture.

Question 2: Think about your heritage, your neighborhood or even your religious background. Does your experience more closely resemble a mosaic or a melting pot?

There is no right or wrong answer. Because the United States is so culturally diverse, you could answer either way. For some, their experience of American life is more like a mosaic where they embrace their unique heritage and culture while being a part of the greater whole. Others, through their experiences, may more closely identify with the concept of a unified and blended culture.


Resource Links
First Nations Histories
(http://www.tolatsga.org/Compacts.html)
This site provides links to information about several Native American tribes.

U.S. Westward Expansion
(http://www.besthistorysites.net/USHistory_WestwardExpansion.shtml)
This site provides links to several events the impacted westward expansion in the U.S.

United States History Map
(http://www.learner.org/interactives/historymap/indians.html)
This site provides an interactive map indicating the approximate location of several Native American tribes.

Tecumseh/Shawnee Prophet's Town
(http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=28646)
This site provides information about historical markers of the Shawnee tribe in Ohio in addition to other links about Native American tribes.

Ethnic America
(http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/ethnic_am.cfm)
This site provides information about various ethnic cultures and their part in U.S. History.

Immigration and Ethnic Heritage
(http://www.loc.gov/topics/content.php?subcat=16)
This site discusses the immigration of various cultures to the U.S.