In 1924, Congress and President Calvin Coolidge drastically restricted immigration to the U.S. by placing most countries on a strict quota system. Mexico was excluded from these restrictions. In this same period, however, Mexicans in the U.S. commonly faced discrimination and even racial violence. In this lesson, students read six historical documents to answer the central historical question: Were Mexicans welcome in the United States in the 1920s?

Overview / Description: This unit will examine the experience of Native Americans during the Great Depression in the United States. It will integrate comparisons with the experiences of other minority groups as well as exposing students to primary source documents related to the government policies which were adopted toward Native Americans during the time. Guiding Questions: What were the US government’s policies toward Native Americans leading up to the Great Depression? Were they fair? What was FDR’s response to the struggles of Native Americans during the Great Depression? What was the Native American experience like during the Great Depression and how did it compare to other minority groups? Learning goals/objectives:    Analyze primary and secondary sources related to the experience of Native Americans during the Great Depression. Summarize the experiences of Native Americans during the Great Depression. 

This assessment measures students' ability to contextualize and periodize two historical documents by placing them on a timeline. The first document is a 1942 letter from the U.S. secretary of state to the American ambassador in Mexico, and the second is an excerpt from a newspaper published in Brownsville, Texas, in 1931. This HAT draws on students' historical knowledge, but in a way that requires more than the simple recall of information. Students must understand how and why the United States' policies on Mexican migration changed from the Great Depression to World War II and use their understanding to place historical sources in time.