These are excerpts from the current draft History/Social Sciences for California Schools.
History 11 the grade. Excerpts mentioning Latinos.
Line 1665
The trial of the Scottsboro Boys illuminates the racism of the period. Black and white sharecroppers in the South launched the Southern Tenants Farmers Union. The economic crisis also led to the Mexican Repatriation Program, in which the Secretary of Labor directed government agents to force nearly 400,000 Mexican migrants (both legal and illegal) out of the country.
Line 1776 page 340
Meanwhile, immigration continued, especially to California, which depended upon agricultural labor provided by immigrants, particularly Mexicans, who continued to come through the Bracero Program. This 1942 government-sponsored program, designed primarily to replace interned Japanese-American farmers and native-born agricultural workers who were mobilizing for war with imported Mexican laborers, continued until 1964. Instruction on the Bracero program can include oral or video histories of those who came to the United States as part of the program
Line 1881. Page 344
Studying the Cold War can also be accomplished by learning about the nation’s relationships with its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Students examine the events leading to the Cuban Revolution of 1959; the political purges and the economic and social changes introduced and enforced by Castro; Soviet influence and military aid in the Caribbean; American intervention in Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973); the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 Missile Crisis; the 1965 crisis in the Dominican Republic; the 1978 Panama Canal Treaty; and the spread of Cuban influence, indigenous revolution, and counterrevolution in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. Students analyze the continuing involvement of the United States in this region. An investigation of U.S. economic relationships with Latin America today includes the international as well as domestic causes of mounting third-world debt.
Line 1882 page 345
The hemispheric unit concludes with students examining U.S. relations with Mexico in the twentieth century. They will gain an understanding of the Mexican perspective regarding immigration, maquiladoras (export processing zones or free enterprise zones), and trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico played a central role in fostering closer relationships between the three countries, but tensions remain on issues related to economic regulation, labor conditions, immigration, and damage to the environment.
Line 1959. Page 348
The advances of the black civil rights movement encouraged other groups—including women, Hispanics and Latin Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, gays and lesbians, students, and individuals with disabilities— to mount their own campaigns for legislative and judicial recognition of their civil equality. Students can note major events in the development of these movements and their consequences. For example, students may study how Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers’ movement used nonviolent tactics, educated the general public about the working conditions in agriculture, and worked to improve the lives of farmworkers. Students should understand the central role of immigrants, including Latino Americans and Filipino Americans, in the farm labor movement. This context also fueled the brown, red, and yellow power movements. The manifestos, declarations, and proclamations of the movements challenged the political, economic, and social discriminations faced by their groups historically. They also sought to combat the consequences of their “second-class citizenship” by engaging in grassroots mobilization. For example, from 1969 through 1971 American Indian activists occupied Alcatraz Island; while in 1972 and 1973, American Indian Movement (AIM) activists took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in Washington, D.C. and held a stand-off at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. California activists like Harvey Milk and Cleve Jones were part of a broader movement that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots, which brought a new attention to the cause of equal rights for homosexual Americans. Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment, edited by Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu; The Latino Reader, edited by Harold Augenbraum and Margarite Olmos; and Native American Testimony, edited by Peter Nabokov, are a few of the readily available collections of personal histories and literature of a period of intense introspection and political activism.
Line 2014. Page 351
Students might compare the status of minorities and women in 1900 to that of the present and reflect on changes in job opportunities, educational opportunities, and legal protections available to them. They may discuss the changes in immigration policy since the Immigration Act of 1965 and explain how these policies have affected American society. In addition, students analyze the impact and experience of refugees who fled Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. How does the life of a new immigrant to the United States today compare with what it was in 1900?
Thank you for your participation.
Duane Campbell. Director, Democracy and Education Institute.
Mexican American Digital History Project.