（３）1965年移民法とその社会的帰結

[1990a] (742-3) A Flood of Legislation. During the campaign, Lyndon Johnson summed up what he believed most Americans wanted. “They want education for their children and an improving life for their families. They want to protect liberty and pursue peace. They expect justice for themselves and are willing to grant it to others." To enable Americans to fulfill these goals Johnson proposed a broad program of social legislation, much of which was passed in 1965. One of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation was the Medicare Act. It provided hospital coverage for citizens over age 65 and allowed them to join a program that helped pay other medical expenses. An associated Medicaid program provided funds to assist poor people of all ages who were not covered by Medicare. The passage of the Medicare Act guaranteed a minimum level of health care for Americans for the first time. President Johnson also pressed for stronger civil rights laws. He redoubled his efforts after a civil rights worker was killed during a voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized federal officials to register voters in states where official racial discrimination continued. The enforcement of this law resulted in the registration of more than one million new black voters by the 1968 election. But the reforms did not end there. The Immigration Act of 1965 removed quotas based on race or national origin that had existed since the 1920s. (See page 572.) The Housing Act provided federal funds for constructing low- and middle-income housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was created. It was headed by Robert Weaver, the first black to serve in a presidential cabinet. Congress also expanded Social Security benefits, provided aid to higher education, began efforts to curb water pollution, and created the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities. After Congress adjourned in October 1965, the President proudly presented a display case of 50 pens to members of the White House press. The inscription read, "With these fifty pens President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the foundations of the Great Society, which was passed by the historical and fabulous first session of the Eighty-ninth Congress."

 

[1990b] (683) A flood of bills. President Johnson had chosen the right strategy. After these two controversial bills passed so easily, his others found clear sailing. The list of important laws passed by the 89th Congress was eye-popping. It covered the nation. There were laws to beautify the highways (supported by his Wife, Lady Bird) and laws for clean air. There was a law to insure truth in packaging. The Appalachian Regional Development Act gave to the poverty-stricken mountainous region stretching from Pennsylvania to Alabama and Georgia $1.1 billion for highways, health centers, and industrial development. The cities, too, received their share. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 aided construction of a quarter-million units of low-rent public housing. "Urban Renewal" -- the clearing of slums and rebuilding of cities-received $2.9 billion. The rents of low- and moderate-income families were subsidized. Congress created a Department of Housing and urban Development. To head the department Johnson named Robert C. Weaver, the first black in the Cabinet. The following year, Congress established the Department of Transportation. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the quota system. Each year 120,000 Persons could come from Western Hemisphere lands. Another 170,000 could be admitted from all other nations, but not more than 20,000 of these could come from any one country. Families of people already in the country, skilled workers, and refugees had priority. Congress voted billions for the war on poverty -- and for exploring outer space. LBJ's program offered something for nearly everybody.

 

[1990c] (723) A Change in Immigration. Congress also passed a new immigration law in 1965. The act changed the old quota system, which had favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. Immigration from countries outside the Western Hemisphere was limited to a total of 170,000 a year, with no more than 20,000 from any one country. Another 120,000 could enter the United States from countries in the Western Hemisphere. After this law went into effect, the main sources of immigration to the United States changed. Since 1965 most immigrants have come from Mexico and from such Asian countries as the Philippines, Korea, and Vietnam.

 

[1990d] (964-5) The Great Society in Action. Johnson spelled out his priorities soon after taking office, even though his program lacked a name at the start. Despite his own ambivalence about Kennedy, he understood the profound shock gripping the nation and knew that he had to dispel the image of pretender to the throne. In his first public address, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide, he embraced Kennedy's goals. He began, in a measured tone, with the words, "All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here today." He asked members of Congress to work with him, and he underscored the theme "Let us continue" throughout his speech. Johnson was determined to secure the measures that Kennedy sought but had been unable to extract from Congress. He took the bills to reduce taxes and ensure civil rights as his first and most pressing priorities, but he was interested too in aiding public education, providing medical care for the aged, and eliminating poverty. By the spring of 1964, the outlines of his own expansive vision were taking shape, and he had begun to use the phrase "Great Society" to describe his reform program. Successful even before the election of 1964, his landslide victory over conservative Republican challenger Barry Goldwater of Arizona validated his approach. LBJ received 61 percent of the popular vote and an electoral tally of 486 to 52 and gained Democratic congressional majorities of 68-32 in the Senate and 295140 in the House. Goldwater's candidacy reflected the growing power of conservatism within the Republican party and the ability of a grass-roots group to organize a successful campaign in party primaries. It also drove liberal voters into the Democratic party and gave Johnson a far more impressive mandate than Kennedy had ever enjoyed. Johnson provided strong executive leadership in support of his proposals. He appointed task forces that included legislators to study problems and suggest solutions, worked with them to draft bills, and maintained close contact with congressional leaders through a sophisticated liaison staff. Not since the FDR years had there been such a coordinated effort, and it resulted in the strongest legislative program since the New Deal. Civil rights reform was LBJ's first legislative priority and was an integral part of the Great Society program (see Chapter 30 for a full discussion of civil rights). But other measures were equally important in extending the boundaries of government action and securing the foundation of the welfare state. Following Kennedy's lead, Johnson pressed for a tax cut to stimulate the economy. He accepted the Keynesian theory that deficits, properly managed, could promote prosperity. To gain conservative support, he agreed to hold down spending; the tax bill passed. With the tax cut in hand, the president pressed for the poverty program that Kennedy had begun to plan. For the first time in American history, the government developed a program specifically directed at ending poverty. As Johnson declared in his 1964 State of the Union message, "This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America." The center of the effort to eradicate poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It created an Office of Economic Opportunity to provide education and training for unskilled young people trapped in the poverty cycle, VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) to assist the poor at home, and assorted community action programs to give the poor themselves a voice in improving housing, health, and education in their own neighborhoods. Aware of the escalating costs of medical care, Johnson proposed a medical assistance plan. Truman had proposed such a measure almost two decades before but had failed to win congressional approval. Nor had Kennedy accomplished anything in this area. Johnson, however, provided the necessary leadership. To head off conservative attacks, the administration tied the Medicare measure to the established social security system and limited the program to the elderly. Medicaid met the needs of the poor below the age of 65 who could not afford private insurance. The Medicare-Medicaid program was the most important extension of federally directed social benefits since the Social Security Act of 1935. Johnson was similarly successful in his effort to provide aid for elementary and secondary schools. Kennedy had met defeat when Catholics had insisted on assistance to parochial schools. Johnson, a Protestant, was able to deal with that ticklish question without charges of favoritism. He endorsed a measure to give money to the states based on the number of children from low-income families. Those funds would then be distributed to assist public as well as private school children. In LBJ's expansive vision, the federal government would ensure that all shared in the promise of American life. As a result of his prodding, Congress passed a new housing act to provide rent supplements to the poor and created a Department of Housing and Urban Development. It reformed the restrictive immigration policy, which for decades had rested on racial and national quotas. The Immigration Act of 1965 replaced the 1924 quota system with a new yearly limit of 170,000 people from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere. Family members of United States citizens were exempted from the quotas, as were political refugees, including at first Cuban and later Indochinese immigrants. In the 1960s, some 350,000 immigrants entered the United States annually; in the 1970s, the number exceeded 400,000 a year. This new immigration brought different groups to America and helped revive a sense of ethnic consciousness. Meanwhile, the federal government provided new forms of aid, such as legal assistance for the poor. It moved further in funding education, including colleges and universities in its financial grants. Finally, Congress provided artists and scholars with assistance through the new National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. Not since the Works Progress Administration in the New Deal had such groups been granted government aid. (966) [Picture] Immigrants, here shown being sworn in as citizens, had an easier time entering the United States after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. (1030-2) The Demographic Transformation. As Americans confronted economic problems, basic population patterns continued to develop in unspectacular but significant ways. Urban growth tailed off. The population became older. The number of nontraditional households increased. New immigrants streamed into the country. Such changing demographic contours often challenged local, state, and federal governments charged with meeting the needs of their constituents. American Society in 1980. The 1980 census revealed that in the previous decade, the population of the United States had increased from 203 million to 227 million. It reached approximately 245 million by 1988. The rise of 11.5 percent in the 1970s, matched by similar rates in the 1980s, marked the second lowest rate of growth in American history. Growth rates had been lower only during the Great Depression. In the baby boom decade between 1950 and 1960, population had grown by 19 percent; between 1960 and 1970, it had increased 13.3 percent. The census highlighted important structural changes. The urban rate of growth, which had been slowing since 1950, leveled off entirely. In 19 states, the rural part of the population actually increased. The age distribution of the population shifted toward the elderly. Between 1960 and 1980, the part of the population under the age of 5 decreased by one-fifth, while the part over the age of 65 increased by about 53 percent. Household composition also changed. A quarter of all households were classified as "nonfamily households," in which two or more unrelated individuals shared living quarters. The percentage of family households declined from 81 in 1970 to 74 in 1980. The New Pilgrims. Another shift occurred as the United States admitted new immigrants from a variety of foreign nations. A fifth of the decade's population growth stemmed from this immigration, which was spurred by the Immigration Act of 1965. Part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, this act authorized the acceptance of immigrants impartially from all parts of the world. Because the national-origins system of the 1920s had favored western Europeans and was therefore frankly racist, most immigrants between 1930 and 1960 had come from Europe or Canada. Between 1977 and 1979, however, only 16 percent came from these areas, while 40 percent came from Asia and another 40 percent from Latin America. Always a nation of immigrants, the United States was once again receiving new ethnic infusions. As had long been true, the desire for jobs fostered immigration. But foreign crises also fueled the influx. After 1975, the United States accepted more than a half million Vietnamese refugees. In 1980, more than 160,000 arrived. That same year, the nation admitted 125,000 Cubans and Haitians to southern Florida. The official total of all immigrants in 1980 was 808,000, the highest in 60 years. Millions more arrived illegally. As the populations of Latin American nations soared and as economic conditions deteriorated, more and more people looked to the United States for relief. In the mid-1970s, Leonard Chapman, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, estimated that there might be 12 million foreigners in the nation illegally. While official estimates were lower, Attorney General William French Smith declared in 1983, "Simply put, we've lost control of our own borders.” In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, aimed at curbing illegal immigration while offering amnesty to aliens who had lived in the United States since 1982. Turnout for the program was less than expected until the mid-1988 deadline approached. Then 50,000 per week applied, compared to 10,000 earlier in the year, and all-night lines became common at legalization centers. The United States had once again become a melting pot of people from very different parts of the world. The Sun Belt in particular, from Florida to California, felt the impact of the new Asians and Hispanics. In Los Angeles, Samoans, Taiwanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Cambodians competed for jobs and apartments with Mexicans, blacks, and Anglos, just as newcomers from different countries had contended with one another in New York City a century before. Throughout the country, in Miami, in Houston, in Brooklyn, the languages heard in the schools and on the streets changed, as did the very complexion of the society. Each group, each family, had its own story. Nguyen Ninh and Nguyen Viet, two brothers who remained in Vietnam after the victory of the North Vietnamese in 1975, were among the many who finally fled their war-torn country by boat. The boat sank, but they were rescued, only to be shuttled to Kuwait, then Greece, and finally to the United States, where another brother had arrived a few years before. Though they spoke no English, they immediately began to look for work. One became a carpenter's helper; the other, an attendant at a valet parking firm. With the money they earned, they helped other members of their family emigrate. Slowly they learned English, obtained better jobs, and saved enough money to purchase a home. In 1980, there were 3.5 million Asians in the United States, out of a total population of 227 million. But their influence went far beyond their numbers. In California, where more lived than anywhere else, they dominated the higher educational system to such a degree that the ability of non-Asians to gain admission was sometimes threatened. (1032) [Picture] Cuban "boat people," classified as refugees from Fidel Castro's Communist regime, were permitted to register for resident status.

 

[1990e] (671-2) The United States experienced prosperity and social change. The United States emerged from World War II as the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth. It played a major role in world affairs even as important social changes took place at home. The American economy was productive. Unlike the Soviet Union, the United States mainland suffered no direct damage during World War II. Not only had the U.S. wartime economy expanded enormously to meet military needs, but it continued to grow rapidly after the war as well. Americans in 1945 accounted for half the world's manufacturing output and about two-thirds of all global exports. Their standard of living in 1948 was twice as high as it was for the next wealthiest peoples-the British, the Swedes, and the Swiss. During the next 2S years, the United States flourished economically as no nation in history had ever done. By 1970 the Gross National Product (GNP) – the total value of all goods and services produced in the country – was five times greater than it was in 1945. With only 6 percent of the world's population in 197O, the United States consumed more than half of the world's production. Only in the 1970s, when Western Europe and Japan made tremendous economic progress, did the gap with the American standard of living begin to narrow. Even so, the United States in the 1980s was still the world's wealthiest nation. A revolution in civil rights took place. Not all Americans shared the wealth. Perhaps as many as 10 percent lived in poverty. Black Americans, the largest minority group, suffered the most -- from legal segregation in the south and social and economic discrimination in the north. They had the highest rates of unemployment, the lowest level of education, and the fewest opportunities for advancement of all Americans. Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, many Americans, both black and white, challenged the system of racial segregation and discrimination through the courts and by means of bus boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations. These organized and peaceful attempts to gain rights for blacks became known as the civil rights movement. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional. This was the civil rights movement's first major victory. Religious leaders played an important, active role in the quest for civil rights. One particularly inspirational leader was the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister. A believer in nonviolence, the Rev. Dr. King later became the first black American to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He was greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, who had led the fight for Indian independence through nonviolent protest. (See Chapter 33.) Beginning in the late 1950s, King led a series of peaceful protests and mass marches that stirred the conscience of millions of Americans. As a result, in 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in public services and in places of work. The following year it passed the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote to all black Americans. These civil rights victories were marred by a tragedy. In 1968 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. By the 1970s and 1980s, increasing numbers of black Americans were playing important roles in national, state, and local government. By the mid-1980s, for example, the nation had almost 250 black mayors and 6,000 black elected officials. In 1988 the Rev. Jesse Jackson challenged other leaders for the Democratic presidential nomination, winning widespread black support. In addition to helping black Americans, the civil rights movement helped women and other minorities such as American Indians and Hispanic Americans. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, also outlawed discrimination in employment on the basis of sex. Although not enforced at the time, this provision was to be of importance in the 1970s when the women's movement gained momentum. By the end of the 1980s, many black and Hispanic Americans had achieved middle-class status. Women also found fewer barriers. Despite the progress in civil rights, however, many people still suffered from unemployment, poor housing, and lack of education. Civil rights leaders insisted that much work had yet to be done. (671) [Picture] The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, lead a column of 30,000 people in a massive march for voting rights in 1965.

 

[1991]   (844-8) 2 Americans Face Challenges Abroad. Section Focus. Key Term: protectionism. Main Idea: As the United States approaches the year 2000, the American people will confront trends affecting not only their own nation but the whole world. Objectives: As you read, look for answers to these questions: 1. How has the American population changed in recent years? 2. What are some recent trends in international relations? In the 1960s, the Canadian writer Marshall McLuhan claimed that the world was becoming a "global village." Many people laughed at the idea. How could billions of human beings, separated by geographical barriers as well as by political and cultural differences, be so closely connected? As we approach the year 2000, however, it seems that McLuhan may have been right. The globe is now connected by instant communication. Goods, capital, information, and people move more rapidly from one corner of the earth to the other. Now, as never before, events in one part of the world can affect people everywhere. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE 1990s. The movement of people has made the United States itself more international in the last quarter-century. In 1965 a more liberal immigration law replaced the rigid quota system put in place during the 1920s. Since 1965 the United States has experienced the largest wave of new immigration since the early 1900s. Most new Americans are Asian or Hispanic. In the 1980s three-fourths of all immigrants -- some five million -- came either from Asia or from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. They represent dozens of diverse national traditions. There are Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Laotians, Mexicans, Cubans, and Guatemalans, to name just a few. Most new immigrants settled in the sunbelt, especially Florida, Texas, and California. At the same time, many businesses moved in the same direction, escaping the higher labor and energy costs of the North and East. The result has been a major shift in the American population. In 1960, the Northeast and Midwest had 54 percent of the total population. By 1990, their portion had dropped to 44 percent. Meanwhile the South and West jumped from 46 percent to 56 percent. Greater immigration to the United States is only one of the large-scale movements of people around the world today. Many of these migrants are fleeing Communist nations to escape poverty and persecution. They are a dramatic sign of the changing times in the Communist world. REFORMING COMMUNIST SOCIETIES. Once Communist, always Communist. That had been a popular American idea since the beginning of the cold war. Communist rulers, according to this view, would never allow democratic change. They might be overthrown, but they would never peacefully give up their dictatorial power. Late in the 1980s, however, dramatic changes took place in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. Several Communist governments made unprecedented reforms. They loosened censorship, allowed greater economic freedom, and opened new forms of political debate. These reforms were made in response to economic crises and growing public discontent. The most important changes took place in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. After coming to power in 1985, Gorbachev pursued his perestroika reform campaign (page 827). This restructuring of Soviet society produced many promising changes within Soviet borders. It also led to a more relaxed Soviet foreign policy. Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Gorbachev promised to let the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe run their own affairs. The Soviet government even faced up to some of the crimes of the Stalin years. For example, a high-ranking Soviet official denounced the secret clause in the 1939 nonaggression pact by which Stalin and Hitler divided Poland and the Baltic states (page 598). Gorbachev's reforms led to the greatest improvement in Soviet-American relations since World War II. Having signed the INF Treaty removing intermediate-range nuclear weapons from Europe (page 828), the superpowers then turned their attention to cutting the number of long-range missiles. They also moved forward on a host of other issues. CHANGES ELSEWHERE IN THE COMMUNIST WORLD. The Soviet example of reform inspired popular movements throughout the Communist world. For example, a stunning transformation took place in Poland in 1989. For the first time in history, a Communist regime was removed from power by peaceful elections. Crippled by soaring inflation and mounting debt, Poland stood on the verge of collapse. The Communist government saw that it lacked the public support it would need to revive the economy. In a move that took nearly everyone by surprise, the government negotiated with its political opponents and called for elections. Solidarity, the trade union that had been outlawed by the Communists for over six years, won all but one of the contested seats. Though the Communist Party kept control of the military, a member of Solidarity became Poland's new prime minister. Following the lead of Poland, change began to sweep through Eastern Europe. The government of East Germany, for example, had long clung to hard-line Stalinist policies. Late in 1989 the people of East Germany, in a series of huge demonstrations, made clear their demand for new leadership. Meanwhile, thousands of East Germans fled to the West through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, whose own reforms included loosened emigration laws. Desperate to regain the people's confidence, East Germany made a bold move. It allowed citizens to move freely between East and West Berlin. The Berlin Wall, the best-known symbol of the cold war, had been breached. At about the same time, the citizens of other Communist countries were demanding change. In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, reform governments came to power peacefully. With dizzying speed, they made plans to guarantee multi-party systems, parliamentary democracy, and religious and economic freedom. In Romania, violence ushered in a new government. After security forces loyal to Nicolae Ceausescu (chow-SHEHS-koo) fired on demonstrators, army units joined outraged citizens in overthrowing the hated dictator. Ceausescu was executed, bringing an end to his despotic rule. The Soviet Union applauded the changes in Eastern Europe. It may have had no choice, for economic troubles were mounting at home. Soviet leader Gorbachev also had his hands full with separatist demands from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and with outbreaks of ethnic violence in Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan. Still, the success of the reform movements was not guaranteed, as the example of China chillingly demonstrated. Deng Xiaoping (DUNG SHAOW-PING) became China's leader in the 1970s after the death of Mao Zedong. He tried to improve the Chinese economy by introducing some elements of capitalism. However, Deng firmly opposed establishing any political reforms to go along with these economic reforms. Many Chinese were dissatisfied. Beginning early in 1989, thousands of Chinese students began holding protest rallies in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. They carried banners saying "Democracy Is Our Common Dream." By May the daily crowds had swelled to more than a million. Workers and older people began to join the young students in the streets. As protests spread to other cities, hope soared among the demonstrators. Then in June 1989, troops attacked the demonstrators. Tanks invaded the square, firing on the mostly unarmed citizens. No one knows how many were killed; estimates ran into the thousands. In the months following the massacre, the government cracked down on all forms of free expression in China. The massacre in Tiananmen Square was a major blow to those who hoped for peaceful democratic reform in China. Americans watched the events in the Communist world with amazement. Some foreign-policy experts went so far as to declare that the cold war was over and that the United States had won. Containment had worked, they claimed. The Soviet empire, prevented from expanding, had collapsed because of its own internal weaknesses. Other experts were not so sure. Events in China showed that reform could be brought to a sudden and bloody halt. Soviet leader Gorbachev might be removed from power or forced to change his policies. Also, the new governments in Eastern Europe faced staggering economic problems, caused by years of Communist mismanagement. Still, it did appear that the ideological competition between the Soviet Union and the United States might become less important in the future. It might well be replaced by a new form of competition -- global economic competition. (844) [Chart] IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1941-1990. GRAPH SKILLS. This graph shows immigration to the United States from various continents over the past five decades. From what continents has immigration skyrocketed? From what continent has immigration fallen? Which of the continents shown here consistently provides the fewest immigrants? CRITICAL THINKING Mow do economic factors influence immigration? (845) [Chart] THE NEWEST AMERICANS. MAP SKILLS. This map shows how recent immigrants are changing the face of American cities. CRITICAL THINKING: What factors influence where an immigrant wilt choose to settle? [Picture] BIOGRAPHY. MARCH FONG EU (1922- ), of Chinese ancestry, is California's secretary of state. Born in Oakdale, California, Eu received doctorates in both education and law. From 1966 to 1974 she was a member of the California legislature. Since then she has served several terms as California's secretary of state. (846) [Picture] German citizens celebrate atop the Berlin Wall after East Germany's announcement of free travel between East and West Berlin late in 1989. HISTORY What factors make certain events historically significant, while other events are quickly forgotten? (847) [Picture] The crushing of pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 gained worldwide attention. Two of the most enduring images of the protests are shown here. Above is the "Goddess of Liberty." Inspired by the Statue of Liberty, it was constructed by demonstrators but later destroyed by government forces. At left, a lone citizen confronts a column of tanks. ETHICS Why would a person risk his or her life in such a situation?

 

[1992a] −

 

[1992b] −

 

[1992c] (210-3) Ellis Island Opens (1892). The event: Inundated with masses of immigrants, the United States Immigration Bureau opened, on January 1, 1892, a large facility on Ellis Island in upper New York Bay for the reception of newcomers. For the next sixty-two years, Ellis Island would serve not only as the main point of entry for America's immigrants but as a symbol of the hopes, fears, and disappointments of all those who entered the country atom foreign lands. ONCE A PICNIC ground for the early Dutch settlers, the island, about a mile off the tip of lower Manhattan, was named for Samuel Ellis, who owned it in the 1770s. It was purchased by federal authorities from New York State in 1808 for use as a government arsenal and fort. After the creation of the Immigration Bureau in 1891, the immigration station was moved from inadequate facilities at Castle Garden -- the former fortress at Battery Park on the extreme southern tip of Manhattan -- to Ellis Island. Officials saw the island as a cordon sanitaire, where masses of immigrants could be received, examined for disease, and quarantined, admitted to the mainland, or deported. For millions, Ellis Island was either the portal to the New World or the locked gate from which they were tuned away. At the height of its activity early in the twentieth century, Ellis Island processed, in its nag-draped Great Hall, a million people a year, twelve million passing through the place between 1895 and 1924. It was the principal immigrant processing station for the United States from 1892 to 1943. Since 1965 Ellis Island has been part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, though it was allowed to fall into decay. After an extensive restoration project, the facility reopened as the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1990. Not every generation of Americans would have erected a monument to immigration. While Americans have always enjoyed thinking of their country as a refuge of peace, liberty, and opportunity, immigrants have frequently been subjected to hatred and prejudice, and immigration has been periodically reduced by restrictive legislation and quotas. The United States, of course, began as a nation of immigrants in the seventeenth century, the vast majority English speakers who became farmers and espoused the Protestant religions. The next century saw waves of German immigration, which made many native-born Americans nervous about the capacity of American society to absorb foreign-speaking newcomers. The next "assault" on Americans' perceived cultural identity came in the nineteenth century as large numbers of Irish-Catholics fled to these shores in an effort to escape famine and political oppression. This time, many Americans worried that their essentially Anglo-Protestant culture would disintegrate, and the Irish were subjected to a good deal of prejudice and abuse, some of it sanctioned by law. Balancing the nation's fears were the needs of industry, which sought cheap immigrant labor in ever-increasing numbers by about 1880. This period saw the greatest influx of Italians, Greeks, Turks, Russians, Slavs, and Jews, sparking new fears about the possibility of "assimilating" so many and diverse peoples into an American culture. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese immigration into the United States for a period of ten years and was regularly renewed until 1920. In 1917 immigrants were subjected to a literacy test, and in 1924 legislation put sharp limits on the number of immigrants permitted to come to the United States (154,000 annually, plus the wives and minor children of U.S. citizens). The 1924 act established national origin quotas aimed at sharply reducing immigration from southern and eastern European countries on the xenophobic grounds that these immigrants were less likely to make good Americans than those from northern and western Europe. Following the horrors and devastation of World War II, some restrictive legislation was lifted to admit wartime refugees. In 1965, as the result of a growing sensitivity to civil rights issues, amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act repealed quotas based on national origin. But the World War II refugees were usually the white Europeans always favored by nativist sentiment, and the 1965 amendments left enough restrictions to allow the government, in recent years, to use immigration policy as a means of rewarding political client states -- welcoming, for example, pro-American South Vietnamese and anti-Sandinista Nicaraguans, while denying entry to Salvadoran refugees. Given traditional biases, Congress's ham-handed attempt to address the problem of the massive illegal alien population in the Southwest in the 1980s came as no surprise. Passing a law aimed at providing legal status and official protection to long-standing illegal residents and temporary workers, most of whom were Mexican, Congress only made matters worse by punishing employers far failing to keep track of the proper papers, which led them to discriminate against anyone with a foreign-sounding name. The refusal of the government to accept Haitian refugees in the 1990s, excused on the grounds that Haitians had already overrun the temporary camps set up to process their applications for immigrant status, only underlined the historical consistency of American immigration policy. No one could reasonably imagine white Europeans huddled into barbed wire enclosures as authorities debated whether the military regime they fled was brutal enough to qualify them to become Americans.

 

[1992d] (802) A flood of bills. President Johnson had chosen the right strategy. After these two controversial bills passed so easily, his others found clear sailing. The list of important laws passed by the 89th Congress was eye-popping. It covered the nation. There were laws to beautify the highways (supported by his wife, Lady Bird) and laws for clean air. There was a law to insure truth in packaging. The Appalachian Regional Development Act gave to the poverty-stricken mountainous region stretching from Pennsylvania to Alabama and Georgia $1.1 billion for highways, health centers, and industrial development. The cities, too, received their share. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 aided construction of a quarter-million units of low-rent public housing. "Urban Renewal" -- the clearing of slums and rebuilding of cities received $2.9 billion. The rents of low -- and moderate-income families were subsidized. Congress created a Department of Housing and Urban Development. To head the department Johnson named Robert C. Weaver, the first black in the Cabinet, The following year, Congress established the Department of Transportation. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the quota system. Each year 120,000 persons could come from Western Hemisphere lands. Another 170,000 could be admitted from all other nations, but not more than 20,000 of these could come from any one country. Families of people already in the country, skilled workers, and refugees had priority. Congress voted billions for the war on poverty-and for exploring outer space. LBJ's program offered something for nearly everybody.

 

[1992e] (802) A flood of bills. President Johnson had chosen the right strategy. After these two controversial bills passed so easily, his others found clear sailing. The list of important laws passed by the 89th Congress was eye-popping. It covered the nation. There were laws to beautify the highways (supported by his wife, Lady Bird) and laws for clean air. There was a law to insure truth in packaging. The Appalachian Regional Development Act gave to the poverty-stricken mountainous region stretching from Pennsylvania to Alabama and Georgia $1.1 billion for highways, health centers, and industrial development. The cities, too, received their share. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 aided construction of a quarter-million units of low-rent public housing. "Urban Renewal" -- the clearing of slums and rebuilding of cities received $2.9 billion. The rents of low -- and moderate-income families were subsidized. Congress created a Department of Housing and Urban Development. To head the department Johnson named Robert C. Weaver, the first black in the Cabinet, The following year, Congress established the Department of Transportation. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the quota system. Each year 120,000 persons could come from Western Hemisphere lands. Another 170,000 could be admitted from all other nations, but not more than 20,000 of these could come from any one country. Families of people already in the country, skilled workers, and refugees had priority. Congress voted billions for the war on poverty-and for exploring outer space. LBJ's program offered something for nearly everybody.

 

[1992f]  (664) The population of the United States was changing drastically. The Immigration Act of 1965 had opened up the country to many more Latin Americans and Asians. South Koreans, Filipinos, and South Vietnamese flooded into the country seeking economic opportunity and political freedom. As to Hispanic immigration, most came from Mexico, though large numbers from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Central and South America also arrived. Dissatisfied with the peaceful protest tactics of Martin Luther King. Jr.. African American leaders such as Stokely Carmichael continued the push for Black Power. The white backlash also continued. Some whites picketed against affirmative action programs, which compelled employers to give minority workers preference in hiring in order to make up for past imbalances in the work force. Yet despite the backlash, the civil rights movement had changed the nation. Gone forever were the "for whites only" signs and other obvious examples of discrimination. Economic, political, and social opportunities for women improved dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s. Women entered the work force by the millions during these years. But a proposed Equal Rights Amendment failed to be ratified by the necessary three quarters of the states. Of the many social problems challenging Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, urban decay and environmental pollution were the most obvious. Neighborhoods and Individuals as well as federal, state, and local governments had to deal with them. A vicious cycle of decay ate away at many of America's central cities. The movement of people to suburbs and the Sun Belt resulted In a decline of public services in the inner cities. Whole neighborhoods wasted away. Schools deteriorated, and the number of dropouts rose. Increasing crime and homelessness worsened the plight of thousands. Many of America's natural resources also deteriorated. Air and water pollution were on the increase in many regions. Millions of automobiles, buses, and trucks poured exhaust fumes into the air, while power plants and factories released clouds of smoke and cinders. In Los Angeles breathing the almost daily smog became a serious health risk. In the Northeast air pollution caused acid rain, which damaged forests and water supplies. Acid rain from America even caused damage in Canada, resulting in strained relations with that country. The pumping of chemical waste products from factories into rivers and lakes threatened water supplies. Chemicals used for killing insects and as fertilizers were also polluting the land and waterways. Accidents to off-shore oil wells and to giant oil tankers spilled millions of gallons of thick, black crude oil into the oceans, fouling miles of beaches and killing seabirds and fish. (664) [Pictures] Two marchers in New York's Puerto Rican Day Parade. Baseball is the national pastime on the island. The girl smiling shyly is holding the Puerto Rican flag. Do you think Puerto Rico might become the 51st state? What arguments are made for and against statehood?

 

[1992g] (563-6) 3 Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. FIND OUT. *Which of Kennedy's programs were enacted during the Johnson administration? *How did President Johnson attempt to help the poor and the elderly? *How did President Johnson expand the voting rights of African Americans? *VOCABULARY: poverty line. Lyndon Johnson, the new President, was a political man in every way During his many years in Congress, he learned just how to evaluate its members. And he often used his well-known powers of persuasion to get bills passed. Senator Smathers of Florida recalled the "Johnson treatment" as being like "a great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed in around you." Johnson combined threats, rewards, appeals to emotion and patriotism, and good old-fashioned arguments. As President, he applied his "treatment" to carry through the legislation begun by John F. Kennedy. Johnson himself had a program for the betterment of society. His "Great Society" was modeled after Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Johnson wanted the federal government to be actively involved in improving civil rights, education, and conditions for the poor and the elderly. During his years in office, Washington saw a whirlwind of activity as Johnson worked to bring the Great Society into being. The Man From the Texas Hills. When Johnson arrived in Washington on November 22, 1963 he said simply "I'll do my best. That's all I can do." It was a rare moment of modesty for this powerful man. Lyndon Baines Johnson was born in the hill country outside Austin. Texas. It was a dry, rough land that demanded long hours of work from those who farmed it. Growing up in a rural community, Johnson learned about hard work and hard times, especially during the Great Depression. He first came to Washington to work for a member of Congress from Texas in 1932, the year Franklin Roosevelt swept into office. Roosevelt became young Johnson's ideal of an active president. And the New Deal showed him how government could be used to help ordinary people. In 1937, Johnson won election to the House of Representatives. He came to the Senate 11 years later. In 1958, Johnson became Senate majority leader. In this position, he was perhaps the most influential politician on Capitol Hill. Johnson Takes Action. In the early days of his presidency, Lyndon Johnson pushed through many of the reforms that President Kennedy had begun. In a short time, Kennedy's tax-cut proposal passed. Thanks to Johnson's influence, so did Kennedy's civil rights program, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act. Southern senators tried to block passage of the civil rights bill by carrying out a filibuster. Finally, after 83 days, Hubert H. Humphrey, a well-known liberal senator from Minnesota, got the Senate to limit debate and the bill was passed in June. The House passed the bill in July, and Johnson signed it immediately. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination in public facilities, such as restaurants and parks, and in the use of federal funds. It tried to protect the rights of blacks to vote and to gain employment. The war on poverty. President Johnson called on the nation to join him in a "war on poverty." In 1964, it was estimated that at least 30 million Americans -- 16 percent of the population -- lived below the poverty line, or the minimum income level people need to survive. The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was a cornerstone of Johnson's program to help the poor. The act established programs to teach people new job skills. It provided loans to encourage rural farm cooperatives and urban businesses. Migrant laborers received aid. The act also created VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), a domestic version of Kennedy's successful Peace Corps. A Democratic Landslide. Johnson easily won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1964. As his running mate he chose Hubert H. Humphrey. The Republicans nominated a conservative senator, Barry Goldwater of Arizona, for President. Party moderates charged that his views were too extreme. He answered them by stating, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue." In the campaign that followed, the Democrats presented Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey as moderates. They charged that Barry Goldwater was a dangerous conservative. For example, their advertisements reminded voters that Goldwater had questioned the social security system. They suggested that he might be too willing to use nuclear weapons in a crisis. The tactic worked. Johnson won 61 percent of the popular vote, the biggest victory since that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. The Democrats also won a large majority in both houses. Johnson now had the votes he needed to enact his Great Society programs. A Flood of Legislation. As the campaign progressed, Lyndon Johnson summed up what he believed most Americans wanted. "They want education for their children and an improving life for their families. They want to protect liberty and pursue peace. They expect justice for themselves and are willing to grant it to others." So that Americans could fulfill these goals, Johnson proposed an ambitious program of social legislation. Then he moved quickly to push his program through Congress, while his election victory was fresh in everyone's mind. "Hurry, boys, hurry," he told his aides. "Get that legislation up to the hill and out. Eighteen months from now on Landslide Lyndon will be Lame-Duck Lyndon." Medicare and Medicaid. In 1965, one major bill after another was written into law. One of the most important programs was Medicare. This plan provided citizens over the age of 65 with government help paying hospital bills. Another program, Medicaid, provided money to assist poor people of all ages who were not covered by Medicare. The passage of these two programs was the first step in guaranteeing a minimum level of health care for all Americans. The Voting Rights Act. President Johnson also pressed for stronger civil rights laws. He pushed even harder after a civil rights worker was killed during a voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 allowed federal officials to register voters in states where local officials practiced discrimination. More than one million African American citizens registered in time to vote in the 1968 elections. The Immigration Act. The reforms did not end there. The Immigration Act of 1965 did away with quotas based on race or national origin, which limited the number of immigrants coming into the country. These quotas had existed since the 1920s. (See page 337.) The Housing Act. The Housing Act provided federal funds for building low and middle-income housing. To carry out these programs, Congress created the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It was headed by Robert Weaver, the first African American to serve in a presidential cabinet. Congress expanded social security benefits and provided aid to higher education. Furthermore, it began efforts to curb water pollution, and it created the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities. After Congress adjourned in October 1965, the President proudly presented a display of 50 pens to members of the White House press. The inscription read, "With these fifty pens President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the foundations of the Great Society, which was passed by the historical and fabulous first session of the Eighty-ninth Congress." (564) [Picture] Johnson Triumphs. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, greet the crowd at the Democratic convention in 1964. Johnson and running mate Hubert Humphrey were elected in a landslide victory after an unusually bitter campaign. The President's victory ensured enactment of his sweeping social programs. Citizenship: How are candidates for national political office chosen in the united States today? (565) [Picture] Getting Out the Vote. Young activists in southwest Georgia register a new voter. Voter registration drives throughout the South signed up thousands of African Americans who had never voted before. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 guaranteed the participation of these new voters in American politics. Citizenship: Why did civil rights workers have to seek out new voters? (676-9) 3 A Changing Population. FIND OUT. *How have immigration patterns been changing? *What are the consequences of slower population growth and a rising average population age? *What areas of the country are growing most rapidly? *VOCABULARY: bilingual education, zero population growth. Each day, between 1,000 and 2,000 immigrants arrive to start a new life in the United States. Roughly 6 million came in the 1980s -- more immigrants than in any decade since World War I. As in the past, the new arrivals are helping to mold the nation. A Nation of Immigrants. The United States has always been a nation immigrants. But over time, the sources, immigration have changed. The most recent changes resulted from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This act abolished the national origins quotas for immigrants. Since 1965, most new Americans have come from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean islands. About half of all arrivals from the Western Hemisphere come from Mexico. Central Americans, South Americans, Cubans, and Haitians are also numerous. Many of these immigrants come to escape the poverty or political unrest that limits opportunities in their homelands. In the 1970s and 1980s, Americans debated what to do about an estimated 6 to 12 million immigrants who had entered the country illegally Congress reacted by passing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This law set penalties for employers who hire noncitizens lacking the "green card" (now white or pink) that shows their legal status. The law also offered an amnesty, or pardon, to an estimated 3.1 million people who had arrived illegally before January 1, 1982. The law, however, has not stopped illegal immigration. Asian Americans. In the 1960s, only 13 percent of immigrants to the United States were from Asia. In the 1980s, that figure sometimes jumped to more than 50 percent. Today, Asians are the fastest-growing group of Americans. Hundreds of thousands fled war-torn Southeast Asia. When 13-year-old Thai Dang decided to escape from communist Vietnam in 1981, she found it difficult to leave. She described her feelings: "I wanted to embrace my dear friend, Trang, tightly, telling her that I would be leaving Saigon in an hour, that she would always remain my friend." But since her escape was a secret, she could not share it with her best friend. The rest of Thai Dang's journey was as hazardous as it had been for thousands of others. Vietnamese police discovered her attempt. She ran, stumbling through a strange forest. Finally, her mother put her on a small boat and waved good-bye. At sea, pirates attacked the boat. Only by begging did the refugees escape with their lives. Thai Dang was among the fortunate "boat people." She finally found her way to the United States. Today, Asian Americans number more than 7 million. They include immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and the Indian subcontinent, as well as from Southeast Asia. Influenced by a tradition of respect for education, Asian immigrants have achieved a great deal of success in their new land. Hispanics. Tune across the radio or television dial and listen to the sounds of the modern United States. They include the lively beat of salsa and other Latin rhythms. In many cities, Spanish-language newscasts provide the latest bulletins from cities like Havana and Mexico City. The presence of Latino or Hispanic culture is strong. An estimated 20 million Hispanics, including people who identify themselves as Latinos, live in the United States today. They make up the second largest minority group, after African Americans. And by the end of the 1990s, Hispanics are expected to outnumber African Americans in the United States. Hispanics form major voting blocs in such cities as Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Antonio. They have come from all parts of the Spanish-speaking Americas, but mainly from Mexico (62 percent), Puerto Rico (13 percent), and Cuba (5 percent). Most Mexican Americans live in the Southwest. The largest Puerto Rican community is in New York City, although many Puerto Ricans live in cities like Chicago and Newark, New Jersey. The majority of Cuban immigrants have settled in southern Florida. As you have read on page 675, Hispanics have become politically influential in the states where they settled in large numbers. "Melting Pot" Or "Salad Bowl"? The many ethnic groups that share in American life have greatly enriched the nation's culture. Historians used to describe the United States as a "melting pot," in which the ethnic cultures blended to form a single American culture. More recently, observers have suggested that American society is more like a "salad bowl." Just as a salad contains a mix of distinctive ingredients, many distinct cultures exist side by side in the United States. Each has a unique identity, but all are united by the political ideals of free society. Yet this mix of cultures presents problems, too. For many members of ethnic minorities, adjusting to new customs and a new language is a difficult challenge. American society helps them in many ways. Public signs and election ballots sometimes appear in more than one language. Some schools offer bilingual education. They allow students to take some courses in their first language while they are learning English. But such efforts have also provoked controversy. Critics say that the efforts discourage non-English speakers from learning English and are a threat to American political unity. Also, bilingual education is expensive; it strains the resources of many school districts. Responding to the critics, more than a dozen states have passed laws making English their official language. (678) [Maps] Hispanic Population, 1990. Asian Population, 1990. MAP STUDY. In recent years, Hispanics and Asians have been the fastest-growing population groups in the United States. 1. What state has the largest percentage of Hispanics? The largest percentage of Asians? 2. What states have more than 1,000,000 Hispanics? More than 1,000,000 Asians? 3. Analyzing Information Why do you think the majority of Hispanic and Asian immigrants live in the South and West? (777-9) VOICES AND VISIONS. 14-2 “When You’re Small.” INTRODUCTION: Cesar Chavez, a well-known Mexican American union leader, was a young boy when the Great Depression struck. He and his family lived in Arizona at the time. Many years later, in an interview with Studs Terkel, Chavez described what the depression meant to the Chavez family. VOCABULARY: Before you read the selection, find the meaning of these words in a dictionary: migratory, melancholy. [We lived in] the North Gila Valley, about fifty miles north of Yuma. My dad was being turned out of his small plot of land. He had inherited this from his father, who had homesteaded it. I saw my two, three other uncles also moving out. And for the same reason. The bank had foreclosed on the loan. If the local bank approved, the Government would guarantee the loan and small farmers like my father would continue in business. It so happened the president of the bank was the guy who most wanted our land. We were surrounded by him: he owned all the land around us. Of course, he wouldn't [approve] the loan. One morning a giant tractor came in, like we had never seen before. My daddy used to do all his work with horses. So this huge tractor came in and began to knock down this corral, this small corral where my father kept his horses. We didn't understand why. In the matter of a week, the whole face of the land was changed. Ditches were dug, and it was different. I didn't like it much. We all of us climbed into an old Chevy that my dad had. And then we were in California, and migratory workers. There were five kids -- a small family by those standards. It must have been around '36. I was about eight. Well, it was a strange life. We had been poor, but we knew every night there was a bed there, and that this was our room. There was a kitchen. It was sort of a settled life, and we had chickens and hogs, eggs and all those things. But that all of a sudden changed. When you're small, you can't figure these things out. You know something's not right and you don't like it, but you don't question it and you don't let that get you down. You sort of just continue to move. But this had quite an impact oh my father. He had been used to owning the land and all of a sudden there was no more land. When I heard . . . what I made out of conversations between my mother and my father -- things like, we'll work this season and then we'll get enough money and we'll go and buy a piece of land in Arizona. Things like that. Became like a habit. He never gave up hope that some day he would come back and get a little piece of land. I can understand very, very well this feeling. These conversations were sort of melancholy I guess my brothers and my sisters could also see this very sad look on my father's face. That piece of land he wanted. . . . No, never. It never happened. He stopped talking about that some years ago. The drive for land, it's a very powerful drive. When we moved to California, we would work after school. Sometimes we wouldn't go. "Following the crops," we missed much school. Trying to get enough money to stay alive the following winter, the whole family picking apricots, walnuts, prunes. We were pretty new, we had never been migratory workers. We were taken advantage of quite a bit. . . . One of the experiences I had. We went through Indio, California. Along the highway there were signs in most of the small restaurants that said "White Trade Only." My dad read English, but he didn't really know the meaning. He went in to get some coffee -- a pot that he had, to get some coffee for my mother. He asked us not to come in, but we followed him anyway. And this young waitress said, "We don't serve Mexicans here. Get out of here." I was there, and I saw it and heard it. She paid no more attention. I'm sure for the rest of her life she never thought of it again. But every time we thought of it, it hurt us. So we got back in the car and we had a difficult time trying -- in fact, we never got the coffee. These are sort of unimportant, but they're . . . you remember 'em very well. . . . We'd go to school two days sometimes, a week, two weeks, three weeks at most. This is when we were migrating. We'd come back to our winter base, and if were lucky, we'd get in a good solid January, February, March, April, May. So we had five months out of a possible nine months. We started counting how many schools we'd been to and we counted thirty-seven. We never got a transfer. Friday we didn't tell the teacher or anything. We'd just go home. And they accepted this. I remember one teacher -- I wondered why she was asking so many questions. (In those days anybody asked questions, you became suspicious. Either a cop or a social worker.) She was a young teacher, and she just wanted to know why we were behind. One day she drove into the camp. That was quite an event, because we never had a teacher come over. Never. So it was, you know, a very meaningful day for us. This I remember. Some people put this out of their minds and forget it. I don't. I don't want to forget it. I don't want it to take the best of me, but I want to be there because this is what happened. This is the truth, you know. History. [From HARD TIMES: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION by Studs Terkel, copyright © 1970 by studs Terkel. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House Inc.]

 

[1992h]

 

[1993a] (846-8) THE JOHNSON YEARS. The Great Society. The presidency now descended to an older political leader, Lyndon Baines Johnson. A Texan, 55 years old, Johnson had come to the vice presidency from 23 years in Congress, ending as Democratic leader of the Senate. No president since Polk had had such impressive legislative experience. He was also the first president from a Southern state since Andrew Johnson a century before. A New Dealer who had become more conservative in his middle years, he retained an authentic concern for the poor and, though a Southerner, for Hispanic and black Americas. His admirers rejoiced in the power of his formidable personality, the sincerity of his social concern, and the resourcefulness with which he pursued his purposes. Others found him egotistical, secretive, devious, and vindictive. In the national shock after Dallas, the new president took over his responsibilities with firmness. He appointed a commission under Chief Justice Warren to investigate the assassination. The commission reported in 1964 that the murderer was a rootless and embittered former Communist named Lee Harvey Oswald. Critics later challenged both the commission's procedures and its conclusions. Johnson made clear his determination to continue his predecessor's policies and (unlike Truman in 1945) his predecessor's Cabinet. His experience and inclination led him toward the field of domestic affairs. Both tax-reduction and civil rights bills were on their way to enactment at the time of Kennedy's death. and the rush of national remorse assured them quick passage. The tax cut, injecting $12 billion into the economy, speeded economic growth. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in the use of federal funds and in places of public accommodation and established an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Seeking a distinctive name for his domestic program, Johnson in May 1964 called for a Great Society -- "a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community." The Great Society incorporated and soon extended Kennedy's New Frontier. The Great Society provided the central issue of the 1964 presidential campaign. Johnson selected the veteran liberal Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. The Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a likable businessman with inflexibly conservative views. Convinced that the danger to freedom came from government, Goldwater had proposed in The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) that the graduated income tax be abolished. He also urged the sale of the TVA, questioned the social security system, and advocated the bombing of North Vietnam. Though Goldwater evoked passionate enthusiasm among his followers, his program and his manager's brusque treatment of his more liberal party opponents alienated many Republicans. The Johnson-Humphrey ticket won 61.1 percent of the popular vote and carried all but six states -- the most decisive presidential triumph since 1936 (see Map 32-1). Victory added 37 Northern Democrats to the House of Representatives -- enough to assure, for the first time since 1938, a working progressive majority. This, along with Johnson's commitment to his programs and his skills in handling Congress, produced the most impressive record of domestic legislation in a single session for 30 years. Long-sought bills for federal aid to education and for medical care to the old (Medicare) and to the poor (Medicaid) were at last enacted. Responding belatedly to the crisis of the cities, Congress passed low-income housing laws, a rent-supplement program, and the Model Cities Act, under which federal block grants encouraged cities to plan their own future. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed remaining barriers to the right to vote and empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to put on the voting list. In an executive order of September 24, 1965, Johnson instituted the "affirmative action" policy, requiring federal contractors and institutions receiving federal assistance to make special efforts to employ women and nonwhite citizens. Congress also liberalized the immigration laws, abolishing the national origins quota of 1924; institutionalized federal support for the arts in the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act; established public broadcasting; gave the government authority to set safety standards for automobiles and highways; set standards for clean air and water; and created two new federal departments -- Housing and Urban Development (to which Johnson appointed Robert C. Weaver, the first black American to serve in the Cabinet) and Transportation. Among Great Society programs the most original was the war on poverty, conducted by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). Headed by Sargent Shriver, Kennedy's brother-in-law and former head of the Peace Corps, OEO included a Job Corps for dropouts from the educational system; a Neighborhood Youth Corps for unemployed teenagers; the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), in effect a domestic Peace Corps; a Head Start program for young children; an Upward Bound program to send bright children to college; and, in its most controversial feature, a Community Action program designed to secure the "maximum feasible participation" of the poor in planning and running the antipoverty effort. A venture so unprecedented could not avoid experiment and confusion. Local politicians particularly saw Community Action as a threat to their own prerogatives, and other critics felt that OEO gave professionals in the social-welfare field undue opportunity to impose their own ideas on the helpless poor. Between 1964 and 1970 federal spending for health, education, welfare services, and income maintenance tripled. One significant result was to alter the composition of the federal budget. The "defense shift" of 1948-53 had created a pattern by which government spending held at about 28 to 29 percent of the gross national product, nondefense spending at about 15 percent, and defense spending at about 9 to 10 percent. With the "welfare shift" of the 1960s total government spending rose to about 33 percent of the gross national product, with nondefense spending rising to about 25 percent and defense spending declining to about 6 to 7 percent. Much of the "welfare shift" benefited people over 65, especially through social security and Medicare. Only a small share went to experimental Great Society programs that, oversold and underfunded, were later too readily dismissed as failures. The reform effort was not directed against endemic poverty and produced no significant change in the distribution of income. But the number of Americans below the poverty line declined by nearly half in the ten years after 1959, and the poor, the old, and black Americans were better off. Though much criticized in later years, Johnson's Great Society represented the culmination of New Deal liberalism in its effort to reverse patterns of privation and inequality in American economic life. (846) [Picture] Victory, 1964: HHH and LBJ. (847) [Map] Map 32-1 The election of 1964. (851-2) A DECADE OF UPHEAVAL. Women in Revolt. The antiwar agitation was only one expression of a volatile and passionate time. The social criticism of the Kennedy years and the example of the civil rights movement had stimulated a mood of rebellion. Students protested not just the war in Vietnam but also their lack of influence on the curricula and parietal rules of their colleges. They were as "powerless," they complained, as the disfranchised Southern black Americans whom they had joined in voter registration drives in Mississippi. Convicts protested against the miserable conditions of their prisons. Gay Americans began openly to demand social acceptance and equality of treatment. Inspired by the example of black activists, other Americans of color also agitated for equal rights -- Asians on the West Coast; Puerto Ricans in eastern cities; Mexican-Americans in the West and Southwest, with Caesar Chavez successful in his heroic efforts to organize agricultural workers in California; Native Americans, most of them destitute, on and off their reservations in every section of the country. Most striking of all was the revolt of the only "minority" that, in fact, constituted a majority of Americans -- women, who, outnumbered by men as late as 1945, exceeded the male population by 5.5 million in 1970. Earlier feminist pressure had improved the legal position of women and given them the vote. To the American male the notion that women still saw themselves in a state of subjection came as a shock. Philip Wylie's popular polemic Generation of Vipers (1942) had portrayed the American man as systematically castrated by his women, from mother to teacher to wife to daughter, and pronounced "momism" the curse of American life. In comic strips Maggie forever chased Jiggs with her rolling pin. Yet all indexes showed women mired in social and economic inferiority. The "feminine mystique" defined a woman as husband's wife, children's mother, family's faithful servant -- never as a person in her own right. When women struck out on their own, most professions (except for elementary school teaching, nursing, library work, and prostitution) resisted them. Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman, said she endured more discrimination as a woman than as a black. In some respects the position of women had been getting worse. The early feminist movement had stimulated able women to seek careers. The example of Eleanor Roosevelt and Frances Perkins in the 1930s, the participation of women in the Second World War as WACs and WAVES and as workers in munitions plants -- all this had strengthened the image of the self-reliant woman. But in the 1940s and 1950s the tide had turned, as the tide had turned against black citizens after Reconstruction. The proportion of women undergraduates declined from 47 percent in 1920 to 31 percent in 1950; women's median earnings relative to similarly employed men were declining, and in 1971 the percentage of women in managerial and proprietorial jobs was lower than in 1960. Women constituted more than 51 percent of the population in 1970 but only 9 percent of the full professors on university faculties, 7.6 percent of the doctors, and 2.8 percent of the lawyers. The average earnings of a woman college graduate were less than those of a man with four years of high school. It was against this background that Betty Friedan in her influential book The Feminine Mystique (1963) called on women to recognize what society was doing to them and to demand equal rights and opportunities. Finding even the civil rights groups and the New Left dominated by "male chauvinism" -- "the only position for women in SNCC," said the black militant Stokely Carmichael in 1964, "is prone" -- Friedan and others established the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966. The recruiting instrument for women's liberation was the "consciousness-raising" group, where women met in "rap sessions" to reflect on their lives. Courses in women's studies, widely instituted in these years, provided historical background. Such activity raised the consciousness of many men, too, startled to discover the manifold ways male condescension and female subordination were built into the structure and language of society. (852) [Picture] The new feminism. (932-8) SOCIETY MOVES INTO THE 1990S. A Changing Population. The population of the United States continued to grow, if at a slower rate, exceeding 250 million by 1990. The total had nearly quadrupled in a century and more than doubled since the first election of Franklin Roosevelt. Then in the 1980s the fertility rate -- the number of children born to each woman over her lifetime -- reached a record low. The "baby boom" of 1946-64 gave way to a "baby bust.” At the same time, medical advances brought life expectancy to a record high -- 79 years for white women, 72 years for white men. One consequence was the "graying of America." People over age 65 were 4 percent of the population in 1900, over 12 percent in the early 1990s. The baby boomers were aging. Having supplied the basis for the youth revolt of the 1960s, the baby boomers promised to have a different political impact as they became middle-aged, suburban and settled, even more different after 2010 when they would become a vociferous claimant lobby of old folks. Already in the early 1990s, older Americans had, thanks to Social Security and expanded pensions, a poverty rate lower than the average for all Americans. Younger Americans, concerned with "generational equity," feared the financial burden of an aging America. Some thought that a disproportionate amount of medical spending went to keeping the old alive at a time when the United States had one of the highest infant mortality rates among democracies, and 20 percent of American children lived in poverty. The dramatic geographical shift of population was to the "Sunbelt," the states below the 37th parallel from Virginia to southern California -- a shift greatly encouraged by the invention of air conditioning. In 1964 California surpassed New York to become the most populous state. In the 1980s the South and West accounted for over 90 percent of the nation's population growth. The shift had political consequences. Between the Civil War and the Second World War, only two men born outside the Northeast (including Ohio) made the White House. Of the eight presidents after 1945, only one came from the Northeast. Each new census gave the South and West more weight in the Electoral College as well as in the House of Representatives. Over a fifth of the population growth during the 1980s was due to immigration. The annual immigration rate had increased from 85,000 in the 1940s to 600,000 in the 1980s. The Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 dramatically changed the composition of the new arrivals. That act abolished the discriminatory national-origins quota system (see p. 653) , establishing needed skills and the reuniting of families as criteria for admission. Subsequently, in 1987, Congress, over Reagan's objections, repealed the provision of the McCarran Act of 1952 permitting exclusion on ideological grounds (see p. 805). In the years immediately before the 1965 act, Canada, Mexico, and Great Britain had been the leading sources of immigrants. Soon thereafter Mexico, Vietnam, and the Philippines headed the list. By the 1990s about 40 percent of immigrants were coming from Asia, another 40 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean. Several million Latin Americans entered the country illegally during the 1980s. Though it was charged that these "undocumented" aliens were taking jobs away from American citizens, evidence suggested that they performed menial tasks rejected by native workers and thereby filled a vacuum in the labor market. Their illegal status, however, exposed them to cruel exploitation in city sweatshops and rural peonage. To remedy this situation, Congress in 1986 passed the Simpson-Rodino Act granting amnesty to illegals who had entered before 1982 and imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hired illegals after 1986. A Nation of Nations. The revisions in immigration policy portended striking changes in the nation's ethnic makeup. The nation's Hispanics grew in the 1980s five times as fast as the rest of the population. Spanish-speaking enclaves had survived in New Mexico for five centuries, and for many decades Mexicans had crossed the border to satisfy the demand for cheap agricultural labor. In the 1980s and 1990s, political upheaval and economic misery in their homelands increased the Hispanic flow. Of the more than 20 million Hispanics -- the illegals made statistical precision difficult -- about 63 percent were Mexican, 12 percent Puerto Rican (and therefore already American citizens), 11 percent Central and South American, 5 percent Cuban. The Mexicans lived in the main in the Southwest, the Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, the Cubans in Florida. By the 1990s Hispanics were emerging as a political force, electing members of Congress, a governor in New Mexico, and mayors in Denver, San Antonio, Miami, Tampa, and Sante Fe. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans tended to be Democrats. Cubans tended to be Republicans. Income levels for Hispanics averaged slightly higher than for black Americans, while educational levels, with the linguistic handicap, were somewhat lower. In contrast to European and Asian immigrants, Hispanics were less eager to learn English, raising instead the standard of "bilingualism." Some observers feared that bilingualism handicapped the newcomers by reducing their capacity to cope with an English-speaking society and that it threatened to fragment the country into linguistic ghettos. A common language, many believed, was an essential bond of cohesion in an increasingly disparate society. Asian immigrants, excluded from the United States till 1952, made an especially impressive contribution to the changing society. Though the 5 million Asians constituted only 2 percent of the population, they exceeded national averages in educational achievement and in income. Over a third of Asian-Americans graduated from college, twice the percentage among white Americans, and they won academic honors out of all proportion to their numbers. Tests suggested that the Asians were more intelligent than other Americans. Certainly they worked harder. Black Americans, almost 30 million in the 1990s, constituted about 12 percent of the population. Their position had improved radically with the civil rights revolution. Talk of "white supremacy" almost vanished. Mandatory legal segregation was abolished, and access to public accommodations assured. The racial wage gap narrowed. In 1940 a black male worker earned only 43 percent as much as his white counterpart; by 1990, 73 percent. The black middle class now outnumbered the black poor. The year 1983 saw the first black astronaut in space and the first black Miss America. The most popular television show in the late 1980s starred the black actor Bill Cosby. The most striking gain of all -- because it accelerated every other form of racial progress -- came in politics. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 produced a massive enfranchisement of Southern black citizens and a corresponding change in the attitudes of Southern white politicians. A one-time militant segregationist like Governor George Wallace now crowned a black homecoming queen at the very university that, a decade earlier, he had sworn to deny to black students. Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles. New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham. Richmond, and Newark elected black mayors. Urban politics was doing for black Americans what it had done for immigrants: providing a means of incorporation into a previously alien political system. In 1990, Virginia, once a Confederate state, elected a black governor. Jesse Jackson meanwhile emerged in the 1980s as the first formidable black contender for the presidency. Despite the gains, many black citizens remained at the lower end of the economic scale. Life expectancy for them was five years less than for whites. The National Urban League, a black organization, reported that 40 percent of black children were raised in fatherless homes, that 25 percent of all black households were affected by crime, that youth unemployment, teenage pregnancy, drug use, and violence were far greater among black than white Americans. Some analysts argued that the black underclass was the victim, not of prejudice, but of poverty. Others insisted that black Americans were still imprisoned in a legacy of institutionalized racism. The oldest and truest Americans, the Indians, were no longer the vanishing Americans. As a result of public health improvements, Indian population grew from 343,000 in 1950 to more than 1.4 million in the 1990s. More than half lived on reservations (there were more than 300 federally recognized tribes) ; most of the rest lived in cities. Wherever they lived, they were the poorest of the poor, at the end of the line in employment, income, education, health, and life expectancy. White Americans, belatedly developing a bad conscience over their ancestors' treatment of the Indians, regarded the Native Americans with new sympathy but proved unable to find an effective way to help them to help themselves. Indians agitated through their own organizations. The National Congress of American Indians, founded during the Second World War (in which 25,000 Indians had served), became more aggressive; and the American Indian Movement, formed by militant urban Indians in 1968 under the banner of "red power," turned to violent methods. Some Indian nations sued in court for the restoration of land, water, mineral, and fishing rights bestowed on them by treaty and often won compensation. Until the 1930s the United States had been dominated politically, economically, and culturally by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, known in later times as WASPs. The Great Depression and the New Deal had given new opportunities for Catholics and Jews, as had the Fair Employment Practices Commission during the Second World War and the G. I. Bill of Rights, both of which also aided black Americans. The civil rights revolution of the 1960s opened the door further to black citizens. The changes in immigration policy brought in Hispanics and Asians. It was no longer uncommon to hear Korean spoken in the streets of New York, Arabic in Detroit, Hindi in Los Angeles, and Spanish everywhere. In 1950, 87 percent of Californians had been white. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, demographers predicted, California would become a Third World state. By 2080, according to another projection, the non-Hispanic white population for the entire country would fall under 50 percent. Most European immigrants had come to the United States expecting to become Americans. Their goal was assimilation. But many new immigrants from Latin America and Asia, like some of the descendants of immigrants from Africa, subscribed to a cult of ethnicity, as did several groups of European origin. That cult emphasized the preservation of old differences. Pressed too far, as it sometimes was, pluralism challenged the concept of a national American identity. "Instead of a nation composed of individuals making their own free choices," historian Arthur Schlesinger. Jr., warned in 1991, "America increasingly sees itself as composed of groups more or less indelible in their national character. "Here is not merely a nation," Walt Whitman had written, "but a teeming Nation of nations." This would never be more true than in the twenty-first century. In the future, as in the past, the newcomers could be expected to infuse American society with variety, vitality, and hope. (934) [Picture] A vociferous lobby. [Picture] Suburban America. (935) [Picture] Mexican-American workers. [Picture] Educational achievers, Queens, New York. (936) [Picture] Guion Bluford: astronaut.

 

[1993b] −

 

[1994a] (407-10) THE GREAT SOCIETY. Few American presidents entered the White House with a longer career in politics than Lyndon Johnson. The contrast between the personalities and political styles of Johnson and Kennedy could hardly have been more striking. Johnson's wealth had been self-made, not inherited. He had none of Kennedy's charisma or urbaneness and few of his cultural pretensions. He was as skeptical of intellectuals as they were of him. But LBJ knew how to get things done. He was a shrewd manipulator, and he had already demonstrated in his long years as Senate minority and then majority leader an uncanny mastery of political techniques. He invited and praised "consensus," while making certain his position always prevailed. LBJ's vision of the Great Society, although absorbing much of Kennedy's New Frontier, was influenced more heavily by his admiration of the New Deal. The ambitious domestic program he proposed was aimed at improving the quality of American life, maximizing opportunities for those who had been denied access to the "affluent society." Like FDR, he felt the need to secure Americans from the fear of hunger, unemployment, and old age. Unlike FDR, he felt the need to attack the special problems plaguing black Americans. Although Johnson's civil rights record in the Senate had been spotty, he seemed ready to extend his commitment to social justice to black people. The racial strife and agitation Johnson inherited as president also provided a stimulus for action exceeding that of any previous occupant of the White House. Not all the Great Society measures proved workable. Some were too hastily drawn, and others suffered from lack of funding. But the commitment of the federal government to the concept of the welfare state seemed unquestioned. And it was this aspect of the Great Society that would arouse the most controversy and backlash in the 1970s and 1980s. For Johnson, the more immediate problem was how to wage a war on poverty while expanding the war in Vietnam. The cost of pursuing both wars at once proved too much. In the clash of priorities, the Great Society and the people of Vietnam were the principal victims. The Transition Years. No sooner had Johnson become president than he proposed to Congress, as an appropriate memorial to Kennedy, that it act on a long-delayed prosperity tax cut and a civil rights bill. The tax-reform bill helped a sagging economy. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most sweeping such legislation in American history, enlarged federal power to protect voting rights, to provide open access for all races to public facilities, to speed up school desegregation, and to ensure equal job opportunities in business and unions. At the same time, Johnson set the stage for his Great Society program. In his first State of the Union message, in January 1964, he told Congress, "Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope, some because of their poverty and some because of their color, and all too many because of both.” To raise the hopes of such people, he proposed a "war on poverty in America." This war Congress also endorsed, in August 1964, when it appropriated almost $950 million for ten separate antipoverty programs to be supervised by a newly established Office of Economic Opportunity. Key features included (1) a Job Corps, which would train underprivileged youth for the labor market; (2) work-training programs that would employ them; (3) a domestic peace corps (officially, Volunteers in Service to America, VISTA) , which would enlist the privileged on behalf of the poor, and (4) a Community Action program, which would involve the poor themselves in the administration and planning of the war. The philosophy underpinning the War on Poverty was that the federal government could democratize the economic society without restructuring it. The government needed only to remove the institutional obstacles that denied deprived groups the opportunity to advance themselves economically. "There were times in those days," recalled LBJ's press secretary, Bill Moyers, "when he thought the poor are poor because the economy is mismanaged against them, but most of the time he thought the problems could be solved if the poor were managed better -- train them for some better jobs, help them to see a doctor, move them to a better place." That was the premise on which the Great Society operated. Encouraged by his legislative triumphs, Johnson eagerly anticipated the presidential election of 1964. What he wanted was a massive triumph at the polls that would make him president in his own right. The Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, star of the strong conservative wing of the party. Although segregationist governor George C. Wallace of Alabama also entered the race by running in a number of Democratic primaries, Goldwater's nomination had deprived him of conservative support. At the Democratic convention, Johnson easily won the nomination; Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota, identified with the liberal wing of the party, won the vice-presidential spot. Goldwater stood for dismantling the welfare state, and many Americans suspected that the Social Security system would be among the victims. Nor did he help his candidacy when he suggested that NATO commanders be permitted to employ tactical nuclear weapons in a crisis. During the campaign, new uncertainties in world affairs made such statements seem particularly irresponsible. Nikita Khrushchev was out of power in the USSR, and China exploded an atomic bomb. While Goldwater evoked visions of atomic confrontation, Johnson appeared to be a man of peace and moderation. With 61 percent of the popular vote, Johnson surpassed even FDR's record in 1936. It was the sweeping mandate he had sought, and he intended to make the most of it. Even while preparing to escalate the Vietnam War, Johnson assured the American people that "this nation is mighty enough -- its society is healthy enough -- its people are strong enough -- to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a great society here at home." Great Society Legislation. The Great Society was the central theme of LBJ's first message to the Eighty-ninth Congress, in January 1965. When that Congress finished its business in the fall of 1966, it had approved nearly every one of the Great Society measures the president had proposed – what Johnson later called "the greatest outpouring of creative legislation in the history of the nation." The first measure, adopted in April 1965, was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which made available for the first time massive amounts of federal aid ($1.3 billion) to school districts. As part of Johnson's continuing commitment to the War on Poverty, Title 1 of the Education Act gave local school districts money to set up compensatory education programs for low-income students. The act also offered incentives for desegregation. As a condition for federal aid, the United States Office of Education now demanded proof that desegregation both for students and for teachers had been undertaken in good faith by the beginning of the 1966-1967 school term. Despite vigorous opposition to these new "guidelines," significant increases were reported in the number of blacks going to school with whites. A second far-reaching measure was the adoption of the Medicare amendments to the Social Security Act, which the president approved on July 30, 1965. The aged had won a significant victory over the relentless lobbying of the American Medical Association. Medicare provided hospital insurance and certain posthospital care for virtually all Americans upon their reaching the age of sixty-five. It also made available inexpensive medical insurance covering doctor bills, diagnostic procedures, and other medical services and supplies. In addition, the Eighty-ninth Congress ended the discriminatory national-origins quota system in immigration; provided special assistance for improvement of conditions in the depressed states of Appalachia; enacted programs that promoted the purification of smog-laden air and the restoration of polluted waterways; created the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities in order to encourage cultural and artistic development; and passed a Truth in Lending Act in order to give consumers greater protection in credit transactions. Recognizing the critical problems of urban Americans, Congress agreed to a rent-supplement program for low-income families, and it established the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Massive new appropriations were made for earlier Great Society programs, including the War on Poverty, the regeneration of cities, and the space program. The Great Society programs, much like the programs adopted in the name of national defense and space exploration, combined impressive successes with costly failures. In the rush to meet urgent needs, some of the programs suffered from poor planning and management. Although many of the programs had been designed to assist low-income Americans, the ways in which they were administered often limited their impact on the segments of that group most in need of help. And as with many of the New Deal programs, the benefits of Great Society programs were often reaped by those groups best organized to influence the distribution of funds. The Great Society, however, did bring hope and help to millions of Americans. It enabled more than 11 million students to receive loans for a college education. Project Head Start, although underfunded, helped to prepare some 8 million low-income preschoolers for grade school, and the Upward Bound program granted comparable assistance to high school students from low-income families who aspired to a college education. The War on Poverty gave poor people medical care through Medicaid, fed millions through such programs as food stamps, welfare, and school lunches, and provided legal counseling for people who could not otherwise afford it. Some 2 million senior citizens were raised above poverty level by amendments to the Social Security Act that set minimum-payment requirements. The antipoverty programs also created 2 million government jobs, with blacks filling 850,000 of them. And the Community Action programs established under the War on Poverty trained tens of thousands of poor people in the arts of politics and management; a number of these people would ultimately run for public office. Many of these programs were deemed sufficiently successful to be permitted to survive into the 1990s. But the Great Society, like the New Frontier, raised the expectations of many Americans without necessarily fulfilling them. It created among many whites the perception that the social programs established in the name of the War on Poverty were draining public funds without producing visible results. Despite the enormous increase in public assistance, all too little had changed. Unlike the costly failures in the defense and space programs, the failures in the Great Society suggested to many Americans misguided extravagance and the need to reconsider the entire commitment to expensive social programs. That sentiment would mount steadily in the 1970s, as the economy weakened, and it would culminate in the victory of Ronald Reagan in the election of 1980. "In the sixties," the newly elected president declared, "we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won." But in saying this Reagan failed to consider that the War on Poverty lasted only four years -- hardly sufficient time to reconstruct a flawed economic society -- and was insufficiently funded to tackle the deep-seated problems afflicting America's poor. When the Eighty-ninth Congress adjourned in October 1966, the American economy had enjoyed six solid years of extraordinary economic expansion. But some people had prospered far more than others. Social dissatisfaction deepened. Life on many family farms remained dreary; city dwellers were exposed to unprecedented violence and fear. Black Americans still found it hard to get jobs or to share in the affluence so visible around them. They were constantly exposed to success, and yet denied it. So frustration mounted, especially among the young. (413-5) La Raza. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Mexican Americans had found themselves dispossessed of their lands, stereotyped, segregated, harassed, and deported at the whims of law officers. By World War II, their numbers had sharply increased, usually in response to demands for cheap labor. Federal legislation permitted the importation of braceros (temporary farm workers) , and many other Mexicans (disparaged as "wetbacks") entered the country illegally, often swimming across the border of the Rio Grande River. From 1910 to 1920, some 800,000 Mexicans entered the United States; during the 1920s, even as Congress restricted immigration from Europe and Asia, some 1.5 million Mexicans arrived. An unorganized labor reserve, politically powerless, badly housed, the victims of discrimination, they were concentrated in the Southwest. Many of them lived in the barrios, or "Mex towns," in the cities. Attempts by Mexican Americans to organize within their communities in order to advance their position and combat discrimination encountered Anglo-American suspicion and opposition. Strikes waged in the Imperial Valley in California in the 1920s and 1930s were crushed, the leaders often deported. Rising tensions between Mexican Americans and the dominant Anglo population erupted in 1943 in Los Angeles in the "zoot suit riots." With the police often looking on, servicemen and civilians attacked Mexican youths who were wearing zoot suits -- jackets with long coattails and wide shoulders and loose black trousers with pegged ankles and a high waistline. This distinctive clothing imparted a sense of pride and identity to Mexican youths. But Anglo-Americans perceived the suits as the emblem of dangerous hoodlums. The tensions underlying the riots resurfaced in the 1950s in "Operation Wetback": federal officers moved against illegal immigrants from Mexico, deporting Mexican Americans who could not immediately prove United States citizenship. The civil rights movement had its impact on the Mexican American as well as the black community. Immigration from Mexico after World War II exceeded that of any other group, and in the 1960s and 1970s the nearly 5 million "Spanish-surnamed" Americans, as the Census Bureau defined them, manifested a new sense of ethnic dignity. Newly organized groups in the community pressed upon their people the need to rediscover their Mexican roots, to take pride in their culture and traditions, and to assert the power of their growing numbers. Although Chicano (a form of Mexicano) had once designated Mexican refugees in the United States, it now included all Mexican Americans, particularly those committed to the cause of la raza (literally "the race," but more broadly the entire Spanish-speaking community). Few events dramatized the Mexican American quest for social and economic justice more than Cesar Chavez's battle in California to organize a farm laborers' union. The seasonal nature of agricultural labor, requiring farm laborers to move from crop to crop, and the vigorous opposition of well-organized growers and corporate farmers had foiled previous organizing efforts. The farm-labor system, as a consequence, had rested essentially on an endless supply of cheap, docile, nonunion field labor. But in 1965, grape pickers in California struck for higher wages, improved working conditions, and union recognition. Soon the grape strike (la huelga) and a national consumer boycott of nonunion grapes became a rallying point of Chicano protest. Born in Yuma, Arizona, Chavez went to California in the 1940s. Like many of those he sought to organize, he had spent his youth in farm-labor camps, left school at the seventh grade, experienced discrimination, and was a devout Roman Catholic. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., he made his religion a weapon for social justice and pledged his movement to nonviolent resistance. Through his National Farm Workers Association, founded in 1962, Chavez hoped not only to raise the living standards of Mexican Americans but to establish a precedent that would affect more than 4 million farm workers -- brown, black, and white -- who lacked job security and economy power. The grape pickers' strike, and in particular the national boycott of nonunion grapes, finally broke the resistance of the grape growers, leading in 1970 to a historic pact that brought union recognition to large numbers of farm workers. By the end of the 1970s, Chavez's efforts had aroused considerable support and controversy. Most important, the union had secured higher wages and better working conditions for thousands of farm laborers; it had forced modern industrial labor patterns on a reluctant and backward agricultural industry; and it had broadened la causa to include social justice for all Mexican Americans. Even while the farm workers were engaged in their struggle, Mexican Americans organized around their new ethnic consciousness and established Chicano studies programs at numerous colleges and schools. They broadened their efforts to improve the quality of life of barrio dwellers, and made some significant political gains, electing several mayors and U.S. representatives and increasing their numbers on court benches, city councils, and boards of education. But the Chicano movement, though it enjoyed some impressive successes, suffered the fate of a number of similar movements in the 1970s. Disagreements over the direction and tactics of the movement resulted in increasing fragmentation and declining influence. By 1975, the movement was in disarray. Just as the black revolution had helped middle-class blacks, the upheaval in the barrios had benefited middle-class Mexican Americans and increased their numbers. But new problems emerged and old problems persisted among the large mass of Mexican Americans in the 1970s and 1980s, most of them members of the urban or rural working class: underemployment, an alarming drop-out rate among schoolchildren, and a persistent racism often fed by the assumption that most Mexican Americans were illegal immigrants. The urgency to confront these problems would increase in the 1980s and 1990s, when Latinos (including Mexican Americans) became the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group. (413) [Picture] Cesar Chavez, farm labor leader, outside the San Diego headquarters of Safeway markets, picketing to support a boycott of nonunion grape growers. (482-4) The New Immigrants. Whatever the persistent inequalities in American life, the United States remained for hundreds of thousands of new arrivals the promised land. Many came seeking political asylum and freedom from oppression. Still others, many of them from lands of poverty, came in search of freedom from hunger and ignorance, the opportunity to better their lives economically, and a chance to educate their children. After 1968 immigration quotas permitted a maximum of 170,000 immigrants to enter annually from countries outside the Western Hemisphere (with a 20,000 ceiling for any one country) , and a maximum of 120,000 immigrants annually from countries within the Western Hemisphere on a first-come, first-served basis. Selected categories ("immediate relatives" of U.S. citizens or "special immigrants" designated by Congress) were granted entry as nonquota immigrants. In 1965 Congress liberalized immigration policy, abandoning the national-origins in favor of a new system of quotas based on skills, refugee status, and family reunification. A maximum of 170,000 immigrants would be admitted from the Eastern Hemisphere (no more than 20,000 from any one country) and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere. Parents, spouses and unmarried children of U.S. citizens were exempted from all quotas. Legal immigration averaged 433,600 a year in the 1970s and increased to 566,600 in the first five years of the 1980s. The political upheavals and economic turmoil in Asia and South America produced large numbers of emigrants to the United States. In the closing years of the 1970s and the early years of the 1980s, fully three-quarters of the legal immigrants came from Asia and the Americas. More than 1.7 million Indochinese refugees fled their countries (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) , many of them migrating to the United States, still others to Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. The refugee status accorded Cubans and Haitians also produced large numbers of immigrants from those nations. By the mid-1980s, as Western Europe began to place more restrictions on immigration, the United States was accepting twice as many foreigners as the rest of the world's nations combined. From Little Havana in Miami to Koreatown in Los Angeles, from the Central American communities in San Francisco to the enlarged Russian-Jewish community in New York, the new immigrants were changing the face of America. This new wave did not fit the traditional view of immigrants as young, working-age men who left their homelands in search of economic opportunities. A Labor Department study in 1985 revealed that women and children accounted for two-thirds of the legal immigrants to the United States. The new immigrants, like the old, were not universally welcomed. Traditional fears of newcomers, stemming from job competition and the strain on community services, fed suspicions over the principal sources of immigration and concern over the substantial number of illegal immigrants entering the country each year, most of them crossing the border separating the United States and Mexico. The nation's fastest-growing minority was, in fact, the Hispanic American. The number of Hispanic Americans increased 30 percent in the 1980s (five times as fast as the rest of the population), to 19 million, accounting for nearly 8 percent of the nation's population. More than half (63 percent) of the Hispanic population traced their roots back to Mexico. People of Puerto Rican origin were the next largest group, some 12 percent. The subgroups that experienced the most rapid increase traced their origin to Cuba and Central or South America; many of them had migrated as a result of political upheavals. By the year 2000 Hispanic Americans were expected to reach 30 million, or some 15 percent of the nation's population. People of Mexican origin, the largest single group, were concentrated in the Southwest and California; most of the Puerto Ricans resided in the Northeast, some 700,000 Cubans were concentrated in Florida, and the growing numbers of immigrants from places such as El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Colombia were more evenly scattered over the United States. With massive numbers of Mexicans entering the United States, the question of how to enforce restrictions on immigration took on added urgency. In 1964, when Mexicans were permitted to enter as agricultural laborers under the bracero program, the Immigration and Naturalization Service picked up only 45,000 undocumented Mexicans along the Southwest border. But that number soared after the program was terminated the next year. By 1971, federal authorities had apprehended hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens; in 1986 alone, officers seized some 1.7 million Mexicans seeking to cross the 1960-mile border separating Mexico and the United States. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 tried to allay concerns about the large number of undocumented workers entering the United States. The law enabled illegal aliens who had entered the United States before 1982 to apply for amnesty; after 18 months, they would be eligible to become permanent residents -- and ultimately United States citizens. At the same time, the law imposed penalties on employers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Although many aliens did apply for amnesty, the law was greeted with considerable suspicion; large numbers of illegal aliens, in fact, refused to apply, fearing the government would use the information gathered from their applications to deport them. The flow of illegal immigrants persisted, most of them motivated by the same considerations that had brought tens of millions to the United States over its 200-year history -- the chance to make the American Dream a reality in their own lives.

 

[1994b] (971-4) The Great Society in Action. Lyndon Johnson had an expansive vision of the possibilities of reform. Using his considerable political skills, he succeeded in pushing through Congress the most extensive reform program in American history. "Is a new world coming?" the president asked. "We welcome it, and we will bend it to the hopes of man." Johnson began to develop the support he needed the day he took office. Despite his growing ambivalence about Kennedy, he understood the profound shock gripping the nation and knew he must dispel the image of impostor. In his first public address, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide, he embraced Kennedy's liberal program. He began, in a measured tone, with the words, "All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here today." He asked members of Congress to work with him, and he underscored the theme "Let us continue" throughout his speech. As a first step, Johnson determined to secure the measures Kennedy had been unable to extract from Congress. He took the bills to reduce taxes and ensure civil rights as his first and most pressing priorities, but he was interested too in aiding public education, providing medical care for the aged, and eliminating poverty. By the spring of 1964, the outlines of his own expansive vision were taking shape, and he had begun to use the phrase "Great Society" to describe his reform program. Successful even before the election of 1964, his landslide victory over conservative Republican challenger Barry Goldwater of Arizona validated his approach. LBJ received 61 percent of the popular vote and an electoral tally of 486 to 52 and gained Democratic congressional majorities of 68-32 in the Senate and 295-140 in the House. Goldwater's candidacy reflected the growing power of conservatism within the Republican party and the ability of a grass-roots group to organize a successful campaign in party primaries. It also drove liberal voters into the Democratic party and gave Johnson a far more impressive mandate than Kennedy had ever enjoyed. Johnson was an energetic leader who knew how to make things happen in the world of politics. He appointed task forces that included legislators to study problems and suggest solutions, worked with them to draft bills, and maintained close contact with congressional leaders through a sophisticated liaison staff. Not since the FDR years had there been such a coordinated effort, and it resulted in the strongest legislative program since the New Deal. It also resulted in greater gains than ever before for the liberal Cause. Civil rights reform was LBJ's first legislative priority and an integral part of the Great Society program (see Chapter 29 for a full discussion of civil rights). But other measures were equally important in extending the boundaries of government action and bolstering the foundation of the welfare state. Following Kennedy's lead, Johnson pressed for a tax cut to stimulate the economy. He accepted the Keynesian theory that deficits, properly managed, could promote prosperity. To gain conservative support, he agreed to hold down spending; the tax bill passed. With the tax cut in hand, the president pressed for the poverty program that Kennedy had begun to plan. Such an effort was bold and unprecedented. In the Progressive era, at the turn of the century, some legislation had attempted to alleviate conditions associated with poverty. During the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt had proposed programs to assist the one-third of a nation that could not help itself. Now Johnson took a step that no president had taken before; in his 1964 State of the Union message, he declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America." The center of this utopian effort to eradicate poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It created an Office of Economic Opportunity to provide education and training for unskilled young people trapped in the poverty cycle, VISTA Volunteers in Service to America) to assist the poor at home, and assorted community action programs to give the poor themselves a voice in improving housing, health, and education in their own neighborhoods. Aware of the escalating costs of medical care, Johnson proposed a medical assistance plan. Both Truman and Kennedy had proposed such measures but had failed to win congressional approval. Johnson, however, succeeded. To head off conservative attacks, the administration tied the Medicare measure to the social security system and limited the program to the elderly. Medicaid met the needs of those on welfare and certain other groups who could not afford private insurance. The Medicare-Medicaid program was the most important extension of federally directed social benefits since the Social Security Act of 1935. By 1976 the two programs were paying for the medical costs of 20 percent of the American people. Johnson was similarly successful in his effort to provide aid for elementary and secondary schools. Kennedy had met defeat when Catholics had insisted on assistance to parochial schools. Johnson, a Protestant, was able to deal with that ticklish question without charges of favoritism. His legislation allocated education money to the states based on the number of children from low income families. Those funds would then be distributed to assist deprived children in public as well as private schools. In LBJ's expansive vision, the federal government would ensure that all shared in the promise of American life. As a result of his prodding, Congress passed a new housing act to provide rent supplements to the poor and created a Department of Housing and Urban Development. It also replaced the restrictive immigration policy, set in place in 1924 (which had limited immigration severely and favored northern Europeans), with a measure that vastly increased the ceiling on immigration and opened the door to immigrants from Asia and Latin America. The Immigration Act of 1965 also exempted from the quotas family members of United States citizens and political refugees, including at first Cuban and later Indochinese immigrants. By the late 1960s, some 350,000 immigrants were entering the United States annually; in the 1970s, the number exceeded 400,000 a year. This new stream of immigration-largely from Asia and Latin America-created a population more diverse than it had been since the early decades of the twentieth century. The consequences of this new diversity were far-ranging and affected many areas of American life, from politics, radio programming, and consumer products to street signs and public school classrooms. Meanwhile, the federal government provided new forms of aid, such as legal assistance for the poor. It moved further in funding education, including colleges and universities in its financial grants. Congress also provided artists and scholars with assistance through the new National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities. Not since the Works Progress Administration in the New Deal had such groups been granted government aid. At the same time, the Great Society reflected the stirring of the environmental movement. In 1962, naturalist Rachel Carson alerted the public to the dangers of pesticide poisoning and environmental pollution in her book Silent Spring. She took aim at chemical pesticides, particularly DDT, which had increased crop yields but had disastrous side effects. Johnson recognized the need to do something about caustic fumes in the air, lethal sludge in rivers and streams, and the steady disappearance of wildlife. The National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964 set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness, while Lady Bird Johnson, the president's wife, led a beautification campaign to eliminate unsightly billboards and junkyards along the nation's highways, and Congress passed other measures to limit air and water pollution. (972) [Chart: Federal Aid to Education in the 1960s] Passage of a bill to provide federal aid to education in 1965 led to rapidly increasing government support for the remainder of the decade. Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census. (973) [Picture] Immigrants, here shown being sworn in as citizens, entered the United States in vastly increased number after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. (1063-7) The Demographic Transformation. As the American people dealt with the swings of the economy, demographic patterns changed in significant ways. The 1990 census revealed that in the previous decade the population of the United States had increased from 228 million to approximately 250 million. The rise of 9.6 percent in the 1980s, down from 11.5 percent in the 1970s, was one of the lowest rates of growth in American history. At the same time, the complexion of the country changed. As a result of increased immigration and minority birthrates significantly higher than the rate for whites, an all-time high of 25 percent of the population in 1992 was black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. The population shifted, as suburban growth continued, leaving ever larger minority populations in the cities. Meanwhile, the rise in the number of immigrants led to growth in states that had not been traditional magnets for newcomers from abroad. Urban and Suburban Shifts. Urban composition changed significantly. White families continued to leave for the steadily growing suburbs, which by 1990 contained almost half the population, more than ever before. As that transformation unfolded, American cities increasingly filled with members of the nation's minorities. In 15 of the nation's 28 largest cities, minorities made up at least half the population. Between 1980 and 1990, the minority population in New York rose from 48 to 57 percent, in Chicago from 57 to 62 percent, in Houston from 48 to 59 percent, in Sam Diego from 31 to 41 percent. Minority representation varied by urban region. In Detroit, Washington, New Orleans, and Chicago, blacks were the largest minority, while in Phoenix, El Paso, Sam Antonio, and Los Angeles, Hispanics held that position, and in San Francisco, Asians outnumbered other groups. In such cities, the gulf between minorities and other inhabitants widened. In Houston, for example, increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians lived in the suburbs, yet most less affluent minority families concentrated in the city itself. In a pattern under way since World War II, commuters from the suburbs took the better-paying jobs, while people living in the cities held lower-paying positions. A Hispanic immigrant like 27-year-old Mario Perez noted in 1991 that the increase in the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the nine years since he arrived made it easier to find a job, but he and others like him found it harder than in the past to secure well-paying jobs. Perez himself worked seven days a week sweeping streets downtown and tending plants for $5.50 an hour. The New Pilgrims. Another shift occurred as the United States admitted new immigrants from a variety of foreign nations. A fifth of the decade's population growth stemmed from this immigration, which was spurred by the Immigration Act of 1965. Part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, this act authorized the acceptance of immigrants impartially from all parts of the world. Because the national-origins system of the 1920s had favored western Europeans and was therefore frankly racist, most immigrants between 1930 and 1960 had come from Europe or Canada. Between 1977 and 1979, however, only 16 percent came from these areas, while 40 percent came from Asia and another 40 percent from Latin America. In the 1980s, only one of eight legal immigrants came from Europe and Canada, while 37 percent came from Asia, and 47 percent came from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Always a nation of immigrants, the United States was once again receiving new, and very different, ethnic infusions. As had long been true, the desire for jobs fostered immigration. But foreign crises also fueled the influx. After 1975, the United States accepted more than a half million Vietnamese refugees. In 1980, more than 160,000 arrived. That same year, the nation admitted 125,000 Cubans and Haitians to southern Florida. The official total of all immigrants in 1978 was higher than it had been in 60 years. Millions more arrived illegally. As the populations of Latin American nations soared and as economic conditions deteriorated, more and more people looked to the United States for relief. In the mid-1970s, Leonard Chapman, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, estimated that there might be 12 million foreigners in the nation illegally. While official estimates were lower, Attorney General William French Smith declared in 1983, "Simply put, we've lost control of our own borders." Several legislative measures sought to rationalize the immigration process further. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, aimed at curbing illegal immigration while offering amnesty to aliens who had lived in the United States since 1982. Turnout for the program was less than expected until the mid-1988 deadline approached. Then 50,000 per week applied, compared with 10,000 earlier in the year, and all-night lines became common at legalization centers. The Immigration Act of 1990 was even more important. It revised the level and preference system for admission of immigrants to the United States and refined administrative procedures for naturalization. Raising immigration quotas by 40 percent per year, the act cut back on restrictions based on ideology or sexual orientation that had been used to deny entry in the past. It also set aside a substantial number of visas for large investors, and provided for swift deportation of aliens who committed crimes. "This act recognizes the fundamental importance and historic contributions of immigrants to our country," President Bush said in signing the measure. It was "good for families, good for business, good for crime fighting and good for America." The United States had once again become a refuge for people from very different parts of the world. The Sun Belt in particular, from Florida to California, felt the impact of the new Asians and Hispanics. In Los Angeles, Samoans, Taiwanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Cambodians competed for jobs and apartments with Mexicans, blacks, and Anglos, just as newcomers from different countries had contended with one another in New York City a century before. Through out the country, in Miami, in Houston, in Brooklyn, the languages heard in the schools and on the streets changed. These groups left a new imprint on the United States. As blacks and Hispanics became major figures in the urban equation, the number of Asians in the country doubled in the 1980s, and they exerted their own influence on the West Coast. In California, where more lived than anywhere else, they became the largest group of entering students at a number of college campuses. Each group, each family, had its own story. Nguyen Ninh and Nguyen Viet, two brothers who remained in Vietnam after the victory of the North Vietnamese in 1975, were among the many who finally fled their war-torn country by boat. The boat sank, but they were rescued, only to be shuttled to Kuwait, then Greece, and finally to the united States, where another brother had arrived a few years before. Though they spoke no English, they immediately began to look for work. One bet came a carpenter's helper; the other, an attendant at a valet parking firm. With the money they earned, they helped other members of their family emigrate. Slowly they learned English, obtained better jobs, and saved enough money to purchase a home. Professionals had an equally hard time. Frequently, training in their country of birth had little bearing in the United States. One Vietnamese physician who resettled in Oklahoma noted, "When I come here, I am told that I must be a beginner again and serve like an apprentice for two years. I have no choice, so I will do it, but I have been wronged to be asked to do this." (1064) [Chart: Population Shifts, 1980-1990] This map shows the population shifts between 1980 and 1990. Note the substantial increases in western regions of the country and the much smaller increases along the Atlantic seaboard. (1065) [Chart: Immigration: Volume and Sources, 1945-1989] This map shows the shifting patterns of American immigration in the postwar years. In particular, note the large increase in Asian and Latin American immigration in the past several decades. (1066) [Chart: Immigration, 1970-1989] This chart shows the significant rise in immigration, after 1970, as the tightly restricted quotas in force from the 1920s to 1965 were liberalized. Note the most rapid rise in the past few years, as Asians and Latin Americans have come in ever larger numbers. Source: Data from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1991. (1067) [Picture] Cuban "boat people, classified as refugees from Fidel Castro's Communist regime, were permitted to register for resident status.

 

[1994c] (634-6) A Changing America. OBJECTIVE: What groups of people are changing America today? 1. Every year, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search provides a national competition for high school students. Forty students become finalists. Out of those forty, ten students win college scholarships. In recent years, over half of the 60 scholarship winners have been the children of immigrants. Hong Huynh, 16 years old when he became a finalist in 1988, fled Vietnam with his parents in 1980. They escaped on a crowded boat. Of his parents Huynh said, "They gave up their home, furniture, everything, so I could be here. I don't want to disappoint them." Sheeyun Park, a physics finalist, also expressed appreciation for his parents, who left Korea for New York in 1974. "If I needed books for courses, they gave me the money," he said. "If I wanted sneakers, they said, (Keep the old pair." These two finalists show just one kind of contribution immigrants make to the United States. Immigration Today. What changes are taking place in the population of the United States? 2. Throughout America's history, waves of immigrants have changed this nation. Until the second half of this century, most immigrants arrived from Europe. In the 1980s more than half of all immigrants were Asians. Many others were from the Western Hemisphere. Now, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, and India along with Mexico are the chief sources of immigration. China, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba follow close behind. The flow of people from those countries continues to change America gradually. For example, African Americans are currently the largest minority group, making up 12 per cent of the total population. Hispanics are the second largest racial minority. They make up 7 per cent of the population. By the end of this century, however, Hispanics are expected to become the largest ethnic minority in the United States. People in History. 3. Maya Lin an American woman with Chinese parents, Maya Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while in her early twenties. The memorial, which stands in Washington, D.C., consists of polished, black granite walls. On those Walls are inscribed the names Of the 58,000 Americans who died in the war. The design began as a contest entry -- No. 1,026. After it was chosen the winner, it created much political and artistic controversy. However, most people thought the memorial succeeded. They saw it as a tribute to the dead and to the veterans who came home to a lukewarm welcome. 4. The daughter of immigrants, Lin is proud of her heritage. She calls her artistic vision "distinctly Asian" in its simplicity. Though born in the United States, she did not feel she fitted into American society until college. Since designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Maya Lin has worked as an architect, a stage designer, and a sculptor. Her most recent project was the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Maya Lin had not studied the civil rights movement before taking on this project. She was too young during the 1960s to have participated in the movement. However, Maya Lin used her feelings and intelligence to come up with a design. She carved the names and events of the civil rights era on stone with water flowing over them. "If you don't remember history accurately," she said, "how can you learn.)" Her experience proves that you do not necessarily have to take part in an event, or a group's struggle, to understand and appreciate it. 5. In the 1980s, the United States pressed the Soviet Union to ease its emigration laws and allow more people to leave Russia. The Soviet Union did not open emigration channels until the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev brought change to emigration policy. In 1989, the Soviet Union offered to ease its emigration laws even further. If the United States would lift barriers against Soviet exports, the Soviet Union would let more people leave. President Bush pressed the Soviets for more changes. He offered "most favored nation" status in exchange for allowing even more people, especially Jews, to emigrate. The result has been a greater number of Soviet immigrants than ever before. Why would people from the Soviet Union want to come to the United States? 6. The most recent change in American immigration policy is the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It allows illegal immigrants who lived in the United States since January 1, 1982, to apply for amnesty, or pardon. Migrant workers here illegally can also apply if they lived in America for at least 90 days between May 1, 1985, and May l, 1986. During 1987 and 1988 two minion illegal immigrants applied. If approved, each was given legal permission to remain in the United States and to apply for citizenship after 6_1/2 years. However, there were problems. In New York City, only about 35 percent of all illegal immigrants signed up. To apply for amnesty cost money -- $185 for the application fee, $90 for a medical exam -- and required an AIDS test. People with the AIDS virus are not allowed to immigrate to the United States. 7. A second problem was that some people could not prove they had lived here long enough. Their employers feared punishment since it is illegal to hire illegal immigrants. Employers must check that their employees are citizens. Employers of illegal aliens can be fined and jailed. Therefore, many employers refused to help employees qualify, although the Immigration and Naturalization Services promised to keep records secret. Now, with the deadline for amnesty passed, illegal immigrants still struggle in this country. Some earn as little as two dollars an hour because of employers who take advantage of their illegal status. Shifting Trends. What other population changes and groups are making a difference in the United States? 8. Though the American family has grown smaller, the number of people over 65 has increased from 8 percent to about 12 percent since 1945. This is partly because of better health care for older people. The Grey Panthers, an organization that fights age discrimination, has 100 local chapters and 100,000 members. It proposes an end to mandatory, or required, retirement and age segregation in housing. The organization also demands reforms in nursing home care and federal health programs. Laws already exist that protect the rights of older Americans. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 keeps employers and potential employers from discriminating against older Americans. In 1980 the airline company Pan Am had to pay $17.2 million to pilots they laid off at age 60. 9. The handicapped make up a large portion of the United States population. They are people with a physical or mental disability, such as blindness, deafness, and muscular and nervous disorders. There are 35 minion handicapped people in America. Fifteen million of these are of working age, but only one third of them are employed. Six million live on Social Security and disability insurance. 4. The handicapped are actively voicing their right to participate in society. Since the 1970s, ramps for people with wheelchairs have been installed to make buildings accessible to them. They continue to demand more ramps, as well as lift-equipped buses. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits unfair treatment of the handicapped. For example, no longer can someone with cerebral palsy be barred from a restaurant. The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 insists that states give free education to every handicapped child. Mainstreaming has become an important trend in the education of the handicapped. In mainstreaming, handicapped students attend regular classrooms and participate in most class activities. There they receive special help to insure their success. "Handicapped for a Day" programs teach about the needs of the handicapped by putting the general public in wheelchairs or blindfolds, for a day-long experience in coping with a disability. Special Olympics is an international program that gives the handicapped the opportunity to compete in athletics. (634) [Picture] Many winners of the Westinghouse Science Contest have gone on to distinguished careers in research, teaching, and industry. (636) [Picture] Many older Americans contribute their time and experience to help others gain valuable skills and education.

 

[1994d] (90) USING A GRAPH: HISPANIC AMERICANS. In Chapter 3, you read about Hispanic Americans. Hispanic refers to Spanish language and culture. Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing minority group in the country. Hispanic people come to the United States from Puerto Rico as well as Mexico, Cuba, and other Latin American countries. A. SENTENCE COMPLETION. In the blank provided, write the word or words that best complete each of the following statements. Use the graph and the information in Chapter 3 of your textbook. 1. One reason the graph shows an increase between 1960 and 1970 is that: more than 200,000 Cubans came to the United States after Fidel Castro gained power. 2. In 1962, a Mexican American farm worker, Cesar Chavez began to organize a union to get better working conditions for grape pickers. 3. From the graph, you would expect the Hispanic population of the United States to be larger in 1995 than in 1990. B. MULTIPLE CHOICE. Underline twice the answer that best completes each of the following sentences. 1. Between 1960 and 1990, the Hispanic population of the United States increased by: a. about 10 million; b. about 16 million; c. about 6 million; d. about 23 million. 2. Cuban Americans have become a powerful political force in: a. Miami; b. New York; c. Houston; d. Chicago. 3. The ten-year period on the graph that shows the largest increase in Hispanic population is: a. 1950 to 1960; b. 1960 to 1970; c. 1970 to 1980; d. 1980 to 1990. 4. Hispanic Americans organized the first successful national boycott in United States history, during which people throughout the country stopped buying grapes from: a. New York State; b. South Carolina; c. California; d. Michigan. 5. The name of the first Hispanic to serve in a President's cabinet is: a. Cesar Chavez; b. Jose Gutierrez; c. Carlos Arboleya; d. Lauro Cavazos.

 

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[1995b]

 

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[1996a] (852-4) The Great Society. In January 1965 Johnson announced a legislative vision that would extend welfare programs on a scale beyond even Franklin Roosevelt’s New Dial. By the end of 1965, some 50 bills had been passed, many of them major pieces of legislation. Programs in education. As a former teacher, Johnson made education the cornerstone of his program. Stronger schools would compensate the poor for their disadvantaged homes, he believed. Under the Elementary and Secondary School Act, students in low-income school districts were to receive educational equipment, money for books, and enrichment programs like Project Headstart for nursery-age children. As schools scrambled to create programs that would tap federal money, they sometimes spent more to pay middle-class educational professionals than to teach lower-income students. Medicare and Medicaid. Johnson also pushed through the Medicare Act, to provide the elderly with health insurance to cover their hospital costs. Studies had shown that older people used hospitals three times more than other Americans and generally had incomes only half as large. Since Medicare made no provision for the poor who were not elderly, Congress also passed a program called Medicaid. Participating states would receive matching grants from the federal government to pay the medical expenses of those on welfare or those too poor to afford medical care. In many ways, Medicare and Medicaid worked. Over the next two decades, their benefits helped to lower significantly the number of elderly poor. But as more patients used hospital services, Medicare budgets rose. In addition, nothing in the act restricted hospitals or doctors from raising their fees or charging for care they once gave for free. The cost of the programs soared by more than 500 percent in the first 10 years. Immigration. The Great Society also reformed immigration policy, striking down a discriminatory quota system based on national origins that had been in effect since 1924 (page 673). Only about 150,000 immigrants a year had been allowed to enter the United States, almost all from northern Europe. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the national origins system. Now, 170,000 people a year would be admitted on a first-come, first served basis. Racial provisions restricting Asian immigration were eliminated, although new limits were placed on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. The environment. Nor did Johnson, in his efforts to outdo the New Deal, slight the environment. By the mid-1960s many Americans had become increasingly concerned about smog from factories and automobiles; lakes and rivers polluted by detergents, pesticides, and industrial wastes; and the disappearance of wildlife. In 1964 Congress had already passed the National Wilderness Preservation System Act to set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness as "forever wild." Congress first established pollution standards for interstate waterways and a year later provided funds for sewage treatment and water purification. Legislation also tightened standards on air pollution. Despite opposition from entrenched interests, the new standards did result in a gradual improvement in water and air quality in many areas. For all he had done, Johnson wanted more. In 1966 he pushed through bills to raise the minimum wage, improve auto safety, aid mass transit, and develop "model cities." But in time opposition mounted. "Doesn't matter what kind of majority you come in with," Johnson had predicted early on. "You've got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves." Even so, Johnson pushed major legislation through Congress as late as 1968. Evaluating the Great Society. Historians have difficulty measuring the Great Society's impact. It produced more legislation and more reforms than the New Deal. It also carried a higher price tag than anyone predicted. Economic statistics suggested that general prosperity, boosted by the tax cut bill, did more to fight poverty than all the OEO programs. And the inevitable scandals began to surface: Job Corps retrainees burglarizing homes in their off-hours, school equipment purchased that no one knew how to use. Conservatives and radicals alike objected that the liberal welfare state was intruding into too many areas of people's lives. For all that, the Great Society proved to be the high-water mark of a trend toward activist government that had grown steadily since the progressive era and the Great Depression. While Americans continued to pay lip service to the notion that government should remain small and interfere little in citizens' lives, no strong movement emerged to eliminate Medicare or Medicaid. Few Americans disputed the right of the government to regulate industrial pollution or to control the excesses of large corporations or powerful labor unions. In this sense, the tradition of liberalism prevailed, whatever Johnson's failings. (881-4) “SILENT” MAJORITIES AND VOCAL MINORITIES. During the 1968 campaign Richard Nixon had noticed a placard carried by a hopeful voter -- "Bring Us Together." That became his campaign theme. Yet of necessity political coalitions cannot bring everyone together. Their goal is simply to assemble a majority on Election Day Nixon recognized quite well that in the three-way race of 1968, his 43 percent did not add up to a majority. But when Wallace's vote was added, the total came to an impressive 60 percent. If Nixon could add discontented southerners and blue-collar workers to the traditional GOP base, he could win again in 1972. These groups resented much that the civil rights movement had done to overcome racial inequalities. To add to that resentment, the civil rights movement inspired other minorities to demand greater equality for themselves. Just as the civil rights campaign gave way to black power militancy, so too other minority activists adopted increasingly disruptive tactics to press their causes. Their new, more assertive visibility was crucial to Nixon's attempt to form his own countermajority. Hispanic Activism. Part of that increased visibility resulted from a new wave of immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico after World War II and, in the case of Cubans, after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power. Historical, cultural, ethnic, and geographic differences among the three major Hispanic groups made it difficult to develop a common political agenda. Still, some activists did seek greater Hispanic unity. Puerto Rican migration. After World War II a weak island economy and the lure of prosperity on the mainland brought more than a million Puerto Ricans into New York City. As citizens of the United States, they could move freely to the mainland and back home again. That dual consciousness discouraged many from establishing deep roots stateside. Equally important, the newcomers were startled to discover that, whatever their status at home, on the mainland they were subject to racial discrimination and most often segregated into urban slums. In 1964 approximately half of all recent immigrants lived below the poverty level, according to the Puerto Rican Forum. Light-skinned migrants escaped those conditions by blending into the middle class as "Latin Americans." The Puerto Rican community thereby lost some of the leadership it needed to assert its political rights. Still, during the 1960s, the urban barrios gained greater political consciousness as groups like Aspira adopted the strategies of civil rights activists and organizations like the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus created links with other minority groups. The Cubans who arrived in the United States after 1959 -- some 350,000 over the course of the decade -- forged fewer ties with other Hispanics. Most settled around Miami. An unusually large number came from Cuba's professional, business, and government class and were racially white and politically conservative. Mexican Americans, on the other hand, constituted the largest segment of the Hispanic population. Until the 1940s most were farmers and farm laborers in Texas, New Mexico, and California. But during the 1950s, the process of mechanization had affected them, just as it had black southerners. By 1969 about 85 percent of Mexican Americans had settled in cities. With urbanization came a slow improvement of the range and quality of jobs they held. A body of skilled workers, middle-class professionals, and entrepreneurs emerged. Cesar Chavez. In 1960, frustrated by years of neglect by major parties, Hispanic political leaders from the region formed the Mexican American Political Association. MAPA declared its intent to be "proudly Mexican American, openly political, and necessarily bipartisan." By 1964 four Mexican Americans had been elected to Congress, but the growing activism across the nation altered traditional Hispanic approaches to politics. Younger Mexican Americans began to call themselves Chicanos. In 1965 Cesar Chavez gained national attention by his efforts to organize migrant laborers into the United Farm Workers. He led them in La Huelga -- The Strike -- which they supported with a national boycott of California lettuce and grapes. By the late 1960s Mexican Americans had clearly established greater ethnic consciousness. Like African Americans, Chicanos saw themselves as a people whose culture had been taken from them. Their heritage had been rejected, their labor exploited, and their opportunity for advancement denied. The new ethnic militancy led to the formation of La Raza Unida (The Race United). This third-party movement sought to gain power in communities in which Mexican Americans were a majority and to extract concessions from the Democrats and Republicans. The more militant "Brown Berets" adopted the paramilitary tactics and radical rhetoric of the Black Panthers. The Choices of American Indians. Termination. Like African Americans and Hispanics. Indians began to protest; yet the unique situation of Native Americans (as many had begun to call themselves) set them apart from other minorities. A largely hostile white culture had in past centuries sought to either exterminate or to assimilate American Indians. Ironically, the growing strength of the civil rights movement created another threat to Indian tribal identities. Liberals came to see the reservations not as oases of Indian culture but as rural ghettos. During the 1950s they joined conservatives eager to repeal the New Deal and western state politicians eyeing tribal resources to adopt a policy of "termination." The Bureau of Indian Affairs would reduce federal services, gradually sell off tribal lands, and push Indians into the "mainstream" of American life. Although most full-blooded Indians objected to the policy, some mixed bloods and Indians already assimilated into white society supported the move. The resulting relocation of approximately 35,000 Indians accelerated a shift from rural areas to cities. The urban Indian population, which had been barely 30,000 in 1940, reached more than 300,000 by the 1970s. American Indian Movement. The social activism of the 1960s inspired Indian leaders to shape a new political agenda. In 1968 urban activists in Minneapolis created AIM, the American Indian Movement. A year later similarly minded Indians living around San Francisco Bay formed Indians of All Tribes. Because the Bureau of Indian Affairs refused to address the problems of urban Indians, more militant members of the organization dramatized their dissatisfaction by seizing the abandoned federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Occupation of Wounded Knee. The Alcatraz action inspired a national Pan-Indian rights movement. Richard Oakes, a Mohawk Indian from New York, declared that the Alcatraz protest was not "a movement to liberate the island, but to liberate ourselves." Then in 1973, AIM organizers Russell Means and Dennis Banks led a dramatic takeover of a trading post at Wounded Knee, on a Sioux reservation in South Dakota. Ever since white cavalry had gunned down over a hundred Sioux in 1890 (page 53S), Wounded Knee had symbolized for Indians the betrayal of white promises and the bankruptcy of reservation policy. Even more, Wounded Knee now demonstrated the problems that Indian activists faced. When federal officers surrounded the trading post, militants discovered that other Indians did not support their tactics and were forced to leave. A Pan-Indian movement was difficult to achieve when so many tribes were determined to go their own ways, as distinct, self-regulating communities. Thus even activists who supported the Pan-Indian movement found themselves splintering. During the 1970s more than 100 different organizations were formed to unite various tribes pursuing political and legal agendas at the local, state, and federal levels. (882) [Picture] Cesar Chavez (center left) mobilized the largely Hispanic migrant workers into the United Farm Workers Union. In 1969 a call for boycotts against grapes and lettuce gained Chavez and the union national attention. (943) The New Immigration. During the 1980s, more than 7 million immigrants entered the country legally more than in any other decade in American history except 1901-1910. Adding another 300,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants each year, the total was even greater than the 8.8 million arriving in the first decade of the century. Latin immigrants. Latin American immigrants accounted for as much as 40 percent of the yearly influx, as they had since the 1960s. But in addition to Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, the Latino population in the 1980s included communities of Dominicans and Central Americans. Like immigrants at the turn of the century, established Hispanic families provided housing for newer immigrants, who were often single. The newcomers hoped to save money from their weekly paychecks to send to relatives in Mexico or Central America. However, in an economy increasingly divided between skilled jobs in the service sectors and low-paying unskilled jobs, Latinos lagged behind Anglos and black Americans in education. Often, the lack of adequate English-language skills discouraged success. Asian Americans. Once the Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the national origins quota system, immigration increased heavily from Asia. By 1990 about 7.3 million Asian Americans lived in the United States. Like earlier immigrants from Europe, those from the Pacific rim came in waves. Some, like the Vietnamese boat people of the late 1970s, were driven from their homes by economic or political turmoil. Others were drawn to reunite families or realize greater opportunities in the Western Hemisphere. "My brother-in-law left his wife in Taiwan and came here as a student to get a Ph.D. in engineering," explained Subi Lin Felipe. "After he received his degree, he got a job in San Jose. Then he brought in a sister and his wife, who brought over one of her brothers and me. And my brother's wife then came." Professional Asian Indians emigrated in search of better jobs in the United States. Doctors and nurses constituted a large percentage of the early Korean immigrants. But letters home to relatives and other nationals soon attracted a more diverse population, which concentrated in small businesses. The presence of other Asian Americans and an international atmosphere drew many Asians to New York City, but climate made Hawaii and California particularly popular destinations. Of more than 800,000 Korean Americans about a quarter lived around Los Angeles in 1990. So, too, the 1.4 million Japanese Americans settled primarily in California and Hawaii. By contrast, the federal government attempted to disperse nearly half a million Vietnamese (as well as Cambodians and Laotians) who fled after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia. The new immigrants often faced more subtle forms of discrimination than those of earlier eras. The Wall Street Journal reported in 1985 that "the same companies that pursue them for technical jobs often shun them when filling managerial and executive positions." Hard work has overcome some, though by no means all, of these prejudices. One survey indicated that while the average American student spent 19.6 hours a week on academic work, the average Japanese American spent 32.6 hours and Chinese American, 40.4. Some Asian groups earn more than other ethnic groups, as well as full-time American wage earners, in part because many immigrant families brought business and educational experience to America, along with a powerful work ethic. A "model minority." Such success has led the media often to stereotype Asians as a "model minority" in America; yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise to scattered acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. (944) [Map] HISPANIC AND ASIAN POPULATIONS. Hispanics and Asians made up the two fastest-growing population groups in the United States over the past several decades. Demographers predict that Hispanics will soon displace African Americans as the nation’s single largest minority group.

 

[1996b] (652-5) Many people of color saw their economic fortunes decline during the 1970s and 1980s. Joblessness plagued blacks, Native Americans, and Hispanics, as well as new immigrants. As a result of the sluggish economy, poverty was still a national problem in 1989, and African-Americans made up a disproportionate share of the poor. The overall poverty rate was 13 percent by 1980, but the rate among blacks was 33 percent and among Hispanics 26 percent, compared with 10 percent for whites. These figures had barely changed by the end of Reagan's presidency in 1989. The weight of poverty fell most heavily on African-American children, almost half of whom lived below the poverty line in the 1980s. A 1981 Children's Defense Fund survey reported that black children in the United States were four times more likely than whites to be born into poverty, twice as likely to drop out of school before twelfth grade, five times as likely as white teenagers to be murdered, and three times as likely to be unemployed. Many of these children lived in families headed by single women who were forced to rely on welfare or earned meager incomes as domestic servants, laundresses, and kitchen helpers. Declining Job Opportunities for African-Americans. Some whites and even other blacks grumbled that poor blacks were responsible for their own poverty. But the job market was far different in the 1970s and 1980s from that of twenty-five, fifty, or seventy five years before. Deindustrialization had eliminated many blue-collar jobs; job demand in the 1970s and 1980s was greatest for skilled workers such as computer operators, bank tellers, secretaries, and bookkeepers. Most jobless people could not qualify. African-American Middle Class. Even as the plight of the African-American poor worsened, the black middle class expanded. The number of black college students increased from 282,000 in 1966 to more than one million in 1980; by 1980, about one-third of all black high school graduates were going on to college, the Same proportion as among white youths. And by 1990, the number of black college students had increased further, to 1.3 million. At least at the upper levels of black society, the dream of equality was being realized. White Backlash. As middle-class African-Americans made gains, however, resentful whites complained that they were being victimized by "reverse discrimination." To meet federal affirmative action requirements, some schools and companies had established quotas for minorities and women; in some cases, the requirements were lower than those for whites. When Allan Bakke, a white man, was denied admission to medical school, he sued on the ground that less-qualified black applicants had been admitted. In a 5-to-4 ruling in 1978, the Supreme Court outlawed quotas but upheld the principle of affirmative action, explaining that race or ethnicity could be counted as "a 'plus' in a particular applicant's file" (Bakke v. University of California). In 1989, however, the Court ruled that past discrimination did not "justify a rigid racial quota" and that white workers could sue to reopen affirmative action cases settled in federal courts years earlier (Richmond v. Croson, Martin v. Wilks). White anger over affirmative action and busing combined with the effects of stagnation to produce an upsurge in racism. In Boston, where busing provoked numerous riots, a group of white students attacked a black passer-by outside city hall. "Get the nigger; kill him," one shouted, and they ran at him with the sharp end of a flagstaff dying an American flag. Tension rose not only in Boston but in cities across the nation. Black Anger. African-Americans were tense, and they showed it more openly than in the past. Charles Silberman wrote in Criminal Violence, Criminal Justice (1978) that "black Americans have discovered that fear runs the other way, that whites are intimidated by their very presence. . . . The taboo against expression of anti-white anger is breaking down, and 350 years of festering hatred has come spilling out." That hatred erupted several times in 1980, most notably in Miami and Chattanooga, after all-white juries acquitted whites in the killings of blacks. Miami's three days of rioting left eighteen dead and four hundred injured. African-American civil rights leaders denounced not only the judicial system but also the executive branch headed by President Ronald Reagan. Appointments were one issue: whereas 12 percent of President Jimmy Carter's high-level appointees had been black and 12 percent women, Reagan's were 4 percent black and 8 percent women. (Reagan did appoint four women to his cabinet, and he made history by appointing Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman associate justice of the Supreme Court.) Moreover, Reagan's civil rights chief in the Justice Department fought against renewing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, opposed busing and affirmative action, and was criticized for lax enforcement of fair housing laws and laws banning sexual and racial discrimination in federally funded education programs. Native American Militancy. Every bit as angry as African-Americans were Native Americans. Their new militancy burst into the headlines in late 1969, when a small group of Indians seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Arguing that an 1868 Sioux treaty entitled them to possession of unused federal lands, the group occupied the island until mid-1971. Two years later, members of the militant American Indian Movement (AIM), demanding the rights guaranteed Indians in treaties with the United States, seized eleven hostages and a trading post on the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded nee, South Dakota, where troops of the Seventh Cavalry had massacred the Sioux in 1890. Their seventy-one-day confrontation with federal marshals ended with a government agreement to examine the treaty rights of the Oglala Sioux. Like other people of color, Native Americans were trapped in poverty. Four in ten Native Americans were unemployed, and nine out of ten lived in substandard housing. Often, being an Indian also meant being unhealthy: Native Americans suffered the highest incidence of alcoholism, tuberculosis, and suicide of any ethnic group in the United States. Indian Suits for Lost Lands. Since 1924, Indians have had dual legal status as U.S. citizens and as members of tribal nations subject to special treaty agreements with the United States. Their dual status has proved a curse, in large part because the government found it easier to breach its treaty commitments. In 1946, Congress established the Indian Claims Commission to compensate Indians for lands stolen from them. Under the legislation, lawyers for the Native American Rights Fund and other groups scored notable victories. In 1980, for example, the Supreme Court ordered the government to pay $ 106 million plus interest to the Sioux Indian Nation for the Black Hills of South Dakota, stolen when gold was found there in the 1870s. Nevertheless, corporations and government agencies continued to covet Indian lands and disregard Indian religious beliefs: a coal company strip-mined a portion of the Hopi Sacred Circle, which according to tribal religion is the source of all life. Hispanic-Americans. As Indians fought to regain old rights, Hispanic Americans struggled to make a place for themselves. An influx of immigrants unequaled since the turn of the century, coupled with a high birthrate, made Hispanic peoples America's fastest-growing minority by the 1970s. Of the more than twenty million Hispanics living in the United States in the 1970s, eight million were Mexican-Americans concentrated in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Several million Puerto Ricans and Cubans clustered principally on the East Coast. These officially acknowledged Hispanics were joined by millions of undocumented workers, or illegal aliens. Beginning in the mid-1960s, large numbers of poverty-stricken Mexicans began to cross the poorly guarded two-thousand-mile border. The movement north continued in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1990, one out of three Los Angelenos and Miamians was Hispanic, as was 20 percent of the population of San Diego, 48 percent of San Antonio, and 70 percent of El Paso. Poverty awaited the new immigrants, as it had previous groups of newcomers. Like many earlier groups, Hispanics faced a language barrier. Most inner-city schools did not provide bilingual education for Spanish-speaking students. Finally, the larger the Hispanic population has become, the more widespread has been the discrimination. Hispanic Cultural Pride. Most of these new Americans preferred their family-centered culture to Anglo culture and for that reason resisted assimilation. "We want to be here," explained Daniel Villanueva, a TV executive, "but without losing our language and our culture. They are a richness, a treasure that we don't care to lose." Like other minorities, Hispanics wanted political power -- "brown power." Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers was the first Hispanic interest group to gain national attention. The militant Brown Berets also attracted notice for their efforts to provide meals to preschoolers and courses in Chicano studies and consciousness raising to older students. And throughout the 1970s, the Mexican-American political party La Raza Unida was a potent force in the Southwest and East Los Angeles. Still, for the group that was becoming the nation's largest minority, Hispanics exercised a disproportionately small share of political power. During the 1980s, Hispanic and Native Americans joined African-Americans in denouncing the Reagan administration. The League of United Latin American Citizens censured Reagan for his "very, very dismal record" in dealing with their problems, and the National Tribal Chairmen's Association charged that under Reagan "the delivery of services by federal agencies to Indians was in a shambles." New Influx of Immigrants. During the 1970s and 1980s, people of color immigrated to the United States in record numbers from Indochina, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Refugees of the Vietnam War arrived, other immigrants came from the Philippines, Korea, Taiwan, India, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica, and boat people poured in from the islands of Cuba and Haiti. Between 1970 and 1980, the United States absorbed more than 4 million immigrants and refugees and perhaps twice that number of illegal aliens. High as these figures were, they doubled again during the next decade. With 9 million new arrivals, the 1980s surpassed the historic high mark set by the 8.7 million immigrants who had reached American shores between 1901 and 1910. The new immigrants consisted largely of families. Among the varied peoples who were seeking opportunity in a new land, Asian Americans were by far the most successful. Immigration Reform. The arrival of so many newcomers put pressure on Congress to curtail the flow and perhaps offer amnesty to aliens already living illegally in the United States. In 1978, Congress authorized a comprehensive reexamination of America's immigration policy. The immigration commission completed its study in 1981, but legislative solutions were delayed until 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control (Simpson-Rodino) Act. The act provided amnesty to undocumented workers who had arrived before 1982. The act's purpose was to discourage illegal immigration by imposing sanctions on employers who hired undocumented workers, but it failed to stem the flow of people fleeing Mexico's economic woes. In 1988, the number of new immigrants from Mexico approached the record numbers reached just before the reform law went into effect.

 

[1996c] (226) 4-25 IMMIGRATION BY SEA. How have times changed or not changed? Immigration by sea, whether in the seventeenth century or the twentieth century can be a life-threatening experience! (Excerpt 1 – Vietnamese, Excerpt 2 – German, Excerpt 3—Haitian) (290-2) 4-25 Immigration By Sea. Except for those of us who are of Native American descent, we are a nation of immigrants. Some have come on foot, others have mown, and others have traveled by boat to arrive in the United States. Read the accounts below that describe the experiences of three different people who have traveled by boat to the United States: one is a German who came in the 1700s; one is a Vietnamese who came in the 1970s; and one is a Haitian who came in the 1990s. 1. "[He] was only six years old when he and his family left. . . . When his father told him they were going on a long trip, [he] was excited at first. . . [he] still has nightmares about the horrible events of his family's escape. . . the boat they sailed on was attacked by pirates. The boat's captain was shot, and the pirates took all the food and water and several of the young girls from the refugee boat, including his sister. Two days later a second pirate ship stopped the boat and took the people's clothes. Suffering from hunger, thirst, cold and fear, the refugees tried to find land. Because of the rough seas, the boat people finally had to abandon ship and swim ashore. . . . [he] and his parents have never heard from his sister."(1) This immigrant was coming from (1) Germany, (2) Vietnam, (3) Haiti (circle one). 2. "During the journey the ship is full of pitiful signs of distress-smells, fumes, horrors, vomiting, various kinds of sea sickness, fever, dysentery, headaches, heat, constipation, boils, scurvy, cancer, mouth-rot, and similar afflictions, all of them caused by the age and the high salted state of the food, especially the meat, as well as the very bad and filthy water. . . . Add to all that shortage of food, hunger, thirst, frost, heat, dampness, fear, misery, vexation, and lamentation as well as other troubles. . . . On board our ship, on a day on which we had a great storm, a woman about to give birth and unable to deliver under the circumstances, was pushed through one of the portholes into the sea. . . ."(2) These immigrants were coming from (1) Germany, (2) Vietnam, (3) Haiti (circle one). 3. "Straw seat mats were laid over the ribs of the boat, a 50-gallon water barrel was secured over the keel, and provisions were hastily tossed in. . . . There were 10 passengers under age 15, the youngest barely a year old. As the sun grew hotter, plastic jugs of tepid water were passed around and the euphoria of a successful getaway faded. . . . As five-foot swells rocked the boat, gourds were passed to the seasick, then emptied over the side. One man fainted and his friends fought for space so that he could breathe fresh air. Others helped a seasick woman to drink water. Because of the crowded conditions, muscles stiffened and arguments erupted. People nodded uncomfortably, heads on their chests, or leaned against one another to doze. Minor movements, like eating caused discomfort to one's neighbors; major physical efforts, like standing up, caused pain. After a day and a half under these conditions, most of the food was gone and a grim realization set in: Surviving the two weeks. . . might be impossible."(3) These immigrants were coming from (1) Germany, (2) Vietnam, (3) Haiti (circle one). In the Venn diagram below, identify the similarities and differences experienced by these immigrants during their journeys. Similarities to Experiences of All Three People. German Immigrant. Vietnamese Immigrant. Haitian Immigrant. Imagine you are a U.S. Immigration official. On what basis might you permit each immigrant group's entry to the United States? On what basis might you deny their entry? Write your answers below. (227) SEPARATION OR ASSIMILATION? This exercise explores a dilemma that many American students of color face. (297) 4-28 Separation or Assimilation? Many Americans feel strongly about the traditions and values found in their specific cultural heritage (e.g., African Americans, Korean Americans, Mexican Americans). They may experience a conflict between how much they want to separate themselves from the mainstream of U.S. society to maintain their cultural identity and how much they want to assimilate themselves into U.S. society. Read the three accounts below of young Mexican Americans who represent three views on this conflict. As you read, identify who among these three teenagers wants to separate, who wants to assimilate, and who wants to find a middle road. 1. PAUL: "I don't want to be known as a Mexican American, but only as an American. I was born in this country and raised among Americans. I think like an Anglo, I talk like one, and I dress like one. It's true that I don't look like an Anglo and sometimes I am rejected by them, but it would be worse if I spoke Spanish or said that I was of Mexican descent. . . . I wish those people who are always making noise about being Mexican Americans would be quiet. We would be better off if they would accept things as they are. . . ."(1) 2. ROBERTO: "I am proud of being a Mexican American. We have a rich heritage. Mexico is a great country that is progressing fast. It has a wonderful history and culture. . . I don't want to be like the 'Paddys' [Anglos]. . . . They don't like anyone who is different. . . . Most people, even some Mexican Americans, look down on us because we are Mexicans. . . . It is unhealthy and unnatural to want to be something you are not."(2) 3. ROSA: "I am happy to be an American of Mexican descent. Because I am Mexican, I leaned to be close to my family, and they have been a source of strength and support for me. . . . My Spanish also helped me a lot in my education and will open a lot of doors for me when I look for a job. As an American I am happy to live in a great progressive country where we have the freedom to achieve anything we want. . . . I feel very rich and fortunate because I have two cultures rather than just one."(3) Complete the following sentences: PAUL/ROBERTO/ROSA (circle one) wants to assimilate into American society. PAUL/ROBERTO/ROSA (circle one) wants to separate from American society. PAUL/ROBERTO/ROSA (circle one) wants neither to assimilate nor to separate from American society but rather to take a middle road. Choose one of these three teenagers and write a letter to this person. Tell her or him what your opinion is of her or his thinking about separation or assimilation. What do you disagree with? What do you agree with? Can you relate to this teenager? Why or why not? Dear: **, I have the following response to your thoughts about separation from/assimilation into (circle one) American society. (Continue on the back.)

 

[1996d] −

 

[1996e] (502) Lindon Johnson and the Great Society. As President, Lyndon Johnson was determined to leave an enduring mark on the nation. Not only did he commit himself to civil rights and liberal tax cuts, but also to aid to education, health benefits for the elderly and poor, job training housing urban renewal, the environment, and more. He called his program "The Great Society" and with it surpassed the New Deal's legislative outpouring. In beating conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, Johnson also bested Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1936. Johnson's vision proved heady indeed. Yet many of the initiatives had a higher price tag than he or his supporters imagined. Inefficiency, corruption, soaring costs, and political infighting dogged many Great Society programs. (504-5) KEY EVENTS. 1964, First of the decade’s urban race riots. Lyndon Johnson elected president. 1965, Great Society: Johnson legislative blitz. Immigration Act: ends quota system. (853) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 12. The Immigration Act of 1965; a. sharply reduced the number of immigrants who could legally enter the U.S. annually. b. set up a quota system based on national origins to establish how many could enter annually from each foreign country. c. eliminated racial provisions restricting Asian immigration. d. served primarily to benefit northern Europeans. (p. 853). (509) IDENTIFICATION QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts. hyphenated Americans, Camelot, liberalism, Alliance for Progress, special forces, Peace Corps, Freedom Riders, Engel v. Vitale, black power, voter registration, Port Huron Statement, Medicare and Medicaid, mod, New Left, soul sisters. Individuals and Places. Berlin Wall, Watts, Eldridge Cleaver, Michael Harrington. Timothy Leary, Motown, Bay of Pigs. James Meredith, Earl Warren. (518-9) “Silent” Majorities and Vocal Minorities. Meanwhile, other significant minorities were becoming active. Hispanics had grown increasingly vocal in insisting that they, like African Americans, had been held back by discrimination and poverty. Various Hispanic groups campaigned for a greater political voice and for economic power. Cesar Chavez, for example, organized Mexican-American migrant farm workers, Indians, too, through various forms of protest and legal challenge, sought to reclaim dignity and old tribal rights. And certain militant homosexual groups joined the chorus of demands for respect and equal rights. Social activists still looked to the Supreme Court to redress their grievances. Even with Nixon appointee Warren Burger replacing the liberal Earl Warren as chief justice, the Court upheld school busing as one way to redress segregation. Unable to shift the Court's balance far enough to the right Nixon increasingly resorted to legal harassment by federal agencies to crush groups he saw as enemies. When the Democrats in 1972 nominated George McGovern, an antiwar liberal, to run for president, Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, won a smashing victory. (520) KEY EVENTS. 1965, Cesar Chavez: leads national campaign on behalf of farm workers. (521-2) LEARNING OBJECTIVES. When you have finished studying this chapter, you should be able to: l. Explain the steps taken that involved the United States more deeply in the Vietnam War. 2. Describe the way Americans fought the Vietnam War and how the conditions of fighting differed from previous conflicts. 3. Explain the rise of the antiwar movement at home and its role in shaping American policy for Vietnam. 4. Explain, why 1968 was such a pivotal year for both the Vietnam War and for domestic politics. 5. Explain why Nixon widened the war as a way to end it, and the accompanying shift in U.S. foreign policy to Vietnamization, the Nixon Doctrine and detente. 6. Describe the liberal and conservative elements of Richard Nixon's "New Federalism" and his appeal to the silent majority. (526) Review Questions. MULTIPLE CHOICE. 14. In the 1960s, Cesar Chavez organized a national boycott of: a. California lettuce and grapes to show sympathy for striking farm workers, b. all Cuban products including sugar and cigars while Fidel Castro remained in power, c. Texas beef, to protest the low pay and poor living conditions of many who worked on the largest ranches. d. corporations who refused to use Hispanic Americans in their advertising campaigns. (p. 883). (527) IDENTIFICATION QUESTIONS. You should be able to describe the following key terms, concepts, individuals and places, and explain their significance: Terms and Concepts. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, escalation, Rolling Thunder, body count, hawks and doves, napalm, Tet Offensive, silent majority, SALT I, detente, AIM, La Huelga, New Federalism, stagflation. Individuals and Places. Jackson State, Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh Trail, Pleiku, William Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, George Wallace, Muhammad Ali, Spiro Agnew, Cesar Chavez, Russell Means, Paris Peace Conference, Clark Clifford.

 

[1997a]

 

[1997b] (706-9) Johnson’s Great Society. Johnson Pushes Social Reform. Johnson's administration began in the tragedy of Kennedy's assassination and ended in the tragedy of the disastrous war in Vietnam. In between Johnson carried forward Kennedy's dream of a New Frontier, then went beyond Kennedy's domestic programs to launch his own vision of the Great Society, In the days following Kennedy's assassination, Johnson took several steps to reassure the world that he would carry on in the same tradition as Kennedy, In his first speech following his succession to office, he said, "All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here today," and asked for the nation's prayers and support. Looking back on those days, Johnson told his biographer, Doris Kearns Goodwin: We were all spinning around and around, trying to come to grips with what had happened, but the more we tried to understand it, the more confused we got. We were like a bunch of cattle caught in the swamp, unable to move in either direction, simply circling 'round and 'round. I understood that; I knew what had to be done. There is but one way to get the cattle out of the swamp. And that is for the man on the horse to take the lead, to assume command, to provide direction. in the period of confusion after the assassination, I was that man. -- Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 1976. The differences between the two men, Kennedy and Johnson, were striking Whereas Kennedy was handsome, sophisticated, and well-educated, Johnson could be crude and intimidating Politeness and polish were not among Johnson's attributes; but he was, as he said, the man for the job. He had been an apt student of politics. A member of the House in 1937 at age 29, he advanced to the Senate in 1949 and rose quickly to the powerful position of Senate majority leader in 1955. Johnson was a genius at building coalitions. "Let us reason together," he would say, with a touch of understatement. He then used what those who received it called "the Treatment." Johnson's method was to find out everything he could about the person he was talking to -- family, friends, strengths, weaknesses, special interests. Then Johnson would proceed to flatter, cajole, promise, threaten, all the while suggesting that the other person's decision was going to make the difference between success or failure. "Lyndon got me by the lapels and put his face on top of mine and he talked and talked," a colleague said. "I figured [the choice] was getting drowned or joining" Fashioning a Legacy President Johnson had boundless confidence in himself, and he knew what he wanted to do. He promised to realize the Kennedy vision, and he did -- perhaps better than Kennedy ever could have. In 1963 Kennedy's program for social change was only an emerging vision. His liberalism was cautious and uncertain. Johnson had no such uncertainties. He was a man determined to do great things, and now he had the power to change the country. What then needed changing? The answer depended on where you looked. In the suburban shopping malls that were springing up around the country, the United States looked robust. Measured in auto sales and economic indicators, the country hummed with prosperity. This was the nation that television viewers watched on The Luly Show and other situation comedies, where everyday problems were solvable within a 22-minute show. There was, of course, another America, as Michael Harrington revealed in his book, The Other America. He described a country within a country, where people were hungry when they went to bed, if in fact they had a bed. Chronic joblessness, unbudged by the New Deal or the postwar economic boom, was set like cement in rural towns and big-city slums. During the 1960s a vision of this other America slowly revealed itself to public consciousness. Strangely enough, it was Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) , the wheeling-dealing politician and friend of the rich, who understood the problem. Johnson's homespun tales of his rag-poor past may have stretched the truth a bit, but he certainly knew hard times as a child growing up in central Texas. Later, as a teacher of the rural poor in his home state, he felt a great empathy for people living in grinding, persistent poverty. LBJ cared about the poor, and he cared about his place in history, He felt he could become the first President to create a just society that all but eliminated chronic poverty and hardship in the United States. Johnson told Congress on March 16, 1964, that "in the past we have often been called upon to wage war against foreign enemies which threaten our freedom today. Now, we are asked to declare a war on a domestic enemy which threatens the strength of our nation and the welfare of our people." That enemy, of course, was poverty, LBJ's ambitious war on poverty would be the cornerstone of his Great Society. The Great Society. Johnson moved quickly to push Kennedy initiatives, including the Civil Rights Act, through Congress. He launched his war on poverty with the Economic Opportunity Act, the most ambitious attempt to aid the poor in the nation's history, It established Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a kind of domestic peace corps of citizens working in poor neighborhoods. The act also funded Project Head Start, to give preschoolers from disadvantaged families a leg up on elementary education. The mood of the country, still affected by the shock of Kennedy's assassination, worked in Johnson's favor during the 1964 presidential election. Johnson overwhelmingly defeated Arizona senator Barry Goldwater and seized the mandate to introduce his own program of reform. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice . . . [It] is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind . . . where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands for commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. -- Lyndon B. Johnson, University of Michigan commencement address, 1964 The President knew that what he called the "honeymoon" of his election would not last for long. "You've got to give it all you can that first year," he said. The result was the most comprehensive reform package to pass through Congress since the New Deal reforms of 1935. Among the most significant pieces of legislation were Medicare, federally funded health care for the elderly, and Medicaid, its companion program for the needy who were too young to qualify for Medicare. These programs were the first to make health care available to those who could not afford it. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 put teeth into the Fifteenth Amendment by providing for federal supervision of voter registration. Cities benefited from the Model Cities Act, which encouraged slum rehabilitation. A new department of Housing and Urban Development was created; its secretary, Robert Weaver, became the first African American to serve in a presidential cabinet. Immigration legislation did away with a quota system that had existed for more than 50 years. As a result, people from a variety of cultures entered the United States, creating considerable variety in the ethnic mix of the population. Successes and Limitations. Johnson's Great Society program of social and political reform is often compared with FDR's New Deal. The goals of the two were somewhat different. The New Deal sought social reforms in some areas -- the creation of the Social Security system is an example. Its main goals, however, were to provide relief for the unemployed and the poor and to stimulate economic recovery. The Great Society was more successful in creating legislative programs than in implementing them. It was underfunded, partly because the financing of the Vietnam War claimed a greater and greater proportion of the tax dollar. Still, the percentage of impoverished Americans, as measured by government standards, dropped from 22 percent in 1959 to 12 percent in 1969. The civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965 were landmark achievements of the Johnson presidency, Perhaps the greatest weakness in the Great Society program was that it promised so much that, despite its successes, critics could always point to problems yet unresolved. (706) [Picture] Federal Support for the Arts. In 1965 Congress established a funding program for artists and arts organizations. This 1969 painting uses strong images to comment on African Americans' fight for civil rights in the United States. What do you think the symbols represent? (707) [Charts] THE GREAT SOCIETY. The domestic programs of President Johnson's Great Society brought improvement to many areas of life, especially for the disadvantaged. During Lyndon Johnson's presidency, great strides were made in programs for social change. What were some areas of life affected by Great Society programs? What age groups were affected? (708) [Picture] A Head Start. This 3-year-old Hispanic girt is "reading" in a Head Start program. What was the purpose of these programs? (709) [Picture] Transformed Living Spaces. Improved urban housing was one of the many benefits of the Great Society programs. What new housing department was created as part of Johnson's Great Society? (734-7) SECTION 2. Hispanic Americans Organize. Recent Hispanic American History. Diverse Yet Similar. Look at a map of the United States. Read out the names of places in the Southwest and Southeast: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, San Antonio, Rio Grande, Ponce de Leon Bay These names all suggest the long history of Hispanic culture in North America. From the first explorers in the 1500s to the most recent immigrants. Hispanic Americans have added a distinctive element to the language and culture of the United States. The term Hispanic American refers to those Americans who have come, or are descended from others who came, from Spanish-speaking lands such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing minority in the country: From 3 million in 1960, the Hispanic population rose to 15 million in 1980 and approximately 27 million in 1995. As many feminists began to demand their rights in the 1960s and 1970s, many Hispanic Americans did as well. Both groups were characterized by diversity: their members came from many different places and had varying interests. Similarities and Differences. Regardless of their country of origin, Hispanic Americans shared the Spanish language and culture and a strong loyalty to family and community. The majority were Roman Catholic. They maintained close ties with their extended families, which included grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as parents, brothers, and sisters. Economic and social pressures forced many urban Hispanic Americans to live in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods, or barrios. In other ways Hispanic Americans were and are a diverse group. The successful Cuban American banker in Miami, the Puerto Rican teenager in New York City's South Bronx, and the Mexican American field-worker in California's San Joaquin Valley all faced different political and economic issues. Five Major Groups. Hispanic Americans may be divided into five major subgroups: Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, those from Central America, and those from South America. Each group has its own history and settlement pattern. Many Mexican Americans were grandchildren or great grandchildren of the 1 million people who fled Mexico in the 20 years following Mexico's 1910 revolution. Others traced their origins to families who lived in Mexican territories that were incorporated into the United States after the Mexican War. Others first came to this country as braceros, farmworkers who were issued temporary work permits by the United States government during World War II and after. Still others were undocumented immigrants -- people who lacked legal papers for residing in the United States. Many Mexican Americans maintained ties with relatives and friends in Mexico through frequent visits or moves back and forth. Because Puerto Rico is a possession of the United States, Puerto Ricans may enter this country as citizens. After World War II, 1 out of every 6 Puerto Ricans came to this country seeking economic opportunities not available in Puerto Rico. In the 1960s, of the 1 million Puerto Ricans in the United States, 600,000 lived in New York City Most were unskilled, poorly educated, and stuck in low-paying jobs. Cubans began arriving in this country in large numbers after Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. One great migration began following the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when 3,000 people a week arrived for several months. A second migration took place between 1965 and 1970, when 368,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States. In 1980, 130,000 Cubans left their homes for this country in what is known as the Mariel Boatlift. A great number of this nation's Cuban Americans settled in and around Miami; large Cuban communities also grew up in New York City and in New Jersey, Many of these immigrants left Cuba for political, not economic, reasons and had little difficulty establishing themselves in the United States. Two other groups of Hispanic Americans are those with roots in Central America and South America. Civil war caused tens of thousands of Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans to seek asylum here. Economic changes and chronic poverty led many of South Americans to enter this country The largest number of these are from Colombia. More than 100,000 Colombians immigrated between 1966 and 1979. Most settled in New York City Miami, and Los Angeles. Hispanic Americans Respond. Hispanic Americans Organize. While the numbers of Hispanic Americans increased dramatically during the 1960s and 1970s, their development as a political force occurred more slowly Because of the Hispanic Americans' diversity it was difficult for any one leader to unite all the segments into a single force. Political Issues. For Hispanic Americans, as for other minorities, a major political issue was representation, which would result from electing to public office people to represent their views. In some border towns such as El Paso, Texas, Hispanic American voters outnumbered other voters two to one, but few Hispanic American candidates were nominated or elected to office. Gerrymandering in other cities, such as Los Angeles, helped to keep Hispanic Americans from massing their votes. Gradually, with changes such as reapportionment, a few Hispanic American candidates were elected. For example, in 1961 voters in San Antonio, Texas, elected Democrat Henry B. Gonzalez to the House of Representatives. In 1964 Texans elected E. "Kika" de la Garza to represent the Lower Rio Grande Valley in the House. Gradually, Hispanic Americans began to organize politically, La Raza Unida, which translates roughly as "the people united," resulted from an effort to organize a national political party that would unite the sometimes divided Hispanic American elements. Jose Angel Gutierrez, a 25-year-old Texan, formed the party early in 1970 to give Mexican Americans political control over some 20 southern Texas counties in which they made up the majority of the population. In September of that year, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, an activist and poet from Colorado, formed the Colorado La Raza Unida. Two years later a national convention drew 3,000 Chicanos, the ethnic label adopted by many Mexican Americans. Another pressing political issue concerned the bracero program. In periods of labor shortage such as occurred during World War II, American growers pressed the United States government to allow farm laborers to enter on temporary, restricted permits. Although Mexico disliked the program, fearing that the workers would face ethnic discrimination, it reluctantly consented to accept it. The program was scrapped in 1965 when Mexican Americans complained about the poor working conditions that the workers suffered. The plight of the undocumented immigrant and the related problem of controlling the United States-Mexico border were other troublesome issues. Poverty in Mexico was the source of much illegal immigration. No one really could be sure how many people had crossed over the 2,000-mile (3,218-km) border without proper documents. The journey to the United States was a difficult and dangerous one for these undocumented immigrants. They were vulnerable to exploitation -- first by "coyotes," often-unscrupulous guides who demanded large sums of money for transporting the immigrants across the border. Coyotes frequently robbed the immigrants, sometimes abandoning them in the wilderness. Immigrants who successfully reached the United States also often faced exploitation -- by employers. Because the workers were in the country illegally, they had no place to turn for protection, and they were often forced to work under poor conditions for little pay. Other challenges awaited undocumented immigrants once they reached this country. Communities generally provided education and emergency health care to anyone who needed it, but undocumented immigrants were often denied other social services, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps, even though most of them paid taxes. In addition, families in need often would not apply for aid for fear of being deported -- that is, sent back to their native land. Undocumented immigrants were not the only ones who suffered. Many Hispanic Americans who were in this country legally faced discrimination from employers as the federal government's Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) pressured businesses not to hire undocumented immigrants. Many employers, in order to avoid attracting the attention of the INS, simply stopped hiring people of color or those with Hispanic-sounding names, regardless of the workers' legal status. Economic Issues. Among minorities, economic subjects such as wages and working conditions were not easily distinguished from broader political and social issues. Cesar Chavez believed that they all must be treated as a single issue. Partly as a result of Chavez's leadership, farmworkers became unionized for the first time. Chavez, a soft-spoken, patient man, has been called a "quiet explosion." Much of his work centered on the grape-growing area around Delano, in California's San Joaquin Valley There he faced bitter opposition from the growers as well as from the Teamsters Union, which had received permission from the growers to represent the workers even though the workers had not been consulted. In his union work, Chavez followed the nonviolent philosophy of India's Mohandas K. Gandhi and our own country's Martin Luther King, Jr. Chavez explains: If someone commits violence against us, it is much better -- if we can -- not to react against the violence, but to react in such a way as to get closer to our goal. People don't like to see a nonviolent movement subjected to violence. . . . That's the key point we have going for us. . . . By some strange chemistry, every time the opposition commits an unjust act against our hopes and aspirations, we get tenfold paid back in benefits. -- Cesar Chavez, Labor Leaders in America, 1987. Realizing the limits of his resources in Delano, Chavez hit upon the idea of organizing national and international boycotts of farm products. He first used the boycott tactic when negotiating with the growers of table grapes. He then later called successfully for boycotts of wine grapes and of lettuce. Social and Cultural Issues. All Hispanic Americans share some social and cultural problems. As people of color, most have been subject to some degree to the pervasive racial and ethnic prejudices in United States society. Social reforms brought about through the civil rights movement did not immediately benefit Hispanic Americans. Hispanic Americans were regarded as white, and therefore they did not receive many of the legal protections granted other minorities. Not until 1970 did a federal district court rule that Mexican Americans constituted an "identifiable ethnic minority with a pattern of discrimination." In the 1970s bilingualism, the use of two languages, became a center of stormy controversy. The proponents of bilingualism claimed that educating children in their native tongue as well as in English was the only way to ensure that minority students would receive an education equal to that of English-speaking classmates. Those who objected to bilingualism felt it delayed the successful assimilation, or incorporation, of minorities into the mainstream of society. A small group of opponents expressed fears that the United States would become a bilingual country. In 1968 the Bilingual Education Act had provided federal assistance to school districts for developing bilingual education programs. In 1974 the legal issues were decided in favor of bilingual education, when the Supreme Court ruled that schools had to meet the needs of those children who had a limited knowledge of English. Nevertheless, the issues of bilingualism and assimilation remain contentious ones in communities across the nation. (734) [Map] DISTRIBUTION OF HISPANIC AMERICANS, 1970. By 1970 the Hispanic American population had grown significantly in United States cities. In what t areas of the United States did Hispanic Americans tend to settle? (735) [Picture] Enrichment. Celebrations such as this Puerto Rican Day parade add to the cultural diversity of the United States. What is one of the main reasons that many Puerto Ricans came to the united States? (736) [Picture] Hard Work. Hispanic Americans often toiled in grape and lettuce fields like these. What problems did Hispanic Americans face? (737) [Picture] Bilingual Education. These first graders of Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico enjoy the benefits of a bilingual classroom. What were the arguments against bilingual education? (738-41) CASE STUDY. Turning Point. The United Farm Workers and the Grape Boycott. JANUARY, 1968. MEMORANDUM. Mr. President, in September the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO -- UFWO -- began the third year of their strike and boycott against California growers of fresh table grapes. They are solemnly dedicated to non-violent, direct action as a tactic to obtain human dignity, and to guarantee by contract improved living and working conditions through collective bargaining with their em players. Senator Harrison Williams, D-N.J. chair, subcommittee on Migratory Labor. Congressional Record, October 11, 1968. The Case In January 1968, labor organizer Dolores Huerta and 60 other members of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) set off from California on a cross-country bus trip. They were headed for New York City the biggest market for West Coast grapes, to kick off UFWOC's latest campaign in its struggle for farmworkers' rights -- a boycott of California table grapes. As they crossed the United States, the farmworkers set up boycott committees in dozens of communities. At each stop, they spoke in churches, schools, and homes, urging people to support their efforts to unionize farmworkers by not buying grapes. The grape boycott grew out of earlier efforts to force grape growers to let their workers join the union. When those pickets, strikes, and negotiations failed, UFWOC turned to the boycott. The growers insisted that the boycott was illegal and that most farmworkers did not want a union, In the months and years that followed, the growers and the farmworkers would each try to win consumers to their side. The boycott would be won or lost in supermarket aisles across the country The Background California's farmworkers -- mainly Mexican Americans, but also whites, African Americans, Filipino Americans, and others -- were among the poorest of the poor. Many were migrants, following the harvest up and down California's Central Valley, picking grapes, lettuce, and other crops. Even though the entire family, including the children, worked long hours in the fields, the average yearly income for a migrant farmworker's family was well below the poverty level of $3,000. Exposed to pesticides in the fields and with little access to health care, the average migrant worker could expect to live only 49 years compared with 70 years for the average United States citizen. Farmworkers had never been able to organize an effective union. They had been excluded from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), passed in 1935, which guaranteed other workers the right to join unions and to bargain collectively with their employers. Organizing Workers. In the 1960s, however, farmworkers in California were beginning to build a union. One of the leaders of this new movement was Cesar Chavez. Chavez, a Mexican American, grew up in a migrant farmworker family in California. Like many other farmworker children, Chavez left school at 14 to work full-time in the fields. In the 1950s Chavez began working with a group that was helping Mexican American communities in California organize to fight discrimination. In 1962 Chavez set off on his own to organize agricultural workers in Delano, California, the heart of California's grape-growing empire. He called his organization the Farm Workers Association (FWA). Within 3 years the FWA had more than 1,000 members and had begun to use traditional labor tactics, including strikes, to win wage increases. In 1966 the FWA joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), another farmworker organization, to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC). The new organization was headed by Chavez and other FWA leaders along with Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, Filipino American labor organizers from AWOC. Building Support UFWOC members went from vineyard to vineyard talking to workers about the union and pressing growers to allow elections so that workers could choose a union to represent them. Once workers had a union. UFWOC argued, they could use collective bargaining to win contracts that would guarantee higher wages, better working conditions, and benefits. In 1967 UFWOC targeted the Giumarra Vineyard Corporation, the largest table-grape grower in California. Giumarra, however, refused to allow union elections, and the vineyard's workers voted to strike. Giumarra then brought in other workers in an attempt to break the strike. To force Giumarra to negotiate, UFWOC called on consumers to boycott Giumarra grapes. To evade the boycott, Giumarra began shipping its grapes under other companies' labels. UFWOC decided that the only way to make the boycott work was to expand it to all table grapes. Chavez later explained, "It was the only way we could do it. We had to take on the whole industry The grape itself had to become a label." The Opinions. The growers insisted that most farmworkers did not want a union. They claimed that California farmworkers were the highest paid of any American farmworkers and that they were already adequately protected by labor laws. The growers argued that they could not afford to pay higher wages and warned that increased farmworker wages would mean higher prices for consumers. The growers also maintained that the boycott was illegal -- prohibited by the NLRA Many conservative politicians, including California Governor Ronald Reagan and President Richard Nixon, supported the growers. Nixon said the boycott should be condemned "with the same firmness we condemn . . . any other form of lawbreaking" Many supermarkets also supported the growers, claiming to do so under the banner of consumer rights. They argued that they should continue to stock grapes so that consumers could choose for themselves whether or not to support the boycott. Chavez and UFWOC argued that the growers should at least allow the workers themselves to decide whether or not they wanted a union by letting them hold elections. UFWOC pointed out that they had always offered growers the option of holding elections before calling for strikes or boycotts. At the few vineyards where elections were held, workers overwhelmingly voted to join UFWOC. UFWOC maintained that farmworkers' wages were unfairly low. Raising these wages would mean only a slight increase in the price of grapes at the supermarket, they said, since United States Department of Labor records showed that only 2 cents to 5 cents of every dollar invested in grape production went to the workers. Furthermore. UFWOC claimed the consumer boycott was legal because the provisions of the NLRA that restricted the use of boycotts did not cover farmworkers. People across the United States and Canada supported the boycott. They set up more than 400 boycott committees and raised more than $20,000 a month for UFWOC. Boycott supporters picketed supermarkets, calling on store managers to stop selling grapes and shoppers to stop buying them. Students demanded that school cafeterias stop serving grapes. In Boston, one group dumped grapes into the harbor in a protest reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, Religious leaders, including California's Catholic bishops, defended the farmworkers' right to unionize. Politicians, too, began to stand up for the farmworkers. All the major Democratic presidential candidates and the mayors of three dozen cities, including New York, declared their support for the boycott. The Players. Cesar Chavez: Director of UFWOC. Chavez was a firm believer in nonviolence as a means of bringing about social change. To make this point and to draw public attention to the boycott, Chavez fasted for 25 days. He said, "Social justice for the dignity of man cannot be won at the price of human life." Growers: Just 30 growers grew 85 percent of California table grapes. Giumarra alone had 10 percent of the market. Many growers were suspicious of Chavez's motives. Some even called him a Communist. Consumers: The farmworkers called on shoppers to stop buying grapes, and many did. New York magazine reported that many Americans "would rather eat a cyanide pellet than a California grape these days." The Outcome. The grape boycott turned out to be one of the most successful consumer boycotts in United States history. In New York City sales of grapes declined by 90 percent during the summer of 1968. National grape sales fell by 12 percent. Prices for grapes dropped too. One grower admitted, "It is costing us more to produce and sell our grapes than we are getting paid for them. . . ." Finally, in the summer of 1970, most growers gave in and signed agreements with UFWOC. The new contracts called for pay increases, employer contributions to worker health and welfare funds, union control over hiring, and joint worker-grower committees to regulate pesticide use. The Significance: Most historians consider the grape boycott to be a landmark in twentieth-century American labor history, For the first time, United States farmworkers gained the right to unionize. The contracts negotiated by the union led to increased pay and better working conditions for many farmworkers. The grape boycott also demonstrated the power of grassroots organizing and of the boycott as a tool for social change. Other groups would later adopt these same tactics to bring about change in other areas, such as the environment. Perhaps most importantly, the grape boycott heralded the emerging political power of Hispanic Americans and others who took part in the struggle. In the years that followed. Hispanic Americans would join together in the National Council of La Raza to lobby Washington on behalf of Hispanic Americans. They would use their new-found political muscle to oppose discrimination, to fight for bilingual education and changes in immigration law, and to elect Hispanics to government posts. (739) [Picture] "Gandhi taught that the boycott is the most nearly perfect instrument of nonviolent change, allowing masses of people to participate actively in a cause. . . . Even if people cannot picket with us or contribute money or food, they can take part in our struggle by not buying certain products." (Cesar Chavez) [Picture] "Employer importation and use of strikebreakers, presence of Mexican alien greencarders, and court injunctions severely limiting the union's right to picket, left no recourse for the workers but to seek public support through a consumer boycott of grapes." (Senator Harrison Williams) [Picture] "If we, as farmers and employers, accept the union as bargaining agent, we are taking away the individual laborer's right of choice -- his right to freedom of work. This is a struggle for the right of a farmer to deal directly with his employees -- a stand for free enterprise." (Louis Rozzoni, president, California Farm Bureau) [Picture] "When we tried to fight back in the past, we found the grower was too strong, too rich, and we had to give up. Cesar Chavez has shown us we can fight back." (Farmworker) (740) [Picture] Cesar Chavez leads marches for farmworkers' rights. (741) [Picture] Boycott Button. (918-9) The New Immigration. Easing Immigration Requirements. Like women, ethnic groups continue to seek a greater voice and greater political power. The increasing ethnic diversity of the United States dates back to 1965. At that time President Johnson and Congress reopened the gates to immigrants and ended the bias against newcomers from Asian and Hispanic countries. The Immigration Act of 1965, wrote one observer, created "a stampede, almost an invasion" of people "who hungered to enter." Changes in Immigration Law. In 1990 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act increased the number of immigrants allowed into the United States. The amendments fixed the ceiling at 700,000 persons per year for the years 1992 through 1994 and at 675,000 persons per year beginning in 1995. The amendments placed no limit on the immigration of immediate family members of United States citizens. They did give preference, however, to people from nations that have sent few immigrants to the United States in recent years, including many European and African nations. The amendments also strengthened preferences for skilled workers. During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s poverty and political conflicts in several parts of the world drove people toward the United States. Devastating wars in Southeast Asia created waves of political refugees, and the United States accepted more than 500,000 Asian refugees between 1975 and 1990. Even more entered the United States from the Philippines, China, Taiwan, South Korea, India, and Pakistan. The chance for economic success that attracted legal immigrants also attracted undocumented immigrants -- people living in the United States without proper visas. In 1986 Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law offered undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States since 1981 a chance to become legal residents. More than 1 million immigrants took advantage of the law during its first year. As one Mexican-born housekeeper said: I am so happy. I prayed and prayed the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] wouldn't find me. I never knew what the next month would bring. Now I'll be able to make plans for the future. I already feel like it's my country. -- Yolanda Perezin "Out of the Shadows," Time, May 4, 1987. The Effects of Immigration. The effects of such extensive immigration concerned many Americans. Some state governors complained that immigrants were competing with unemployed United States citizens for the limited number of available jobs. In 1981, however, a congressional committee reported that immigrants "work hard, save and invest, and create more jobs than they take." Other critics, forgetting America's immigrant past, wondered how so many new people, with their different customs, foods, and languages, would fit into American culture. Despite these concerns, most observers predict that the United States will be as enriched and stimulated by its modern immigrants as it has been throughout its history: Cultural and ethnic differences conceived as problems in earlier times have usually come to be treasured for adding richness and diversity to American culture. (918) [Picture] Newcomers. New American citizens are sworn in under a tent in Washington, D.C. What did the amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act do? [Chart] Patterns of Immigration. More than 11 million immigrants entered the United States between 1965 and 1995. What immigration patterns can you identity?

 

[1998a] (1078-83) LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE GREAT SOCIETY. Like the state he hailed from, Lyndon Baines Johnson was in all things bigger than life. His gifts were greater, his flaws more glaring. Insecurity was his Achilles heel and the engine that drove him. If Kennedy had been good as president, Johnson would be "the greatest of them all, the whole bunch of them." If FDR won in a landslide in 1936, Johnson would produce an even larger margin in 1964. And to anyone who displeased him, he could be ruthlessly cruel. His scatological language and preoccupation with barnyard sex amused few and offended many He counted himself among history's great figures. A visiting head of state once asked Johnson if he was born in a log cabin. "No, no," the president responded. "You have me confused with Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger." Yet Johnson could not understand why so few people genuinely liked him; one courageous diplomat, when pressed, found the nerve to respond, "Because, Mr. President, you are not a very likable man." The Johnson treatment. Johnson was born in Stonewall, Texas, in the hill country outside Austin, where the dry climate and rough terrain only grudgingly yielded up a living. Schooled in manners by his overbearing mother and in politics by his father and his cronies, Johnson arrived in Washington in 1932 as an ardent New Dealer who loved the political game. When he became majority leader of the Senate in 1954, he cultivated an image as a moderate conservative who knew what strings to pull or levers to jog to get the job done. Johnson knew what made his colleagues run. On an important bill, he latched onto the undecided votes until they succumbed to the famous "Johnson treatment," a combination of arguments, threats, emotional or patriotic appeals, and enticing rewards. Florida Senator George Smathers likened Johnson to "a great overpowering thunderstorm that consumed you as it closed around you." Or as Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post recalled, "He never just shook hands with you. One hand was shaking your hand; the other was always someplace else, exploring you, examining you." Despite his compulsion to control every person and situation, Johnson possessed certain bedrock strengths, No one was better at hammering out compromises among competing interest groups. To those who served him well he could be loyal and generous. As president, he cared sincerely about society's underdogs. His support for civil rights, aid to the poor, education, and the welfare of the elderly came from genuine conviction. He made the betterment of such people the goal of his administration. The Origins of the Great Society. In the first months after the assassination, Johnson acted as the conservator of the Kennedy legacy "Let us continue," he told a grief-stricken nation. Liberals who had dismissed Johnson as an unprincipled power broker grudgingly came to respect the energy he showed in steering reform through Congress. The Civil Rights Act and tax cut legislation were only two of the most conspicuous pieces of Kennedy business Johnson quickly finished. Discovering poverty. Kennedy had come to recognize that prosperity alone would not ease the plight of America's poor. In 1962 Michael Harrington's book The Other America brought attention to the widespread persistence of poverty despite the nation's affluence. Harrington focused attention on the hills of Appalachia that stretched from western Pennsylvania south to Alabama. In some counties a quarter of the population survived on a diet of flour and dried-milk paste supplied by federal surplus food programs, Under Kennedy Congress had passed a new food stamp program as well as laws designed to revive the economies of poor areas, replacing urban slums with newer housing and retraining the unemployed. Robert Kennedy also headed a presidential committee to fight juvenile delinquency in urban slums by involving the poor in "community action" programs. Direct participation, they hoped, would overcome "a sense of resignation and fatalism" that sociologist Oscar Lewis had found while studying the Puerto Rican community of New York City. Economic Opportunity Act. It fell to Lyndon Johnson to fight Kennedy's "war on poverty." By August 1004 this master politician had driven through Congress the most sweeping social welfare bill since the New Deal. The Economic Opportunity Act addressed almost ever, major cause of poverty. It included training programs such as the Job Corps, granted loans to rural families and urban small businesses as well as aid to migrant workers, and launched a domestic version of the Peace Corps, known as VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). The price tag for these programs was high. Johnson committed almost $1 billion to Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy brother-in-law, who directed the new Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). When Michael Harrington complained that even $1 billion could barely scratch the surface, Shriver tartly replied, "Maybe you've spent a billion dollars before, but this is my first time around." The speed Johnson demanded led inevitably to confusion, conflict, and waste Officials at OEO often found themselves in conflict with other cabinet departments, as well as state and local officials. For example, OEO workers organized voter registration drives in order to oust corrupt city officials. Others led rent strikes to force improvements in public housing. The director of city housing in Syracuse, New York, reacted typically: "We are experiencing a class struggle in the traditional Karl Marx style in Syracuse, and I do not like it." Such battles for power and bureaucratic turf undermined federal poverty programs. The Election of 1964. In 1964, however, these controversies had not yet surfaced. Johnson's political stock remained high. To an audience at the University of Michigan in May, he announced his ambition to forge a "Great Society," in which poverty and racial injustice no longer existed. The chance to fulfill his dreams seemed open to him, for the Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their presidential candidate Ruggedly handsome, Goldwater was a true son of the West who held a narrow view of what government should do, for he was at heart a libertarian. Government, he argued, should not dispense welfare, subsidize farmers, tax incomes on a progressive basis, or aid public education. At the same time, Goldwater was so anti-Communist that he championed a large defense establishment. Goldwater's extreme views allowed Johnson to portray himself as a moderate. He chose Minnesota's liberal Senator Hubert Humphrey to give regional balance to the ticket, Only the candidacy of Governor George Wallace of Alabama marred Johnson's election prospects. In Democratic primaries, Wallace's segregationist appeal won nearly a third or more of the votes in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland -- hardly the Deep South. He was persuaded, however, to drop out of the race. The election produced the landslide Johnson craved. Carrying every state except Arizona and four in the Deep South, he received 61 percent of the vote. Democrats gained better than two-to-one majorities in the Senate and House. All the same, the election was probably more a repudiation of Goldwater than a mandate for Johnson. The president realized that he had to move rapidly to exploit the momentum of his 1964 majority. The Great Society. In January 1965 Johnson announced a legislative vision that would extend welfare programs on a scale beyond Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. By the end of 1965, 50 bills had been passed, many of them major pieces of legislation, with more on the agenda for the following year. Programs in education. As a former teacher, Johnson made education the cornerstone of his Great Society. Stronger schools would compensate the poor for their disadvantaged homes, he believed. Under the Elementary and Secondary School Act, students in low-income school districts were to receive educational equipment, money for books, and enrichment programs like "Project Headstart" for nursery-school-age children. As schools scrambled to create programs that would tap federal money; they sometimes spent more to pay middle-class educational professionals than to teach lower-income students. Medicare and Medicaid. President Johnson also pushed through the Medicare Act to provide the elderly with health insurance to cover hospital costs. Medicare targeted the elderly because studies had shown that older people used hospitals three times more than other Americans and generally had incomes only half as large. Since Medicare made no provision for the poor who were not elderly, Congress also passed a program called Medicaid. Participating states would receive matching grants from the federal government to pay the medical expenses of those on welfare or too poor to afford medical care. In many ways, Medicare and Medicaid worked. The poor and elderly received significantly more help when facing catastrophic illnesses. Over the next two decades, such aid helped to lower significantly the number of elderly poor. But as more patients used hospital services, Medicare budgets rose. In addition, nothing in the act restricted hospitals or doctors from raising their fees. The cost of the programs soared by more than 500 percent in the first 10 years. HUD. Ten days after signing the Medicare bill, Johnson signed the Omnibus Housing Act, designed to subsidize rents for poor families unable to find adequate public housing. Four days later came the Voting Rights Act. Within two weeks Congress approved the creation of a new cabinet-level Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). To head it, Johnson named Robert Weaver, a former president of the NAACP. And in the tradition of the New Deal, which had patronized the arts under the WPA, Johnson created the National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities. Colleges and their students received support for scholarships and loans, research equipment, and libraries. Immigration reform. The Great Society also reformed immigration policy. In 1924 the National Origins Act enshrined the racism of the era. It restricted immigration to 150,000 a year, almost all from northern Europe. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the national origins system. Now, 170,000 people a year would be admitted on an equitable basis. Racial provisions restricting Asian immigration were eliminated, although new limits were placed on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. The environment. Nor did Johnson, in his efforts to outdo the New Deal, slight the environment. By the mid-1960s many Americans had become increasingly concerned about acrid smog from factories and automobiles; lakes and rivers polluted by detergents, pesticides, and industrial wastes; and the disappearance of wildlife. In 1964 Congress had already passed the National Wilderness Preservation System Act to set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness as "forever wild." Lady Bird Johnson, the president's wife, campaigned to eliminate the garish billboards and junkyards along many of the nation's roads. Congress first established pollution standards for interstate waterways and a year later provided funds for sewage treatment and water purification. Legislation also tightened standards on air pollution. Environmental reform provoked opposition from groups like mining companies, cattle-grazers, and the timber industry, who wanted to continue using the public domain for their own purposes. But the public accepted the benefits of the new regulation. Among other accomplishments, by the mid-1990s smog had declined nationwide by about a third and the number of rivers and lakes suitable for swimming and fishing had doubled. For all he had done, Johnson wanted to do more. In 1966 he pushed through bills to raise the minimum wage, improve auto safety, aid mass transit, and develop "model cities." But in time opposition mounted. "Doesn't matter what kind of majority you come in with," Johnson had predicted early on. "You've got just one year when they treat You right, and before they start worrying about themselves." Yet as late as 1968 Johnson pushed major legislation through Congress to ban discrimination in housing (Fair Housing Act), to build public housing, to protect consumers from unfair credit practices (Truth-in-Lending Act), and to protect scenic rivers and expand the national park system. Evaluating the Great Society. Historians have difficulty measuring the Great Society's impact. It produced more legislation and more reforms than the New Deal. It also carried a high price tag. Economic statistics suggested that general prosperity, accelerated by the tax cut bill, did more to fight poverty than all the OEO programs. And the inevitable scandals began to surface: Job Corps retrainees burglarizing homes in their off-hours. school equipment purchased that no one knew how to use. Conservatives and radicals alike objected that the liberal welfare state was intruding into too many areas of people's lives. Ethnic groups like Italian and Polish Americans objected to what they considered favoritism accorded black Americans and Hispanics under many programs. For all that, the Great Society established the high-water mark of interventionist government, a trend that began in the progressive era and flourished during the Great Depression and in World War II. While Americans continued to pay lip service to the notion that government should remain small and interfere little in citizens' lives, no strong movement emerged to eliminate Medicare or Medicaid. Few Americans disputed the right of the government to regulate industrial pollution or to control the excesses of large corporations or powerful labor unions. Even conservatives granted the government a role in managing the economy and providing citizens with a safety net of benefits in sickness and in old age. In this sense, the tradition of liberalism prevailed, whatever Johnson's failings. (1079) [Picture] The irrepressible Lyndon Johnson had difficulty playing second fiddle to anyone, even when he was vice president. But his shrewd political instincts and folksy charm, which he knew how to deploy to good effect, often allowed him to outmaneuver his opponents. (1080) [Picture] The Job Corps was one of many strategies Johnson's Great Society used to alleviate unemployment and poverty. The idea was to train the unskilled and retrain those whose skills were no longer needed. (1082) [Chart] GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT, 1955-1990. Government has been a major growth industry since World War II. Most people think of "big government" as federal government. But even during the Great Society, far more people worked in state and local government. Despite the antigovernment rhetoric, federal employment grew substantially in the Reagan-Bush era. (1084-5) COUNTERPOINT. What triggered the upheavals of the 1960s? Historians have debated the causes of the turbulent 1960s. Some scholars have favored a generational explanation. The United States has undergone periodic cycles of reform as each new generation has come of age -- about once every 30 years. Thus the twentieth century began with progressive reformers pushing for change, only to give way to the quiet "normalcy" of the 1920s, which in turn was succeeded by the activist New Deal in the 1930s. Similarly, the "consensus" decade of the 1950s preceded liberalism's high tide in the 1960s. In that light, the Port Huron Statement can be read as a call for a new cycle of reform led by the nation's young baby boomers, who grew up during the 1950s. "There had to be a critical mass of students, and enough economic fat to cushion them," suggested one historian. Other historians are more leery of the "generational" approach. Consider some of the figures who played pivotal roles in the decade's social reforms: civil rights advocates like Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, feminist Betty Friedan, environmentalist Rachel Carson, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, drug-promoter Timothy Leary, and rock stars like Bob Dylan and the Beatles. All were born before or during World War II and were not a part of the baby boom generation. In fact, it is possible to argue that by and large baby boomers served mainly as foot soldiers in a crusade led by a generation that came of age during the consensus years of the 1950s. In the end, it may be more useful to focus on specific catalytic events that bonded different generations. Mississippi Freedom Summer was such an event. Young student volunteers underwent a kind of on-the-job boot camp, often tutored by radical “veterans” half a dozen years older, who had already come to the voting rights project. The newly arrived baby boomers gave up their suburban dress for overalls and work shirts of the sort worn by poor African American laborers in the Mississippi Delta. Workers shared in the terror of frequent harassment and even possible death. Once SNCC volunteers returned to their college campuses, they themselves became catalysts for much of the turmoil that followed. That is not to say necessarily that they "caused" the rebellion of the 1960s. But they did help shape much of the discontent stirring beneath the veneer of campus conformity. (1121-3) “SILENT” MAJORITIES AND VOCAL MINORITIES. During the 1968 campaign Richard Nixon had noticed a placard carried by a hopeful voter -- "Bring Us Together." That became his campaign theme. Yet of necessity political coalitions cannot bring everyone together. Their goal is simply to assemble a majority on Election Day Nixon recognized that in the three-way race of 1968, his 43 percent did not add up to a majority. But when Wallace's vote was added, the total came to an impressive 60 percent. If Nixon could add discontented southerners and blue-collar workers to the traditional GOP base, he could win in 1972. These groups resented much that the civil rights movement had done to overcome racial inequalities. To add to that resentment, the civil rights movement inspired other minorities to demand greater equality for themselves. Just as the civil rights campaign gave way to black power militancy, so, too, other minority activists adopted increasingly disruptive tactics to press their causes. Their new visibility was crucial to Nixon's attempt to form his own countermajority. Latino Activism. Part of the increased visibility of minorities resulted from a new wave of immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico after World War II. That wave was augmented by Cubans after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. Historical, cultural, ethnic, and geographic differences made it difficult to develop a common political agenda among Latinos. Still, some activists did seek greater unity. After World War II a weak island economy and the lure of prosperity on the mainland brought more than a million Puerto Ricans into New York City. As citizens of the United States, they could move freely to the mainland and back home again. That dual consciousness discouraged many from establishing deep roots stateside. Equally important, the newcomers were startled to discover that, whatever their status at home, on the mainland they were subject to racial discrimination and most often segregated into urban slums. In 1964 approximately half of all recent immigrants lived below the poverty level, according to the Puerto Rican Forum. Their unemployment was three times greater than for whites and 50 percent higher than for blacks. Light-skinned migrants escaped those conditions by blending into the middle class as "Latin Americans." The Puerto Rican community thereby lost some of the leadership it needed to assert its political rights. Still, a shared island orientation preserved a strong group identity. By the 1960s, the urban barrios gained greater political consciousness as groups like "Aspira" adopted the strategies of civil rights activists and organizations like the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus created links with other minority groups. The Cubans who arrived in the United States after 1959 -- some 350,000 over the course of the decade -- forged fewer ties with other Latinos. Most settled around Miami. An unusually large number came from Cuba's professional, business, and government class and were racially white and politically conservative. Mexican Americans, on the other hand, constituted the largest segment of Latinos. Until the 1940s most were farmers and farm laborers in Texas, New Mexico, and California. But during the 1950s, the process of mechanization had affected them, just as it had southern blacks. By 1969 about 85 percent of Mexican Americans had settled in cities. With urbanization came a slow improvement of the range and quality of jobs they held. A body of skilled workers, middle-class professionals, and entrepreneurs emerged. Cesar Chavez. In 1960 frustrated by years of neglect by major parties, Latino political leaders from the region formed the Mexican American Political Association. MAPA declared its intent to be "proudly Mexican American, openly political, and necessarily bipartisan." By 1964 four Mexican Americans had been elected to Congress, but the growing activism across the nation altered traditional Hispanic approaches to politics. Younger Mexican Americans began to call themselves Chicanos. In 1965 Cesar Chavez gained national attention by his efforts to organize migrant laborers into the United Farm Workers. He led them in La Huelga -- The Strike -- which they supported with a national boycott of California lettuce and grapes. By the late 1960s Mexican Americans had clearly established an ethnic consciousness and a movement. Like blacks. Chicanos saw themselves as a people whose culture had been taken from them. Their heritage had been rejected, their labor exploited, and their opportunity for advancement denied. The new ethnic militancy led to the formation, of La Raza Unida (The Race United). This third-party movement sought to gain power in communities in which Chicanos were a majority and to extract concessions from the Democrats and Republicans. The more militant "Brown Berets" adopted the paramilitary tactics and radical rhetoric of the Black Panthers. (1122) [Picture] Cesar Chavez mobilized the largely Hispanic migrant workers into the United Farm Workers Union. His demands for recognition of the union by California growers led to a bitter strike (in Spanish, huelga) in 1966. In 1969 a call for boycotts against grapes and lettuce gained Chavez and the union national attention. In July 1970, after five years of conflict, the growers agreed to recognize the union. (1199-1202) A NATION OF NATIONS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. When George Washington took the oath of office in 1789, he understood all too well the odds against the survival of the United States. History had demonstrated that few republics ever endured for long. Certainly none had endured with a population of 4 million people spread across a million square miles of territory As the United States approaches the twenty-first century, its population has risen to more than 250 million, with territory exceeding 3.6 million square miles. Such size and diversity would have astonished Washington. Given the present state of the world, in which so many nations and empires have fallen prey to ethnic, religious, and nationalist rivalries, the survival of the American republic should perhaps astonish us as well. How well it has dealt with the conflicts among its diverse citizenry has depended on the ability of different groups to participate equally and openly in the political system. The republic's most dramatic failure came with the Civil War. That breakdown occurred, it might be argued, because enslaved African Americans were forbidden any participation in the system. Indeed, they were treated as the property of other Americans who could and did exercise political power. Many pivotal moments in American history have turned on the attempts of new groups to be heard and to exercise effective political power -- whether western Populists or eastern immigrants, militant suffragettes or concerned evangelicals, civil rights workers or overtaxed middle-class voters. In a nation where more than half the population changed addresses between 1985 and 1995 and where immigration during the decade reached new highs, diversity and mobility remain hallmarks of American society. Inevitably, the debate over equal participation will continue. The New Immigration. During the 1980s, more than 7 million immigrants entered the country legally -- more than in any decade in American history except 1901-1910. Adding another 300,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants each year, the total was even greater than the 8.8 million arriving in the first decade of the century: The percentage of the population that was foreign-born jumped from a low of 4.8 in 1970 to 8.7 in 1994. Latin American immigrants accounted for as much as 40 percent of the yearly influx, as they had since the 1960s. But now, in addition to Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, the Latino population included communities of Dominicans and Central Americans. Most moved to the Sunbelt states of Florida, Texas, and California, as well as to Illinois and New York. Like immigrants at the turn of the century; established Latino families provided housing for newer immigrants, who were often single. The newcomers hoped to save money from their weekly paychecks to send to relatives in Mexico or Central America. However, in an economy increasingly divided between skilled jobs in the service sectors and low-paying unskilled jobs, Latinos lagged behind Anglos and blacks in education. Often, the lack of adequate English-language skills discouraged success, especially among older Latino immigrants. On the other hand, one study of immigrants to Southern California showed that younger Latino immigrants generally learned English (about 70 percent) and had a lower poverty rate than older immigrants. The political climate of the 1990s led many Hispanic Americans to worry about their own future, The welfare reform bill passed in 1996 prohibited legal immigrants who had not become citizens from receiving most federal welfare benefits. Furthermore, pressures to restrict immigration were rising, especially in California. In response, applications by legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens rose sharply: from about 446,000 in 1995 to 1.2 million in 1996. "I'm afraid they're trying to take everything away from us," one legal immigrant explained. "I pay my taxes all the time. I've been very straight with the government here. So why are they coming after us?" In October 1996 Latinos from all over the country gathered in Washington for the Latino and Immigrants' Rights March, to protest welfare and immigration legislation. Asian Americans. After the Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the national origins quota system, immigration from Asia increased heavily By 1990 about 7.3 million Asian Americans lived in the United States. Like earlier immigrants from Europe, those from the Pacific rim came in waves. Some, like the Vietnamese "boat people" of the late 1970s, were driven from their homes by economic or political turmoil. Others were drawn to reunite families or realize greater opportunities in the Western Hemisphere. "My brother-in-law left his wife in Taiwan and came here as a student to get a Ph.D. in engineering," explained Subi Lin Felipe. "After he received his degree, he got a job in San Jose. Then he brought in a sister and his wife, who brought over one of her brothers and me. And my brother's wife then came." Professional Asian Indians emigrated in search of better jobs. Doctors and nurses constituted a large percentage of the early Korean immigrants. But letters home soon attracted a more diverse population, which concentrated in small businesses. By the mid-1980s Indians owned more than 50 percent of the nonchain motels in the United States, and Koreans often replaced Jews and Italians as owners of small inner-city delicatessens and produce stores. The presence of other Asian Americans and an international atmosphere drew many Asians to New York City, but climate made Hawaii and California particularly popular destinations. In 1977 alone some 40,000 Filipinos migrated to Honolulu, many eager to escape from the corrupt regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Of more than 800,000 Korean Americans, about a quarter lived around Los Angeles in 1990. So, too, the 1.4 million Japanese Americans settled primarily in California and Hawaii. By contrast, the federal government attempted to disperse nearly half a million Vietnamese (as well as Cambodians and Laotians) who fled after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia. Even successful new immigrants encountered subtle forms of discrimination. "Many Asian Americans hoping to climb the corporate ladder face an arduous ascent," reported the Wall Street Journal. "Ironically the same companies that pursue them for technical jobs often shun them when filling managerial and executive positions." Hard work has overcome some, though by no means all, of these prejudices. Many immigrant families have brought business and educational experience to America, as well as a powerful work ethic. Japanese American wages are 10 percent above white wages and 50 percent higher than African American and Hispanic wages. Such success led the media to stereotype Asians as a "model minority," yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino-American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise to scattered acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. (1200) [Picture] PROJECTED POPULATION SHIFTS: 1980-2050. Census figures project an increasing ethnic and racial diversity for the United States. White population is expected to drop from 80 percent in 1980 to about 53 percent in 2050, with the nation's Hispanic population rising most sharply Which graph presents the data most effectively? (1201) [Picture] The willingness of immigrants to work hard for low wages contributed to the prosperity of the 1990s. The irony of this picture should not be lost in a nation where patriotic rhetoric is routinely used to support restrictions on immigrants, such as California's Proposition 187, passed in 1996.

 

[1998b] −

 

[1998c] (1007-10) The Great Society in Action. Lyndon Johnson had an expansive vision of the possibilities of reform. Using his considerable political skills, he succeeded in pushing through Congress the most extensive reform program in American history. "Is a new world coming?" the president asked. "We welcome it, and we will bend it to the hopes of man." Johnson began to develop the support he needed the day he took office. In his first public address, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide, he sought to dispel the image of impostor as he embraced Kennedy's liberal program. He began, in a measured tone, with the words, "All I have, I would have given gladly not to be standing here today." He asked members of Congress to work with him, and he underscored the theme "Let us continue" throughout his speech. As a first step, Johnson resolved to secure the measures Kennedy had been unable to extract from Congress. He took the bills to reduce taxes and ensure civil rights as his first and most pressing priorities, but he was interested too in aiding public education, providing medical care for the aged, and eliminating poverty. By the spring of 1964, the outlines of his own expansive vision were taking shape, and he had begun to use the phrase "Great Society" to describe his reform program. Successful even before the election of 1964, his landslide victory over conservative Republican challenger Barry Goldwater of Arizona validated his approach. LBJ received 61 percent of the popular vote and an electoral tally of 486 to 52 and gained Democratic congressional majorities of 68-32 in the Senate and 295-140 in the House. Goldwater's candidacy reflected the growing power of conservatism within the Republican party and the ability of a grass-roots group to organize a successful campaign in party primaries. It also drove moderate Republicans to vote for the Democratic party this time and gave Johnson a far more impressive mandate than Kennedy had ever enjoyed. Johnson knew how to make things happen in the world of politics. He appointed task forces that included legislators to study problems and suggest solutions, worked with them to draft bills, and maintained close contact with congressional leaders through a sophisticated liaison staff. Not since the FDR years had there been such a coordinated effort. Civil rights reform was LBJ's first legislative priority and an integral part of the Great Society program (see Chapter 29). But other measures were equally important in extending the boundaries of government action and bolstering the welfare state. Following Kennedy's lead, Johnson pressed for a tax cut to stimulate the economy. He accepted the Keynesian theory that deficits, properly managed, could promote prosperity. To gain conservative support, he agreed to hold down spending. On one occasion, he applied such pressure that the author of an amendment to provide a tax credit for families with children in college ended up voting against his own proposal. Soon the tax bill passed. With the tax cut in hand, the president pressed for the poverty program that Kennedy had begun to plan. Such an effort was bold and unprecedented. In the Progressive era, at the turn of the century, some legislation had attempted to alleviate conditions associated with poverty. During the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt had proposed programs to assist the one-third of a nation that could not help itself. Now Johnson took a step that no president had taken before; in his 1964 State of the Union message, he declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America." The center of this utopian effort to eradicate poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. It created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to provide education and training through programs such as the Job Corps for unskilled young people trapped in the poverty cycle. VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), patterned after the Peace Corps, offered assistance to the poor at home, while Head Start tried to give disadvantaged children a chance to succeed in school. Assorted community action programs gave the poor themselves a voice in improving housing, health, and education in their own neighborhoods. Aware of the escalating costs of medical care, Johnson also proposed a medical assistance plan. Both Truman and Kennedy had supported such an initiative but had failed to win congressional approval. Johnson succeeded. To head off conservative attacks, the administration tied the Medicare measure to the social security system and limited the program to the elderly. Medicaid met the needs of those on welfare and certain other groups who could not afford private insurance. The Medicare-Medicaid program was the most important extension of federally directed social benefits since the Social Security Act of 1935. By 1976 the two programs were paying for the medical costs of 20 percent of the American people. Johnson was similarly successful in his effort to provide aid for elementary and secondary schools. Kennedy had met defeat when Catholics had insisted on assistance to parochial schools. Johnson, a Protestant, was able to deal with the ticklish religious question without charges of favoritism. His legislation allocated education money to the states based on the number of children from low-income families. Those funds would then be distributed to assist deprived children in public as well as private schools. In LBJ's expansive vision, the federal government would ensure that everyone shared in the promise of American life. As a result of his prodding ding, Congress passed a new housing act to give rent supplements to the poor and created a Cabinet Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal government provided new forms of aid, such as legal assistance for those who could not afford to pay for it themselves. It moved further in funding higher education, including colleges and universities in its financial grants. Congress also provided artists and scholars with assistance through the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, created in 1965. Not since the Works Progress Administration in the New Deal had such groups been granted government aid. Johnson's administration also provided much needed immigration reform. It replaced the restrictive immigration policy, set in place in 1924 (which had limited immigration severely and favored northern Europeans), with a measure that vastly increased the ceiling on immigration and opened the door to immigrants from Asia and Latin America. The Immigration Act of 1965 also exempted from the quotas family members of U.S. citizens and political refugees, including at first Cuban and later Indochinese immigrants. By the late 1960s, some 350,000 immigrants were entering the United States annually; in the 1970s, the number exceeded 400,000 a year. This new stream of immigration-largely from Asia and Latin America-created a population more diverse than it had been since the early decades of the twentieth century. The consequences of this new diversity were far-ranging and affected many areas of American life, from politics, radio programming, and consumer products to street signs and public school classrooms. The Great Society also reflected the stirring of the environmental movement. In 1962, naturalist Rachel Carson alerted the public to the dangers of pesticide poisoning and environmental pollution in her book Silent Spring (see Chapter 29). Though the chemical industry fought Carson and argued that she left readers "unable to sort fact from fancy," a special presidential advisory committee warned against widespread pesticide use. Johnson recognized the need to go even further. He was determined to deal with caustic fumes in the air, lethal sludge in rivers and streams, and the steady disappearance of wildlife. The National Wilderness Preservation Act of 1964 set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness, while Lady Bird Johnson, the president's wife, led a beautification campaign to eliminate unsightly billboards and junkyards along the nation's highways, and Congress passed other measures to limit air and water pollution. (1010) [Picture] Immigration from Asia and Latin America brought greater diversity to the United States. Here a Cuban refugee waits to enter the United States at the immigration processing facility at the Miami, Florida, airport in 1974. (Michael Heron/Woodfin Camp & Associates) (1091-7) Demographic and Regional Change. As the American people dealt with the swings of the economy, demographic patterns changed in significant ways. According to the 1990 census, the population of the United States increased from 228 million to approximately 250 million between 1980 and 1990. The rise of 9.6 percent in the 1980s, down from 11.5 percent in the 1970s, was one of the lowest rates of growth in American history. At the same time, the complexion of the country changed. As a result of increased immigration and minority birthrates significantly higher than the rate for whites, an all-time high of 25 percent of the population in 1992 was black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American. The population shifted as well. Suburban growth continued, leaving ever larger minority populations in the cities. Meanwhile, in the West a pattern of urban and regional development underway since World War II continued and provided a model for the rest of the country. Urban and Suburban Shifts. American cities increasingly filled with members of the nation's minorities. White families continued to leave for the steadily growing suburbs, which by 1990 contained almost half the population, more than ever before. In 15 of the nation's 28 largest cities-New York, Chicago, and Houston among them-minorities made up at least half the population. Minority representation varied by urban region. In Detroit, Washington, New Orleans, and Chicago, blacks were the largest minority; in Phoenix, El Paso, San Antonio, and Los Angeles, Hispanics held that position; in San Francisco, Asians outnumbered other groups. The cities grew steadily poorer. In Houston, for example, although increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians lived in the suburbs, most of the poorest minority families concentrated in the city itself. As had been the case since World War II, commuters from the suburbs took the better-paying jobs, while people living in the cities held lower-paying positions. Mario Perez, a 27-year-old Hispanic immigrant, noted in 1991 that the increase in the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the nine years since he arrived in Houston made it easier to find a job but harder to secure well-paying work. Perez himself worked seven days a week sweeping streets downtown and tending plants for $5.50 an hour. Western Development. At the same time, the population was moving west. In 1900, the region consisting of the Mountain and Pacific states contained about 5 percent of the nation's population. By 1990 that figure stood at 21 percent. The population of the nation as a whole rose by less than 10 percent in the 1980s, but the population of the West increased by 22 percent. That population was becoming much more urbanized. In the 50 years following 1940, the six largest metropolitan areas in the West grew by 380 percent; the six largest in the East expanded by only 64 percent. While the West remained the nation's emptiest region, it was nonetheless the most urbanized. By 1990, 80 percent of all Westerners lived in metropolitan areas (compared to 76 percent of the people in the rest of the United States). Writer Wallace Stegner observed, the West "is urban; it's an oasis civilization." With its urban development, the West became a pacesetter for the rest of the country. If the New England village had been a representative symbol of the 18th century, and the midwestern town a similar symbol of the 19th century, now in the late twentieth century the western metropolis was singled out for special symbolic attention. The Stanford Industrial Park, established in California in 1951, focused on research-oriented manufacturing and became a model for other high-tech centers. Western cities were often unbounded, open-ended, sprawling in all directions. They seemed capable of expanding indefinitely. Horizontal, low-slung homes made western neighborhoods look very different from those in the Northeast. Tourism became a dynamic industry, with the West in the forefront. The motel, a western invention, made automobile travel easier. Western cities were among the most popular tourist destinations, catering to visitors from both the Pacific Basin and the rest of the world. California was the nation's fastest growing state, with the population increasing in the 1980s by nearly 26 percent. Responding to a question about California's impact on the rest of the country, Wallace Stegner said, "We are the national culture, at its most energetic end." Within the state, Los Angeles became the most dynamic example of American vitality and creativity. The motion picture industry exerted a worldwide impact. The city became a capital of consumption. Novelist Thomas Pynchon caught the energy of Los Angeles in his 1990 novel Vineland. In the following passage, he described the city as seen at night from the freeway. There were: screaming black motorcades that could have carried any of several office seekers, cruisers heading for treed and more gently roaring boulevards, huge double and triple trailer rigs that loved to find Volkswagens laboring up grades and go sashaying around them gracefully and at gnat's-ass tolerances, plus flirters, deserters, wimps and pimps, speeding like bullets, grinning like chimps, above the heads of the TV watchers, lovers under the overpasses, movies at the mall letting out, bright gas-station oases in the pure fluorescent spill,. . . the adobe air, the smell of distant fireworks, the spilled, the broken world. The New Pilgrims. The second great wave of immigrants in the twentieth century brought about another demographic shift. The number of immigrants has risen dramatically in the past 30 years. In the 1970s, the number averaged 450,000 a year, far higher than in the decade before. In the 1980s, it averaged 730,000. In 1990, as the chart here shows, more people arrived than in any single year in this century. Altogether, a fifth of the population growth in the 1980s stemmed from immigration. The influx was spurred by the Immigration Act of 1965 (see Chapter 28). Part of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program, this act authorized the acceptance of immigrants impartially from all parts of the world. The result in the 1980s, as in the 1970s, was far greater numbers of Asians and Latin Americans. In this latter decade, 37 percent came from Asia, and 47 percent came from Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Always a nation of immigrants, the United States was once again receiving new, and very different, ethnic infusions. As has long been true, the desire for jobs fostered immigration. But foreign crises also fueled the influx. After 1975, the United States accepted more than a half million Vietnamese refugees, uprooted by the war that had finally come to an end. In 1980, more than 160,000 arrived. That same year, the nation admitted 125,000 Cubans and Haitians to southern Florida, as they fled persecution in their own lands. Millions more arrived illegally. As the populations of Latin American nations soared and as economic conditions deteriorated, more and more people looked to the United States for relief. In the mid-1970s, Leonard Chapman, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, estimated that there might be 12 million foreigners in the nation illegally. While official estimates were lower, Attorney General William French Smith declared in 1983, "Simply put, we've lost control of our own borders." Several legislative measures sought to rationalize the immigration process. In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, aimed at curbing illegal immigration while offering amnesty to aliens who had lived in the United States since 1982. As the mid-1988 deadline approached, 50,000 per week applied to stay. The Immigration Act of 1990 revised the level and preference system for admission of immigrants to the United States and refined administrative procedures for naturalization. Raising immigration quotas by 40 percent per year, the act cut back on restrictions based on ideology or sexual orientation that had been used to deny entry in the past. It also set aside a substantial number of visas for large investors and provided for swift deportation of aliens who committed crimes. "This act recognizes the fundamental importance and historic contributions of immigrants to our country," President Bush said in signing the measure. The more than 10 million immigrants who arrived between 1976 and 1990 belonged to two very different economic classes. In the 1970s and early 1980s, as the chart here shows, about 25 percent were professionals, and more than 40 percent were white-collar employees. Many of these immigrants brought skills, funds, and family support networks that could assist in business ventures in America. At the same time, the United States absorbed a large group of less skilled workers. In this decade and a half, about 46 percent of all employed immigrants were laborers, service sector workers, and semiskilled employees. The now of this group increased in the 1980s and 1990s. This new wave of immigration changed the complexion of the United States, just as it had in decades past. Once again, as had been the case before 1924, the nation was a refuge for people from very different parts of the world. The Sun Belt in particular, from Florida to California, felt the impact of the new Asians and Hispanics. In Los Angeles, Samoans, Taiwanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and Cambodians competed for jobs and apartments with Mexicans, African Americans, and Anglos, just as newcomers from different countries had contended with one another in New York City a century before. Throughout the country, in Miami, in Houston, in Brooklyn, the languages heard in the schools and on the streets changed. These groups left a new imprint on the United States. As African Americans and Hispanics became major figures in the urban equation, the number of Asians in the country doubled in the 1980s, and they made up nearly half of all immigrants by the end of the decade. Immigrants from India, the Philippines, China, and Korea often brought skills and professional expertise. Southeast Asian refugees were frequently less well off when they arrived. Many of these unskilled immigrants provided the labor for the rapidly expanding West Coast electronics industry. The Asian immigrants, following a pattern established decades before, sought better and better opportunities for their children, and in California they became the largest group of entering students at a number of college campuses. Sometimes the media highlighted the successes of Asian immigrants, particularly in contrast to the problems encountered by other groups. In 1986, U.S. News & World Report noted Asian American advances in a cover story, while Newsweek ran a lead article on "Asian Americans: A 'Model Minority,'" and Fortune called them "America's Super Minority." Asian Americans were proud of the exposure but pointed out that many members of the working class still struggled for a foothold. In the Chinatowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles, 40 to 50 percent of the workers were employed in the ill-paid service sector or garment industry; in New York's Chinatown the figure was close to 70 percent. Chinese immigrant women, in particular, often had little choice but to work as seamstresses, just as women from other nationalities had earlier in the century. Each group, each family, had its own story. Nguyen Ninh and Nguyen Viet, two brothers who remained in Vietnam after the victory of the North Vietnamese in 1975, were among the many who finally fled their war-torn country by boat. The boat sank, but they were rescued, only to be shuttled to Kuwait, then Greece, and finally to the United States, where another brother had arrived a few years before. Though they spoke no English, they immediately began to look for work. One became a carpenter's helper; the other, an attendant at a valet parking firm. With the money they earned, they helped other members of their family emigrate. Slowly they learned English, obtained better jobs, and saved enough money to purchase a home. Professionals often had a hard time. Frequently, training in their country of birth had little bearing in the United States. One Vietnamese physician who resettled in Oklahoma noted, "When I come here, I am told that I must be a beginner again and serve like an apprentice for two years. I have no choice, so I will do it, but I have been wronged to be asked to do this." In the 1970s and 1980s, America's efforts to help immigrants coincided with still-intact social assistance programs of the liberal welfare state. Affirmative action programs, in particular, provided aid for both legal and illegal arrivals. Bilingual classrooms became more common, and multiculturalism, stressing the different values that made up a larger American identity, became a dominant theme in many schools. Yet those efforts brought increasing resistance from Americans already here, particularly as the structure of the economy changed and good jobs became more scarce. That opposition, which echoed anti-immigrant feeling of the past, included strenuous efforts to restrict illegal immigration and a move to lower annual quotas for new arrivals. Resistance came to a head in California, in the midterm elections of 1994. Proposition 187 required teachers and clinic doctors to deny assistance to illegal aliens and to report them to police. While its constitutionality is still being weighed by the courts, it provided a model for other states to follow, and caught the attention of national legislators as the Republicans took control. (1093) [Chart: Population Shifts, 1980-1990] This map shows the population shifts between 1980 and 1990. Note the substantial increases in western regions of the country and the much smaller increases along the Atlantic seaboard. (1094) [Chart: Immigration, 1970-1990] This chart shows the significant rise in immigration after 1970, as the tightly restricted quotas in force from the 1920s to 1965 were liberalized. Note the most rapid rise in the 1980s, as Asians and Latin Americans have come in ever larger numbers. Source: Data from Statistical Abstract of the United States. (1095) [Chart: Immigration by Occupational Group, 1976-1990] This graph shows the large fraction of immigrants in the past two decades who have been white-collar and professional workers. Source: 1990 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. (1095) [Picture] Cuban "boat people," classified as refugees from Fidel Castro's Communist regime, were permitted to register for resident status. They were among the many immigrants from Asia and Latin America who were permitted to enter the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. (Reuters/Bettmann) (1096) [Picture] Asian workers often found themselves trapped in low-paying jobs with little hope of advancement. Here women work at sewing machines in a cluttered factory in Queens, New York in 1993, in conditions similar to those earlier in the 20th century. (Donna Binder/ Impact Visuals) (1097) [Chart: Immigration: Volume and Sources, 1945-1990] This map shows the shifting patterns of American immigration in the postwar years. In particular, note the large increase in Asian and Latin American immigration in the past several decades.

 

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[1999b] (856-9) LYNDON JOHNSON AND THE GREAT SOCIETY. Like the state he hailed from, Lyndon Baines Johnson was in all things bigger than life. His gifts were greater, his flaws more glaring. Insecurity was his Achilles heel and the engine that drove him. If Kennedy had been good as president, Johnson would be "the greatest of them all, the whole bunch of them." His folksy style often verged on the offensive: after a 1965 operation, he shocked a national audience by lifting his shirt to expose a jagged scar and corpulent belly. The president was sometimes driven to ask why so few people genuinely liked him; once a courageous diplomat actually answered: "Because, Mr. President, you are not a very likable man." The Johnson treatment. Johnson was born in the hill country outside Austin, Texas, where the dry, rough terrain only grudgingly yielded up a living. He arrived in Washington in 1932 as an ardent New Dealer who loved the political game. As majority leader of the Senate after 1954, Johnson was regarded as a moderate conservative who knew what strings to pull to get the job done. On an important bill, he latched onto the undecided votes until they succumbed to the famous "Johnson treatment," a combination of arguments, threats, rewards, and patriotic appeals. (Once, before meeting with Johnson, President Eisenhower pleaded with his attorney general, William Rogers, to run interference: "Bill, if Lyndon tries to get around my desk, block him off. I can't stand it when he grabs me by the lapel.") Despite his compulsion to control every person and situation, Johnson was best at hammering out compromises among competing interest groups. To those who served him well he could be loyal and generous. And as president, he cared sincerely about society's underdogs. His support for civil rights, aid to the poor, education, and the welfare of the elderly came from genuine conviction. He made the betterment of such people the goal of his administration. The Origins of the Great Society. In the first months after the assassination, Johnson acted as the conservator of the Kennedy legacy. "Let us continue," he told a grief-stricken nation. Liberals who had dismissed Johnson as an unprincipled power broker came to respect the energy he showed in quickly steering Kennedy's Civil Rights Act and tax cut legislation through Congress. Kennedy had come to believe that prosperity alone would not ease the plight of America's poor. In 1962 Michael Harrington's book The Other America Michael Harrington's The Other America. brought attention to the persistence of poverty despite the nation's affluence. Harrington focused attention on the hills of Appalachia that stretched from western Pennsylvania south to Alabama. In some counties a quarter of the population survived on a diet of flour and dried-milk paste supplied by federal surplus food programs, Under Kennedy, Congress had passed a new food stamp program as well as laws designed to revive the economies of poor areas, Robert Kennedy also headed a presidential committee to fight juvenile delinquency in urban slums by involving the poor in "community action programs." Economic Opportunity Act. It fell to Lyndon Johnson to fight Kennedy's "war on poverty By August." 1964 this master politician had driven through Congress the most sweeping social welfare bill since the New Deal. The Economic Opportunity Act addressed almost every major cause of poverty. It included training programs such as the Job Corps, which brought poor and unemployed recruits to rural or urban camps to learn new job skills. It granted loans to rural families and urban small businesses as well as aid to migrant workers. The price tag for these programs was high -- almost $1 billion to fund the new Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). The speed Johnson demanded led inevitably to confusion, conflict, and waste. Officials at OEO often found themselves in conflict with other cabinet departments, as well as state and local officials. For example, OEO workers organized voter registration drives in order to oust corrupt city officials. Others led rent strikes to force improvements in public housing. The director of city housing in Syracuse New York reacted typically: "We are experiencing a class struggle in the traditional Karl Marx style in Syracuse, and I do not like it." Such battles for bureaucratic turf undermined federal poverty programs. The Election of 1964. In 1964, however, these long-term flaws were not yet evident. Johnson's political stock remained high as he announced his ambition to forge a "Great Society, " in which poverty and racial injustice no longer existed. The chance to fulfill his dreams seemed open to him, for the Republicans nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona as their presidential candidate. Though ruggedly handsome and refreshingly candid, Goldwater believed that government should not dispense welfare, subsidize farmers, or aid public education. Few Americans subscribed to such conservative views. Many worried, too, at Goldwater's willingness to give military commanders the power to launch tactical nuclear weapons without presidential authority. Thus the election produced the landslide Johnson craved. Carrying every state except Arizona and four in the Deep South, he received 61 percent of the vote. Democrats gained better than two-to-one majorities in the Senate and House. The president moved rapidly to exploit the momentum of his 1964 majority. The Great Society. In January 1965 Johnson announced a legislative vision that would extend welfare programs on a scale beyond even Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. By the end of 1965, some 50 bills had been passed, many of them major pieces of legislation. Programs in education. As a former teacher, Johnson made education the cornerstone of his program. Stronger schools would compensate the poor for their disadvantaged homes, he believed, Under the Elementary and Secondary School Act students in low-income school districts were to receive educational equipment, money for books, and enrichment programs like Project Headstart for nursery-age children. As schools scrambled to create programs that would tap federal money, they sometimes spent more to pay middle-class educational professionals than to teach lower-income students. Medicare and Medicaid. Johnson also pushed through the Medicare Act, to provide the elderly with health insurance to cover their hospital costs. Studies had shown that older people used hospitals three times more than other Americans and generally had incomes only half as large. Since Medicare made no provision for the poor who were not elderly; Congress also passed a program called Medicaid. Participating states would receive matching grants from the federal government to pay the medical expenses of those on welfare or those too poor to afford medical care. In many ways, Medicare and Medicaid worked. Over the next two decades, their benefits helped to lower significantly the number of elderly poor. But as more patients used hospital services, Medicare budgets rose. In addition, nothing in the act restricted hospitals or doctors from raising their fees or charging for care they had once given for free. The cost of the programs soared by more than 500 percent in the first 10 years. Immigration. The Great Society also reformed immigration policy, striking down a discriminatory quota system based on national origins that had been in effect since 1924 (page 675). Only about 150,000 immigrants a year had been allowed to enter the United States, almost all from northern Europe. The Immigration Act of 1965 abolished the national origins system. Now, 170,000 people a year would be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. Racial provisions restricting Asian immigration were eliminated, although new limits were placed on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. The environment. Nor did Johnson, in his efforts to outdo the New Deal, slight the environment. By the mid-1960s many Americans had become increasingly concerned about smog from factories and automobiles; lakes and rivers polluted by detergents, pesticides, and industrial wastes; and the disappearance of wildlife. In 1964 Congress had already passed the National Wilderness Preservation System Act to set aside 9.1 million acres of wilderness as "forever wild." Congress first established pollution standards for interstate waterways and a year later provided funds for sewage treatment and water purification. Legislation also tightened standards on air pollution. Despite opposition from entrenched interests, the new standards did result in a gradual improvement in water and air quality in many areas. For all he had done, Johnson wanted more. In 1966 he pushed through bills to raise the minimum wage, improve auto safety, aid mass transit, and develop "model cities." But in time opposition mounted. "Doesn't matter what kind of majority you come in with," Johnson had predicted early on. "You've got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves." Even so, Johnson pushed major legislation through Congress as late as 1968. Evaluating the Great Society. Historians have difficulty measuring the Great Society's impact. It produced more legislation and more reforms than the New Deal. It also carried a higher price tag than anyone predicted. Economic statistics suggested that general prosperity, boosted by the tax cut bill, did more to fight poverty than all the OEO programs. Conservatives and radicals alike objected that the liberal welfare state was intruding into too many areas of people's lives. For all that, the Great Society proved to be the high-water mark of a trend toward activist government that had grown steadily since the progressive era and the Great Depression. While Americans continued to pay lip service to the notion that government should remain small and interfere little in citizens' lives, no strong movement emerged to eliminate Medicare or Medicaid. Few Americans disputed the right of the government to regulate industrial pollution or to control the excesses of large corporations or powerful labor unions. In this sense, the tradition of liberalism prevailed, whatever Johnson's failings. (857) [Picture] Lyndon Johnson had difficulty playing second fiddle to anyone, even as vice president under John F. Kennedy (right). (860-1) COUNTERPOINT. What Triggered the Upheavals of the 1960s? Historians have debated the causes of the turbulent 1960s. Some scholars have favored a generational explanation. The United States has undergone periodic cycles of reform as each new generation has come of age -- about once every 30 years. Thus the twentieth century began with progressive reformers pushing for change, only to give way to the "normalcy" of the 1920s, which in turn was succeeded by the activist New Deal. Similarly, the "consensus" decade of the 1950s preceded liberalism's high tide in the 1960s. In that light, the Port Huron Statement can be read as a call for new cycle of reform led by the nation's baby boomers, who grew up during the 1950s. "There had to be a critical mass of students, and enough economic fat to cushion them," suggested one historian. Other historians are more leery of the "generational" approach. Consider some of the figures who played pivotal roles in the decade's social reforms: civil rights advocates like Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, feminist Betty Friedan, environmentalist Rachel Carson, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, drug promoter Timothy Leary, and rock stars like Bob Dylan and the Beatles. All were born before or during World War II and were not a part of the baby boom generation. In fact, it is possible to argue that by and large baby boomers served mainly as foot soldiers in a crusade led by a generation that came of age during the consensus years of the 1950s. In the end, it may be more useful to focus on specific catalytic events that bonded different generations. Mississippi Freedom Summer was such an event. Young student volunteers gave up their surburban dress for overalls and work shirts of the sort worn by poor African American laborers in the Mississippi Delta. Volunteers and local folks shared in the terror of frequent harassment and even possible death. Once SNCC volunteers returned to their college campuses, they themselves became catalysts for much of the turmoil that followed That is not to say necessarily that they "caused" the rebellion of the 1960s. But they did help shape much of the discontent stirring beneath the veneer of campus conformity. (888-91) “SILENT” MAJORITIES AND VOCAL MINORITIES. During the 1968 campaign Richard Nixon had noticed a placard carried by a hopeful voter: "Bring Us Together." That became his campaign theme. Yet of necessity political coalitions cannot bring everyone together. Their goal is simply to assemble a majority on Election Day. Nixon recognized quite well that in the three-way race of 1968, his 43 percent did not add up to a majority. But when Wallace's vote was added, the total came to an impressive 60 percent. If Nixon could add discontented southerners and blue-collar workers to the traditional GOP base, he could win again in 1972. These groups resented much that the civil rights movement had done to overcome racial inequalities. To add to that resentment, the civil rights movement inspired other minorities to demand greater equality for themselves. Just as the civil rights campaign gave way to black power militancy, so too other minority activists adopted increasingly disruptive tactics to press their causes. Their new, more assertive visibility was crucial to Nixon's attempt to form his own countermajority. Hispanic Activism. Part of that increased visibility resulted from a new wave of immigration from Mexico and Puerto Rico after World War II and, in the case of Cubans, after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power. Historical, cultural, ethnic, and geographic differences among the three major Hispanic groups made it difficult to develop a common political agenda. Still, some activists did seek greater Hispanic unity. Puerto Rican migration. After World War II a weak island economy and the lure of prosperity on the mainland brought more than a million Puerto Ricans into New York City. As citizens of the United States, they could move freely to the mainland and back home again. That dual consciousness discouraged many from establishing deep roots stateside. Equally important, the newcomers were startled to discover that, whatever their status at home, on the mainland they were subject to racial discrimination and most often segregated into urban slums. In 1964 approximately half of all recent immigrants lived below the poverty level, according to the Puerto Rican Forum. Light-skinned migrants escaped those conditions by blending into the middle class as "Latin Americans." The Puerto Rican community thereby lost some of the leadership it needed to assert its political rights. Still, during the 1960s, the urban barrios gained greater political consciousness as groups like Aspira adopted the strategies of civil rights activists and organizations like the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus created links with other minority groups. The Cubans who arrived in the United States after 1959 -- some 350,000 over the course of the decade -- forged fewer ties with other Hispanics. Most settled around Miami. An unusually large number came from Cuba's professional, business, and government class and were racially white and politically conservative. Mexican Americans, on the other hand, constituted the largest segment of the Hispanic population. Until the 1940s most were farmers and farm laborers in Texas, New Mexico, and California. But during the 1950s, the process of mechanization had affected them, just as it had black southerners. By 1969 about 85 percent of Mexican Americans had settled in cities. With urbanization came a slow improvement of the range and quality of jobs they held. A body of skilled workers, middle-class professionals, and entrepreneurs emerged. Cesar Chavez. In 1960, frustrated by years of neglect by major parties, Hispanic political leaders from the region formed the Mexican American Political Association. MAPA declared its intent to be "proudly Mexican American, openly political, and necessarily bipartisan." By 1964 four Mexican Americans had been elected to Congress, but the growing activism across the nation altered traditional Hispanic approaches to politics. Younger Mexican Americans began to call themselves Chicanos. In 1965 Cesar Chavez gained national attention by his efforts to organize migrant laborers into the United Farm Workers. He led them in La Huelga -- The Strike -- which they supported with a national boycott of California lettuce and grapes. By the late 1960s Mexican Americans had clearly established greater ethnic consciousness. Like African Americans, Chicanos saw themselves as a people whose culture had been taken from them. Their heritage had been rejected, their labor exploited, and their opportunity for advancement denied. The new ethnic militancy led to the formation of La Raza Unida (The Race United). This third-party movement sought to gain power in communities in which Mexican Americans were a majority and to extract concessions from the Democrats and Republicans. The more militant “Brown Berets” adopted the paramilitary tactics and radical rhetoric of the Black Panthers. (889) [Picture] Cesar Chavez (center left) mobilized the largely Hispanic migrant workers into the United Farm Workers Union. In 1969 a call for boycotts against grapes and lettuce gained Chavez and the union national attention. (950-3) A NATION OF NATIONS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. When George Washington took the oath of office in 1789, he understood all too well the odds against the survival of the United States. History offered no example of such a large and diverse republic ever enduring for long. As the United States approaches the twenty-first century, its population and territory have grown even larger and ever more diverse. More than 250 million inhabit a nation exceeding 3.6 million square miles. Such size and diversity would have astonished Washington. Given the present state of the world, in which ethnic, religious, and nationalist rivalries threaten so many nations, the survival of the American republic should perhaps astonish us as well. How well the republic has dealt with the conflicts among its diverse citizenry has depended on the ability of different groups to participate equally and openly in the political system. The republic's most dramatic failure came with the Civil War. That breakdown occurred, it might be argued, because enslaved African Americans were forbidden any participation in the system -- indeed, were treated as the property of other Americans who could and did exercise political power. Many pivotal moments in American history have turned on the attempts of groups to exercise effective political power -- whether western Populists or eastern immigrants, militant suffragettes or concerned evangelicals. In a nation where half the people have moved over the past decade and immigration has reached new highs, diversity and mobility define the social fabric. As a consequence, the debate over equal participation will continue. The New Immigration. During the 1980s, more than 7 million immigrants entered the country legally -- more than in any decade in American history except 1901-1910. Adding another 300,000 to 500,000 illegal immigrants each year, the total was even greater than the 8.8 million arriving in the first decade of the century. Latin immigrants. Latin American immigrants accounted for as much as 40 percent of the yearly influx, as they had since the 1960s. But in addition to Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans, the Latino population in the 1980s included communities of Dominicans and Central Americans. Like immigrants at the turn of the century, established Hispanic families provided housing for newer immigrants, who were often single. The newcomers hoped to save money from their weekly paychecks to send to relatives in Mexico or Central America. However, in an economy increasingly divided between skilled jobs in the service sectors and low-paying unskilled jobs, Latinos lagged behind Anglos and black Americans in education. Often, the lack of adequate English-language skill discouraged success. The political climate of the 1990s alarmed many Latinos. The welfare reform bill passed in 1996 prohibited legal immigrants who had not become citizens from receiving most federal welfare benefits. Furthermore, pressures to restrict immigration were rising, especially in California. In response, applications by legal immigrants to become U.S. citizens rose sharply: from almost 446,000 in 1995 to 1.2 million in 1996. Asian Americans. Once the Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the national origins quota system, immigration from Asia increased heavily. By 1990 about 7.3 million Asian Americans lived in the United States. Like earlier immigrants from Europe, those from the Pacific rim came in waves. Some, like the Vietnamese "boat people" of the late 1970s, were driven from their homes by economic or political turmoil. Others were drawn to reunite families or realize greater opportunities in the Western Hemisphere. "My brother-in-law left his wife in Taiwan and came here as a student to get a Ph.D. in engineering," explained Subi Lin Felipe. "After he received his degree, he got a job in San Jose. Then he brought in a sister and his wife, who brought over one of her brothers and me. And my brother's wife then came." Professional Asian-Indians emigrated in search of better jobs. Doctors and nurses constituted a large percentage of the early Korean immigrants. But letters home soon attracted a more diverse population, which concentrated in small businesses. The presence of other Asian Americans and an international atmosphere drew many Asians to New York City, but climate made Hawaii and California particularly popular destinations. Of more than 800,000 Korean-Americans, about a quarter lived around Los Angeles in 1990. So, too, the 1.4 million Japanese-Americans settled primarily in California and Hawaii. By contrast, the federal government attempted to disperse around the country nearly half a million Vietnamese (as well as Cambodians and Laotians) who fled after the American withdrawal from Southeast Asia. A "model minority." The relative success of many Asian Americans has led the media often to stereotype them as a "model minority"; yet the experience of Asian immigrants remains widely diverse, encompassing high-income Filipino-American doctors and low-income agricultural laborers, Japanese-Americans who are poor and elderly as well as those who are younger, upwardly mobile technicians. Ethnic tensions, made worse by job losses and an American trade deficit with Asian countries, gave rise periodically to acts of violence. During the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, Korean shops were often the targets of looters and arsonists. (952) [Maps] HISPANIC POPULATION, 1990. ASIAN POPULATION, 1990. HISPANIC AND ASIAN POPULATIONS Hispanics and Asians made up the two fastest-growing population groups in the United States over the past several decades. Demographers predict that Hispanics will soon displace African Americans as the nation's single largest minority group.

 

[1999c] (1022-3) New Immigrants. As American society became less tolerant and government less supportive of social programs, a new wave of immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean arrived. The 1965 Immigration Act had ended the national quota system for immigration, allowing non-Europeans to legally enter the United States in sizable numbers. To the surprise of U.S. policymakers, the nation's Asian population had quickly grown. In 1960. Asians represented half of I percent of the population. By 1990, the figure had grown to 3 percent, and Asians were nearly half of all immigrants coming to America. Most came as families and tended to cluster in ethnic communities in major urban areas, especially in Hawai'i and the Pacific coast region. Some were highly educated, had marketable skills, and found economic success as engineers, medical professionals, and owners of small businesses. Chang-Lin Tien experienced such a success. Born in China, he became a professor of mechanical engineering and eventually chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1990. The success of so many Asian Americans -- they are among the nation's most prosperous and best-educated minority -- has caused them to be considered a "model minority." But this stereotype ignores many variables, including levels of education, dates of arrival, and ethnicity. Although immigrants from India and Japan have higher high school graduation rates than whites, those from China, the Philippines, and Indochina have lower ones. Many immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived with few possessions, little education, and few skills. Mired in poverty, they frequently had difficulty assimilating into American society and faced racial hostility. Along the Gulf coast, whites fearing economic competition attacked Vietnamese shrimpers. Many Asian Americans believe that a number of universities, under pressure from whites and from non-Asian minority groups, established quotas to limit the admission of Asians to professional and graduate programs. The consequence of growing numbers and anti-Asian prejudice convinced many to become more active in local, state, and national politics and to adopt the term Asian American to stress inclusiveness rather than ethnic diversity. Still, as one Asian American commented, "no one can claim to know what Asian-American ethnicity is or what it will become." Despite Asians' success and assimilation into American society, concluded one Asian-American activist, "there is a stereotype that Asians are foreigners even though they've been here for many generations." Immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Mexico faced more negative stereotypes as they entered the country. A 1991 Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans favored limits on immigration and 69 percent believed that there were too many Latinos in the country. Another public opinion poll indicated that old stereotypes of Latinos as "lazy" and "unpatriotic" were still held by the non-Latino population. Prejudice and the lack of unskilled jobs keep Latino immigrants at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. "There is a growing schism between poor Latinos, on the one hand, and middle-class Latinos on the other," noted one Latino leader. Despite families working two and three jobs, he concluded, "the ladder isn't there" for newer immigrants and other poor Latinos. Adding to the overall rate of poverty and hostility faced by Latinos is the issue of illegal immigration, primarily from Mexico. In 1986, trying to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States, the Immigration Reform and Control Act outlawed the hiring of illegal aliens and strengthened controls to prevent illegal entry into the United States. The act also offered amnesty to illegal aliens who could provide documented proof that they had been in the United States before January 1, 1982. The law, however, did little to reduce the number of Mexicans and other Latin Americans trying to enter the United States, most of them seeking work. (1023) [Picture] Latinos, Asians, and people from the Caribbean comprise the majority of immigrants arriving in the United States today. Critics of immigration worry that these groups will not assimilate easily and want to limit further immigration. Supporters argue that assimilation is taking place and point to increased rates of nationalization and citizenship. Here, a Vietnamese family participates in the all-American sport of baseball (T-Ball). Bob Daemmrich.

 

[2000a] (281) In short, the structure and dynamics of agricultural labor in California were far more complex than The Grapes of Wrath could suggest within the tale of a single family's tribulations. Why did Steinbeck ignore that complexity, with its often darker side? The answer is perhaps not so difficult to understand. Instinctively; he viewed the Okies as victims, not victimizers. From his perspective, the real tragedy of the farm crisis of the 1930s was the destruction of Jeffersonian agrarian ideals. Steinbeck wanted the government to give the Joads more than a handout; he advocated a second revolution that would recreate an America of small farmers rooted in the land. He failed to acknowledge that the ideals he cherished too often applied only to white Americans and, in any case, had become increasingly irrelevant to the kind of industrial agriculture that was transforming America. In the half-century since the dust storms swept across the southwestern plains, the United States has been transformed by a civil rights revolution. It has been reminded, too, of its diversity, by the renewed tide of immigration springing up in the wake of the Immigration Reform Act of 1964. Historians have worked to give voice to that diversity. In doing so, they have drawn not only on statistics but folk songs, photographs, anecdotes, and observations from ordinary people like the Turners, the Garretsons, and Lillie Gasca-Cuellar. Among this abundance of evidence, the impersonal numbers of the census may have seemed, at first blush, the most lifeless of voices. But in the aggregate, the mass of their ones and zeros provide the structure that gives a collective portrait weight and balance. And with proper study; the tales they tell can prove to be nearly as gripping as those of a novel.

 

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