California Communities

Other changes from History that your class might be interested in:

Plessy vs Ferguson --> Brown vs. Board of Education In the court case called Plessy vs Ferguson, United States Supreme Court ruled for segregation.  The idea was that it was constitutional to keep the races separated as long as everybody got something equal, separate but equal. So in that world of 1896 to 1954, lots of cities across United States were completely segregated. In 1954, came a giant change.  In fact, there were lots of these little changes before.  In Tape vs. Hurley, Chinese students were then allowed to attend mainstream school.  In the Lemon Grove Incident, Mexicans were granted the same right... sort of.  If your class is interested in racial segregation, or you have a budding lawyer in the class, this might be an angle you can use.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo As a teacher, in an area where a lot of students identify as Mexicans, I am always shocked to find out how very few of them know that California used to be part of Mexico. Every time I show them the borders of Mexico before this treaty was signed, they are shocked.  "We didn't cross the border: The border crossed us," I hear so many say.  Although many individual communities remained mostly the same, this treaty changed something about their communities at large. So it is very much a bird's eye view of outside factors that can come in and change your community.

The Use of Nuclear Power  The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki started the nuclear age.  This moment in history changed the entire direction of history.  Some areas of Japan have yet to recover.  Honestly, I think this is a little too dark for the age group that I teach.  However, there's always at least one kid who is interested in atomic power, or nuclear weapons. You can talk about the tragedies of atomic weapons, a nuclear fallout, and how those things can change communities. But you can also talk about the benefits of nuclear power, how those things benefit communities.  As as teacher, you must tread lightly.  If you spin it right as a teacher, exploring how nuclear power changed the world can be a great project.

The Berlin Wall Came Down If you have a class like mine, they play Call of Duty and know just enough about World War II to be curious.  This would be a good project for those students.  That Berlin Wall stood for way too long and it would be a great tangent for kids to discover how the Berlin wall going up changed Berlin and how the Berlin wall coming down thirty years later changed it again.

Other resources:

Census information from 1840-2000

Primary Source Document of an immigrant to California (A fruit farmer)

Article on Toxic Waste from Gold Mining