Directions: This assignment has several documents for you to read and view in order to answer the four required questions. You will answer questions based on all of the documents below. Please follow any formatting guidelines and minimum length requirements as set by the course for college academic writing that you have utilized all semester and are stated in the syllabus. Please take your time to analyze these documents and submit thoughtful arguments supported by the evidence these documents provide. Please follow all directions provided for this assignment that are provided after the documents are introduced. Documents: 1. Miss Columbia s School House (1894) 2. Emilio Aguinaldo Criticizes American Imperialism in the Philippines (1899) 3. Eisenhower addressing Little Rock situation (September 24, 1957) 4. Alcatraz Proclamation (November 1969) 5. The Soiling of Old Glory by Stanley Forman (April 5, 1976) 6. President Ronald Reagan Defends American Morality (1983) 7. Senator Barack Obama s A More Perfect Union Speech (March 18, 2008) Primary Source One: Miss Columbia s School House (1894) The caption for this cartoon read Please, Ma am, May We Come In? with the male figure standing outside the gate representing Hawaii and the female figure representing Canada. Primary Source Two: Emilio Aguinaldo Criticizes American Imperialism in the Philippines (1899) As one of the principal leaders of Filipino independence from Spain, Emilio Aguinaldo railed against American policies towards his people in this document published in North American Review in September 1899. For this document, please read DOCUMENT 205 in Reading the American Past: Selected Historical Documents, Volume 2: From 1865 (pages 9699). Primary Source Three: Mob Rule Cannot Be Allowed to Override the Decisions of Our Courts : President Dwight D. Eisenhower s Address on Little Rock, Arkansas (September 24, 1957) Please watch the complete address HERE or at the following url: https:www.cspan.orgvideo?151861eisenhowerspeechlittlerock In 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously decided in Brown v. Board of Education that public schools segregated according to race were inherently unequal. State laws requiring school segregation therefore conflicted with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling challenged traditional attitudes and threatened a segregated way of life in the South validated in 1896 by the Court s ruling in Plessey v. Ferguson. The 1896 ruling permitted separate but equal public accommodations. In 1955, the Court ordained that desegregation of public schools should proceed with all deliberate speed; yet in many parts of the South, reactionary forces resisted. In Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus challenged efforts by the school board to institute a gradual school desegregation process and ordered state National Guard troops to defy Federal law and stop nine AfricanAmerican students from attending an allwhite high school. As television spread images of the subsequent mob violence around the world, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the following radio and television address on September 24, 1957, announced his reluctant response. Despite his disapproval of the Brown decision, Eisenhower, couching his address in the language of law and order, Cold War propaganda, and national pride, became the first president since Reconstruction to send Federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans. Although the nine students enrolled, resistance to desegregation continued as Faubus closed Little Rock high schools the following year and the number of desegregated schools in the South dropped precipitously in the ensuing years. The text of the speech is below. Good Evening, My Fellow Citizens: For a few minutes this evening I want to speak to you about the serious situation that has arisen in Little Rock. To make this talk I have come to the President s office in the White House. I could have spoken from Rhode Island, where I have been staying recently, but I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to take and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the Federal Court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference. In that city, under the leadership of demagogic extremists, disorderly mobs have deliberately prevented the carrying out of proper orders from a Federal Court. Local authorities have not eliminated that violent opposition and, under the law, I yesterday issued a Proclamation calling upon the mob to disperse. This morning the mob again gathered in front of the Central High School of Little Rock, obviously for the purpose of again preventing the carrying out of the Court s order relating to the admission of Negro children to that school. Whenever normal agencies prove inadequate to the task and it becomes necessary for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to use its powers and authority to uphold Federal Courts, the President s responsibility is inescapable. In accordance with that responsibility, I have today issued an Executive Order directing the use of troops under Federal authority to aid in the execution of Federal law at Little Rock, Arkansas. This became necessary when my Proclamation of yesterday was not observed, and the obstruction of justice still continues. It is important that the reasons for my action be understood by all our citizens. As you know, the Supreme Court of the United States has decided that separate public educational facilities for the races are inherently unequal and therefore compulsory school segregation laws are unconstitutional. Our personal opinions about the decision have no bearing on the matter of enforcement; the responsibility and authority of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution are very clear. Local Federal Courts were instructed by the Supreme Court to issue such orders and decrees as might be necessary to achieve admission to public schools without regard to race ?and with all deliberate speed. During the past several years, many communities in our Southern States have instituted public school plans for gradual progress in the enrollment and attendance of school children of all races in order to bring themselves into compliance with the law of the land. They thus demonstrated to the world that we are a nation in which laws, not men, are supreme. I regret to say that this truth ?the cornerstone of our liberties ?was not observed in this instance. It was my hope that this localized situation would be brought under control by city and State authorities. If the use of local police powers had been sufficient, our traditional method of leaving the problems in those hands would have been pursued. But when large gatherings of obstructionists made it impossible for the decrees of the Court to be carried out, both the law and the national interest demanded that the President take action. Here is the sequence of events in the development of the Little Rock school case. In May of 1955, the Little Rock School Board approved a moderate plan for the gradual desegregation of the public schools in that city. It provided that a start toward integration would be made at the present term in the high school, and that the plan would be in full operation by 1963. Here I might say that in a number of communities in Arkansas integration in the schools has already started and without violence of any kind. Now this Little Rock plan was challenged in the courts by some who believed that the period of time as proposed in the plan was too long. The United States Court at Little Rock, which has supervisory responsibility under the law for the plan of desegregation in the public schools, dismissed the challenge, thus approving a gradual rather than an abrupt change from the existing system. The court found that the school board had acted in good faith in planning for a public school system free from racial discrimination. Since that time, the court has on three separate occasions issued orders directing that the plan be carried out. All persons were instructed to refrain from interfering with the efforts of the school board to comply with the law. Proper and sensible observance of the law then demanded the respectful obedience which the nation has a right to expect from all its people. This, unfortunately, has not been the case at Little Rock. Certain misguided persons, many of them imported into Little Rock by agitators, have insisted upon defying the law and have sought to bring it into disrepute. The orders of the court have thus been frustrated. The very basis of our individual rights and freedoms rests upon the certainty that the President and the Executive Branch of Government will support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the Federal Courts, even, when necessary with all the means at the President s command. Unless the President did so, anarchy would result. There would be no security for any except that which each one of us could provide for himself. The interest of the nation in the proper fulfillment of the law s requirements cannot yield to opposition and demonstrations by some few persons. Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts. Now, let me make it very clear that Federal troops are not being used to relieve local and state authorities of their primary duty to preserve the peace and order of the community. Nor are the troops there for the purpose of taking over the responsibility of the School Board and the other responsible local officials in running Central High School. The running of our school system and the maintenance of peace and order in each of our States are strictly local affairs and the Federal Government does not interfere except in a very few special cases and when requested by one of the several States. In the present case the troops are there, pursuant to law, solely for the purpose of preventing interference with the orders of the Court. The proper use of the powers of the Executive Branch to enforce the orders of a Federal Court is limited to extraordinary and compelling circumstances. Manifestly, such an extreme situation has been created in Little Rock. This challenge must be met and with such measures as will preserve to the people as a whole their lawfullyprotected rights in a climate permitting their free and fair exercise. The overwhelming majority of our people in every section of the country are united in their respect for observance of the law ?even in those cases where they may disagree with that law. They deplore the call of extremists to violence. The decision of the Supreme Court concerning school integration, of course, affects the South more seriously than it does other sections of the country. In that region I have many warm friends, some of them in the city of Little Rock. I have deemed it a great personal privilege to spend in our Southland tours of duty while in the military service and enjoyable recreational periods since that time. So from intimate personal knowledge, I know that the overwhelming majority of the people in the South ?including those of Arkansas and of Little Rock ?are of good will, united in their efforts to preserve and respect the law even when they disagree with it. They do not sympathize with mob rule. They, like the rest of our nation, have proved in two great wars their readiness to sacrifice for America. A foundation of our American way of life is our national respect for law. In the South, as elsewhere, citizens are keenly aware of the tremendous disservice that has been done to the people of Arkansas in the eyes of the nation, and that has been done to the nation in the eyes of the world. At a time when we face grave situations abroad because of the hatred that Communism bears toward a system of government based on human rights, it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence, and indeed to the safety, of our nation and the world. Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations. There they affirmed faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person and they did so without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. And so, with deep confidence, I call upon the citizens of the State of Arkansas to assist in bringing to an immediate end all interference with the law and its processes. If resistance to the Federal Court orders ceases at once, the further presence of Federal troops will be unnecessary and the City of Little Rock will return to its normal habits of peace and order and a blot upon the fair name and high honor of our nation in the world will be removed. Thus will be restored the image of America and of all its parts as one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good night, and thank you very much. September 24, 1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower Source: 3Dwight D. Eisenhower1s Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock2 in Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945 ?1968 (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998), 60 ?64. Primary Source Four: Alcatraz Proclamation (November 1969) From November 20, 1969 until June 11, 1971, Alcatraz Island was occupied by a Native American rights group called Indians of All Tribes. Alcatraz Penitentiary was closed in 1963 and the U.S. Government had declared the island as surplus federal property. Indians of All Tribes claimed the island by citing the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) between the United States and the Sioux. The treaty returned to Native peoples all retired, abandoned and outof use federal lands. Between 1964 and 1969, several small scale attempts were made to claim Alcatraz on behalf of native peoples. On November 20, 1969, 79 members of Indians of All Tribes managed to land on Alcatraz despite a Coast Guard blockade and issued the following proclamation: Proclamation to the Great White Father and All His People We, the native Americans, reclaim the land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery. We wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with the Caucasian inhabitants of this land, and hereby offer the following treaty: We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for twentyfour dollars ($24) in glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man’s purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago. We know that $24 in trade goods for these 16 acres is more than was paid when Manhattan Island was sold, but we know that land values have risen over the years. Our offer of $1.24 per acre is greater than the 47? per acre that the white men are now paying the California Indians for their land. We will give to the inhabitants of this island a portion of that land for their own, to be held in trust by the American Indian Affairs [sic] and by the bureau of Caucasian Affairs to hold in perpetuity ?for as long as the sun shall rise and the rivers go down to the sea. We will further guide the inhabitants in the proper way of living. We will offer them our religion, our education, our lifeways, in order to help them achieve our level of civilization and thus raise them and all their white brothers up from their savage and unhappy state. We offer this treaty in good faith and wish to be fair and honorable in our dealings with all white men. We feel that this socalled Alcatraz Island is more than suitable for an Indian Reservation, as determined by the white man’s own standards. By this we mean that this place resembles most Indian reservations in that: 1. It is isolated from modern facilities, and without adequate means of transportation. 2. It has no fresh running water. 3. It has inadequate sanitation facilities. 4. There are no oil or mineral rights. 5. There is no industry and so unemployment is very great. 6. There are no health care facilities. 7. The soil is rocky and nonproductive; and the land does not support game. 8. There are no educational facilities. 9. The population has always exceeded the land base. 10. The population has always been held as prisoners and kept dependent upon others. Further, it would be fitting and symbolic that ships from all over the world, entering the Golden Gate, would first see Indian land, and thus be reminded of the true history of this nation. This tiny island would be a symbol of the great lands once ruled by free and noble Indians. Primary Source Five: The Soiling of Old Glory by Stanley Forman (April 5, 1976) In 1965, Massachusetts passed the Racial Imbalance Act that required school districts to desegregate or risk losing state funding. In 1974, federal judge Wendell A. Garrity Jr. ordered a compulsory busing program in Boston that required white and black school children to be bused throughout the district to finally bring about desegregation. While Garrity s ruling would eventually be upheld by the Supreme Court, racial tensions immediately boiled over in the streets of Boston. On April 5, 1976, the year of the American bicentennial, Stanley Forman, a photographer with the now defunct Boston Herald American, took 1250th of a second out of his day to take a picture that remains a defining illustration of race in America. At the time, Boston was in turmoil over courtordered busing, a scheme that forcibly bused students to schools often far from their homes in an effort to diversify schools. Opposition was strong and sparked a protest at City Hall where white demonstrators ended up severely beating a prominent black attorney, Ted Landsmark. The figure holding Ted Landsmark is not holding him up for the kill. The man, Jim Kelly, one of the protesters, is actually trying to get him out of harm’s way. He was one of the leaders of the antibusing movement. Joseph Rakes, who is holding the flag, is also misrepresented. It appears as though he is using the flagpole as a spear to plunge it at Landsmark. In fact, he’s actually swinging or waving it across at him. Indeed, the flag actually missed Landsmark on that swing. The picture does show the fact that a black man was beaten with an American flag, but there is much more going on. Primary Source Six: President Ronald Reagan Defends American Morality (1983) Known as The Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan addressed a meeting of the National Association of American Evangelicals in 1983 to articulate his belief in America s moral righteousness, particularly in relation to the Cold War. For this document, please read DOCUMENT 304 in Reading the American Past: Selected Historical Documents, Volume 2: From 1865 (pages 310314). Document 7: A More Perfect Union Speech by Senator Barack Obama (March 18, 2008) In running for President of the United States in 2008, Senator Barack Obama faced severe criticism over his prior attendance at a church where the Reverend Jeremiah Wright s incendiary sermons about America and race stirred anxieties about the presidential candidate s own feelings about race in America. Speaking at the National Constitution center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Barack Obama delivered a campaign defining speech that paved his way to winning the Democratic Party nomination and ultimately the White House. Please watch the complete speech HERE or at the following url: https:www.youtube.comwatch?v=zrpv2tHaDo A transcript of the speech can be found HERE or at the following url: https:blogs.wsj.comwashwire20080318textofobamasspeechamoreperfectunion Assignment Rationale: Realizing one s liberties following the Reconstruction era was no easier for many Americans than it was prior to the Civil War. Industrialization and immigration in the late nineteenth century only served to draw deeper and clearer distinctions on who and what an American was or could be. As the United States became an empire through the SpanishAmerican War domestic relationships of inequality transcended across the globe through our foreign policies. Domestic issues of race, class, and gender found expression throughout America s foreign policies in the twentieth century, culminating in the near simultaneous onset of the Cold War and rise of the modern Civil Rights Movement. As minority groups found domestic and global audiences for their grievances, America s moral authority to lead the world came under intense scrutiny. In many respects, America s past continues to profoundly shape America s view of the world and their view of us to this very day. ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS: Based upon your reading of these selected primary documents and incorporating such secondary sources as your textbook and lecture notes, I would like you to answer the following four questions. Please provide specific examples from these documents that support your arguments. 1) What perceptions of others are reflected attending Miss Columbia s School House (Document 1)? How does Aguinaldo s criticism of America s policies towards the Philippines (Document 2) echo the 1894 political cartoon? What do these two documents suggest about the way America perceived conquered peoples and the likelihood that they would ever be fit for American citizenship and its liberties? 2) What relationship does President Eisenhower draw between events in the modern Civil Rights Movement and the goals of the United States in waging the Cold War (Document 3)? How does the Alcatraz Proclamation (Document 4) and the The Soiling of Old Glory photograph (Document 5) reflect the increasing radicalization of the Civil Rights Movement by the 1970s as well as the violent responses it could produce within Anglo American communities? Based upon Eisenhower s speech, how do you believe he would respond to Documents 4 and 5 in the context of the Cold War? 3) According to President Reagan (Document 6), what does having a positive view of American history mean and what values does the country stand for? What should modern Americans think of their country s past in regards to race relations according Senator Obama (Document 7)? Do you agree with these documents arguments about America s past? Why or why not? 4) Based upon your reading of these documents, to what extent do you believe America s past continues to influence American society and modern debates about inequality? Does our past and efforts to confront and resolve issues of inequality empower us with a moral authority to dictate world affairs today? Why or why not? Guidelines for question responses: 1. Please restate the question in its entire format. You may cut and paste the question or retype it. 2. Each response shall be written in MLA format, Times New Roman, 12 point font, and 1 margins. b. You will include a works cited page. c. There is to be no first person in your work. NONE. d. All verbs shall be past tense verbs ? not present tense. 3. Each response shall be doublespaced. 4. Each response shall have examples from the documents to support your arguments. You may use other documents, but the ones specifically mentioned in the exam MUST be utilized. No credit will be given otherwise to a response that does not specifically mention the primary source. a. This means you will be integrating direct quotations from each document into your responses. b. You will use intext citations in proper MLA format to cite all quotes. c. You will explain your quotes. 5. There is a minimum length for each response. Each response should be at least two pages long. a. Please note this is doublespaced. b. Please note this does NOT include the question restated. In essence, this means that your response will be closer to 2 ?« pages with the question restated in its entirety. c. Responses not meeting the minimum guidelines will receive no credit. d. In reality, your responses will be longer than this to answer each portion of the question.
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