Unit 8

1. Without Sanctuary

Race. What is Race?
Ethnicity. What is Ethnicity?

Race is coined the phrase "the biological aspects, or physical features a person represents"
Ethnicity is more of a social construct dealing with certain characteristics such as religion, language, dress, culture, that makes up 'what' a person is.

Race or Ethnicity, you can't really have one without the other. If a person is African American, whether they are directly from Africa or not, they will have physical attributes that make them look African American, or black. They are also ethnically African American based on their cultural views, possibly their dress and even their language (AAE or Ebonics). In the late 19th and early to mid 20th century race and ethnicity played a very large role in the making of the United States and it's views on blacks. Whites would more often than not become very violent with blacks because they thought of them as "lower society"; often beating them with whatever they could find, even their fists, mocking them publicly and in front of their families and in the worst, but common of situations an African American was lynched. Lynching was a common method of execution in the which a black was found to be in trouble (often for nothing at all) and hung to the nearest tree and left there for everyone to see. This, I'm sure was a morbid scene, but for whites in this time, it was a sense of pride and overcoming of the black population.

Without Sanctuary is a website/documentary film about the lynching in American culture and it's affects on the population abroad. If one was to visit a lynching, they would find an African American being beaten in numerous and unimaginable ways with knives, sticks, fists, anything possible. They would be tortured, and left still alive only to be hung from a tree or electricity pole or bridge. White people were apathetic about where and apathetic about how it may feel. They paraded around looking up at a limp dead body hanging from above. Children, adults, moms, dads, grandmas and grandmas gathered to watch a lynching. It was always a mob of people, 10-15 to even hundreds, marching in to watch what they believed to be the right thing to do in order to keep the blacks segregated from the whites. Fear was all it was. A fear that African Americans could actually be better than they were... in these times, I can assure you they were.


2. An American Ethnic Group

Italian Immigration 

Italians are the largest group of immigrants to ever come to America. Italians were in a way forced to come to the Americas due to lack of space, food and increase in poverty. With the jump in birth rates in the 1870's and the decrease in death rates, many Italians, especially those of Southern Italy suffered. Soils eroded, available oil and natural resources decreased and all while the population kept on getting larger and larger. Along with those recent disasters, many natural disasters started happening around the Italians- including the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.

As a result Italians began moving away from their own country and coming to the Americas; first they went to South America and then by the 19th century they migrated to North America. Italians became very prominent fruit sellers in North America and also worked a very large majority of the construction jobs in both New York City and Chicago. As early as 1890, 90% of New York City's public workers and 99% of Chicago's street workers were Italian. 

Because family played such a large role in Italy, Italians brought over that same sense of ownership to one's family and relatives here in America. They were able to establish hundreds of networks that aided in their own way of life and only bettered their living.

The majority of Italians never planned on staying in North America permanently  living in small rooms and taking on the labored jobs and getting paid for it. "Italian immigrants migration to the United States could not be interpreted as a rejection of Italy. In reality, it was a defense of the Italian way of life, for the money sent home helped to preserve the traditional order. Rather than seeking permanent homes, they desired an opportunity to work for a living, hoping to save enough money to return to a better life in the country of their birth."

Information found at:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/italian_immigration.cfm