Day 34: Immigration History 101

● 1968: MLK is assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. was an African-American Baptist minister and civil rights leader during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from mid-1950s until his death.o Among his many efforts, King headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Through his activism and inspirational speeches he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965.

MLK spotlight:
In his book, What Would Martin Say?, Clarence Jones, one of King’s lawyers and a close advisor, argues that King would vehemently oppose any form of amnesty for undocumented immigrants:
He’d say, ‘If you’re in this country illegally, have you come here in order to protest what you consider an ‘unjust law?’ If you haven’t, then for whatever other reason you’re here, even if it’s to make money for your sick child, which is as good a reason as there is, then you’re just violating the immigration laws of this country and deserve no more consideration from the authorities than does a thief.
Among those who claim King’s legacy as supportive of immigrant rights is the National Immigration Law Center. On the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington its executive director, Marielena Hincapié, said of King:
We share his dream that all people — regardless of their race, gender, or immigration or economic status — be treated equally, fairly, and humanely… that all people have equal access to justice, education, government resources and economic opportunities, and are able to achieve their full potential as human beings.

Hmmm…Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/martin-luther-king-and-im_b_9002016
Cartoon by: Dave Granlund, Politicalcartoons.com
**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 33: Immigration History 101

● 1965: Immigration and Nationality Act Repeals the national origins quota system that favors European immigration. Creates a system for emigrating based on familial ties and skill (merit).

Immigrant du jour:

Steve Jobs

The man behind the iPhone, who created one of the most influential digital companies in the world, is also the child of an immigrant. Jobs’ biological father was a political refugee from the Syrian city of Homs, a city devastated by the civil war.
Jobs was adopted as an infant by a family in California. He’s just one of the many children of immigrants who founded a company that changed the world. Approximately 40% of all Fortune 500 companies were founded by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, according to a report published by Forbes.

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/children-of-immigrants-who-changed-the-us/

Cartoon by: Eric Allie, Caglecartoons.com

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 33: Immigration History 101

● 1965: Voting Rights Act and Malcolm X is assassinated.
o All citizens are granted equal voting power under the law, and must be provided with the same ability and accessibility to voting places.

o Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister and civil rights leader during the Civil Rights Movements in the United States. He challenged the mainstream civil rights movement by urging followers to defend themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary.”
▪ After Malcolm X’s death, his bestselling book The Autobiography of
Malcolm X popularized his ideas, particularly among Black youth, and laid the foundation for the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Civil Rights Spotlight: (drum roll please…)
Malcolm X! (1925–1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement. He is best known for his controversial advocacy for the rights of blacks; some consider him a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans, while others accused him of preaching racism and violence.

Born Malcolm Little in OMAHA, NEBRASKA- he relocated to New York City’s Harlem neighborhood in 1943, after spending his teenage years in a series of foster homes following his father’s murder and his mother’s placement in a mental hospital. In New York, he engaged in several illicit activities, and was sentenced to ten years in prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison he joined the Nation of Islam‍—‌changing his name to Malcolm X because, he later wrote, Little was the name that “the white slavemaster … had imposed upon my paternal forebears”‍—‌and quickly became one of its most influential and visible leaders after his parol in 1952.
for MORE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

Cartoon by: Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News, NY, via caglecartoons.com

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

We take a commercial break from our regularly scheduled program to bring you this response.

On April 28th the president of the the United States said (quoted not paraphrased): “The border is like Disneyland now the the administrations zero-tolerance policy has ended.”

Since I visited the border myself, spent a week with organizations, Arizonians, immigrants and citizens that work and live on the border- I can tell you-seeing with my own eyes and not in the news-this is simply not true.

But take your children there.

So- I will repost this lovely, horrible reminder of why people try to come to the U.S. May none of us, sitting in our comfortable homes, with water & TV and food & family- have to experience this.

Home
by Warsan Shire (British-Somali poet)

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city
running as well.
your neighbours running faster
than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind
the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.
no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet,
hot blood in your belly.
it’s not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did –
you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow,
each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.
you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles travelled
meant something more than journey.
no one would choose to crawl under fences,
be beaten until your shadow leaves you,
raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of
the boat because you are darker, be sold,
starved, shot at the border like a sick animal,
be pitied, lose your name, lose your family,
make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with go home blacks, refugees
dirty immigrants, asylum seekers
sucking our country dry of milk,
dark, with their hands out
smell strange, savage –
look what they’ve done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?
the dirty looks in the street
softer than a limb torn off,
the indignity of everyday life
more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between
your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child’s body
in pieces – for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.
i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to
leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.
no one leaves home until home
is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don’t know what
i’ve become.

Day 32: Immigration History 101

● 1964: Civil Rights Act
o Outlaws discrimination in public accommodations and by employers. The “separate but equal” defense no longer holds throughout the nation.

Civil Rights Spotlight:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Pub.L. 88–352, 78 Stat. 241, enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, and racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations.
The legislation had been proposed by President John F. Kennedy in June 1963, but opposed by filibuster in the Senate. After Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the bill forward, which in its final form was passed in the U.S. Congress by a Senate vote of 73–27 and House vote of 289–126. The Act was signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964, at the White House.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, had changed the political situation. Kennedy’s successor as president, Lyndon Johnson, made use of his experience in legislative politics, along with the bully pulpit he wielded as president, in support of the bill. In his first address to a joint session of Congress on November 27, 1963, Johnson told the legislators, “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long.”

Cartoon by: By The U.S. National Archives (“A Step in the Right Direction!!”) [No restrictions or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 31: Immigration History 101

● 1963: March on Washington
o The largest demonstration of labor unions, religious leadership, organizers, and supporters of the Civil Rights congregate in Washington. This is where MLK famously recited his “I have a dream” speech. Due to this and actions like this throughout the nation the Civil Rights Act of 1964 garnered support and momentum.

Civil Rights Spotlight: Ruby Dee (born Ruby Ann Wallace, October 27, 1922 – June 11, 2014) was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and civil rights activist. She participated in the 1963 March on Washington.

Cartoon by: Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons, via caglecartoons.com

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 30: Immigration History 101

● 1961: Freedom Rides
o People throughout the U.S., mostly from the South, begin the freedom rides as a form of peaceful protest. This was to bring attention to the civil rights movement, and the plight of those fighting for equal rights.

Civil Rights Spotlight: 
Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person — nine months before Rosa Parks did the very same thing.

Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system. Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.

Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.
Read more @:
https://www.npr.org/…/before-rosa-parks-there-was-claudette…

Cartoon by: Dave Granlund, Minnesota, via caglecartoons.com

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 29: Immigration History 101

● 1954: Operation Wetback
o Targets Mexican American communities in search for “illegal immigrants” and deports over 3.8 million people to Mexico. Many of those deported had been in the United States since the Bracero Program of the 1940s.
o Throughout the roundups, however, American employers continued to recruit undocumented workers, motivated by the low labor costs and the desire to avoid the bureaucratic obstacles of the Bracero Program.

Immigrant du jour: María Joaquina de la Portilla Torres was born to a Spanish father (Francisco de la Portilla) and Mexican mother (Julia Torres) in Guanajuato, Mexico. For the first six years of her life she lived in Mexico City, moving to her father’s natal city, Sevilla, in 1888. She studied music in France, with Claude Debussy and Franz Lenhard among her teachers. In 1900 she moved back to Mexico and continued her musical studies at her aunt’s solfège school. In 1907, the then 22-year-old de la Portilla, married Leo A. Grever, an American oil company executive, and in 1916 became a U.S. citizen and moved to New York City where she lived for the rest of her life.
Grever wrote more than 800 songs — the majority of them boleros — and her popularity reached audiences in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. She was said to have possessed perfect pitch and wrote most of her songs in one key. Her first piece of music, a Christmas carol, was composed when she was four years old. She wrote her first song when she was 18 years old, “A Una Ola” (To a Wave), and it sold three million copies.

Cartoon by: Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, via caglecartoons.com

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 28: Immigration History 101

● 1952: McCarran–Walter Act
o This act retained the quota system from the Immigration Act of 1924 and gave preference to certain countries, like Great Britain, Germany and Ireland, while reducing the number of immigrants from colonies in the New World. It allowed for deportation of immigrants involved in subversive activities. It banned racial and ethnic discrimination over who can naturalize, allowing Asians to naturalize.

Immigrant du jour: Edward Bing Kan- December 17, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law an Act to Repeal the Chinese Exclusion Acts. This repeal law overturned previous laws that had excluded the vast majority of Chinese immigrants since 1882. It also provided for a new annual quota of 105 Chinese immigrants. Additionally, the law added “Chinese persons or persons of Chinese descent” to the categories of individuals eligible for naturalization. For the first time, any qualified lawfully admitted Chinese immigrant could become a naturalized U.S. citizen.

On January 18, 1944, one month and one day after the new law went into effect, Edward Bing Kan swore the Oath of Renunciation and Allegiance in the U.S. District Court at Chicago, becoming the first Chinese-American to naturalize after repeal of Chinese Exclusion.
(https://www.uscis.gov/…/edward-bing-kan-first-chinese-ameri…)

Cartoon by: Nelson Harding [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

**Program created (in part) by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**

Day 27: Immigration History 101

● 1951: United Nation Refugee Convention
o Defining rights of refugees, including protections for employment and welfare, on the issue of identity papers and travel documents
o Is amended in 1967 to apply to all people who become refugees after 1951

Immigrant/refugee du jour: 
The physicist Albert Einstein arrived in America in 1933 after he and thousands of other Jews fled persecution in Nazi Germany. That year, the Nobel laureate and humanitarian called for the founding of the aid organization that was to become the International Rescue Committee. (Repeat performance!)

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”

Cartoon by: Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE, via caglecartoons.com

**Program created by Ana Rodriguez-BorderLinks’ (Tucson AZ)**