several documents

This assignment has several documents for you to read and view in order to answer the five

required questions. Please follow any formatting guidelines and minimum length requirements as

set by your professor. Please take your time to analyze these documents and submit thoughtful

arguments supported by the evidence these documents provide.

Documents:

1. Excerpt of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Hyphenated Americans” Speech (October 12, 1915)

2. Excerpt of “Shut the Door” Speech (April 9, 1924)

3. Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” (February 1940)

4. LOOK Magazine’s “How to Spot a Communist” (March 1947)

5. Political Cartoon “You read books, eh?” (April 24, 1949)

6. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” Speech (February 9, 1950)

7. Excerpt of Port Huron Statement (June 15, 1962)

8. Black Panther Ten-Point Program (October 1966)

9. Caesar Chavez “Letter from Delano” (April 4, 1969)

10. Equal Rights Amendment (1972)

11. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (June 23, 1972)

12. George H.W. Bush on the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (July 26, 1990)

13. Maya Angelou “On the Pulse of the Morning” (January 20, 1993)

14. President-Elect Barack Obama’s Victory Speech (November 4, 2008)

Document 1: [excerpt] “Hyphenated Americans” Speech (1915)

Former President Theodore Roosevelt delivered the following speech to a meeting of the

Knights of Columbus in Carnegie Hall, New York City on October 12, 1915. With World

War I raging in Europe and across the globe, Roosevelt warned of the need for

preparedness amongst American citizens. Excerpts from this speech focus upon how

Roosevelt defined “Hyphenated Americans” and the importance of their

“Americanization” for the country’s strength and success in future conflicts.

FOUR centuries and a quarter have gone by since Columbus by discovering America opened the greatest era in

world history. Four centuries have passed since the Spaniards began that colonization on the main land which has

resulted in the growth of the nations of Latin-America. Three centuries have passed since, with the settlements on

the coasts of Virginia and Massachusetts, the real history of what is now the United States began. All this we

ultimately owe to the action of an Italian seaman in the service of a Spanish King and a Spanish Queen. It is

eminently fitting that one of the largest and most influential social organizations of this great Republic, a Republic in

which the tongue is English, and the blood derived from many sources, should, in its name, commemorate the great

Italian. It is eminently fitting to make an address on Americanism before this society.

DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES

We of the United States need above all things to remember that, while we are by blood and culture kin to each of the

nations of Europe, we are also separate from each of them. We are a new and -distinct nationality. We are

developing our own distinctive culture and civilization, and the worth of this civilization will largely depend upon

our determination to keep it distinctively our own. Our sons and daughters should be educated here and not abroad.

We should freely take from every other nation whatever we can make of use, but we should adopt and develop to

our own peculiar needs what we thus take, and never be content merely to copy.

Our nation was founded to perpetuate democratic principles. These principles are that each man is to be treated on

his worth as a man without regard to the land from which his forefathers came and without regard to the creed which

he professes. If the United States proves false to these principles of civil and religious liberty, it will have inflicted

the greatest blow on the system of free popular government that has ever been inflicted. Here we have had a virgin

continent on which to try the experiment of making out of divers race stocks a new nation and of treating all the

citizens of that nation in such a fashion as to preserve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and/ political

life. Our duty is to secure each man against any injustice by his fellows….

HYPHENATED AMERICANS

What is true of creed is no less true of nationality. There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I

have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an

American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German

or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance

must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if

he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as

any one else.

The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a

nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-

Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-

Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that

nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and

nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls

himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays

a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the

land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing

as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an

American and nothing else….

For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an Irish- American, or an English-American, is to be a

traitor to American institutions; and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of

the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.

PRINCIPLES OF AMERICANISM

Now this is a declaration of principles. How are we in practical fashion to secure the making of these principles part

of the very fiber of our national life? First and foremost let us all resolve that in this country hereafter we shall place

far less emphasis upon the question of right and much greater emphasis upon the matter of duty. A republic can`t

succeed and won`t succeed in the tremendous international stress of the modern world unless its citizens possess that

form of high-minded patriotism which consists in putting devotion to duty before the question of individual rights.

This must be done in our family relations or the family will go to pieces….

What is true of the family, the foundation stone of our national life, is not less true of the entire superstructure. I am,

as you know, a most ardent believer in national preparedness against war as a means of securing that honorable and

self-respecting peace which is the only peace desired by all high-spirited people. But it is an absolute impossibility

to secure such preparedness in full and proper form if it is an isolated feature of our policy… But it is equally true

that there cannot be this preparation in advance for military strength unless there is a social basis of civil and social

life behind it. There must be social, economic, and military preparedness all alike, all harmoniously developed; and

above all there must be spiritual and mental preparedness….

RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS

We should meet this situation by on the one hand seeing that these immigrants get all their rights as American

citizens, and on the other hand insisting that they live up to their duties as American citizens. Any discrimination

against aliens is a wrong, for it tends to put the immigrant at a disadvantage and to cause him to feel bitterness and

resentment during the very years when he should be preparing himself for American citizenship. If an immigrant is

not fit to become a citizen, he should not be allowed to come here. If he is fit, he should be given all the rights to

earn his own livelihood, and to better himself, that any man can have. Take such a matter as the illiteracy test; I

entirely agree with those who feel that many very excellent possible citizens would be barred improperly by an

illiteracy test. But why do you not admit aliens under a bond to learn to read and write within a certain time? It

would then be a duty to see that they were given ample opportunity to learn to read and write and that they were

deported if they failed to take advantage of the opportunity.

No man can be a good citizen if he is not at least in process of learning to speak the language of his fellow-citizens.

And an alien who remains here without learning to speak English for more than a certain number of years should at

the end of that time be treated as having refused to take the preliminary steps necessary to complete Americanization

and should be deported. But there should be no denial or limitation of the alien`s opportunity to work, to own

property, and to take advantage of civic opportunities. Special legislation should deal with the aliens who do not

come here to be made citizens. But the alien who comes here intending to become a citizen should be helped in

every way to advance himself, should be removed from every possible disadvantage, and in return should be

required under penalty of being sent back to the country from which he came, to prove that he is in good faith fitting

himself to be an American citizen.

PREPARATIVES TO PREPAREDNESS

Therefore, we should devote ourselves as a preparative to preparedness, alike in peace and war, to secure the three

elemental things: one, a common language, the English language; two, the increase in our social loyalty citizenship

absolutely undivided, a citizenship which acknowledges no flag except the flag of the United States and which

emphatically repudiates all duality of intention or national loyalty; and third, an intelligent and resolute effort for the

removal of industrial and social unrest, an effort which shall aim equally at securing every man his rights and to

make every man understand that unless he in good faith performs his duties he is not entitled to any rights at all.

The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped by

representatives of foreign governments, by foreign societies, by a press and institutions conducted in a foreign

language and in the interest of foreign governments, and if we permit the immigrants to exist as alien groups, each

group sundered from the rest of the citizens of the country, we shall store up for ourselves bitter trouble in the

future….

AMERICANIZATION

The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized population no other kind can fight the battles

of America either in war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens, it must possess

American citizenship and American ideals. It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and must

show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every prince, potentate, or foreign government. It must be

maintained on an American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in important plants and at critical

times. None of these objects can be secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant sections,

and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The

immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of

the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure

such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel

that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of “Let alone” which we have hitherto

pursued is thoroughly vicious from two standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too often

the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover, by this policy we have failed to impress upon the

immigrant and upon the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as to receive justice, that they

are expected to be heartily and actively and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living under

it.

We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they

remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as

an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and

women about it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid overcrowding or the kind of living

system which makes impossible the decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates and the

merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both individual and family life and morals to the industrial

machinery. We cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants, and general resources in the hands of alien

workmen, alien to America and even likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have recently

been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in

time of war men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would in the name of duty to their

own foreign countries bring destruction to us… What would be done to us in the name of war if these things are done

to us in the name of neutrality?

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