In 1943, Anglo servicemen attacked Mexican American, Filipino American, and African American adolescents in Los Angeles. This violence was known as the "Zoot Suit Riots," named for the allegedly un-patriotic fashion then popular among the city's youth. In this lesson, students examine four historical sources to answer the question: What caused the Zoot Suit Riots?
Material Type: Assessment, Case Study, Formative Assessment, Lesson Plan
In this lesson, students are presented with a claim made on Twitter about a massacre of Mexican Americans by law enforcement in Porvenir, Texas. Students use the internet to evaluate the trustworthiness of several historical sources and learn about the 1918 massacre.
Material Type: Assessment, Lesson
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 In this lesson, students read six historical documents to answer the central historical question: Were Mexicans welcome in the United States in the 1920s?
Material Type: Assessment, Formative Assessment, Lecture, Lesson
From 1910 to 1929, one-tenth of Mexico’s population (about one million people) moved to the United States. This historic wave of migration came to a halt in the 1930s, and in the new decade, more Mexicans left the U.S. than entered. In this lesson, students examine congressional testimony, photographs, industry correspondence, and state legislation to answer the question: Why did Mexican migration to the U.S. drastically change in the 1930s?
Material Type: Assessment, Lecture, Lesson, Primary Source
This assessment gauges students' knowledge of the past. Rather than measure whether students can simply recall decontextualized facts, this assessment requires students to make connections across time and construct an argument about how events are connected. Students with a strong sense of the past will be able to explain that the Great Depression intensified anti-immigrant scapegoating like that included in this letter or that McClatchy wrote to Congress about how to solve the “problem of unemployment” because the unemployment rate was very high during the Great Depression. Strong students will also be able to connect the xenophobia and racism against Mexicans conveyed in the letter with Mexican Repatriation.
Material Type: Assessment
This assessment gauges students’ ability to contextualize two historical documents and place them in the correct chronological order. Document A is a passage from a press conference held by the Chicano Moratorium Committee in 1970. Document B is an interview with a Mexican American farmworker in 1941. This assessment draws on students' knowledge about Mexican American rights in a way that goes beyond the simple recall of facts and dates. In this assessment, students must show that they have a broad understanding of how Mexican American rights changed over time and demonstrate the ability to use knowledge about the past to place the two documents in context. In this assessment, students who correctly contextualize the documents will see that Document B, which describes segregation between whites and Mexican Americans, was likely written before Document A, a press conference held by the Chicano Moratorium Committee.
Material Type: Assessment
Explore the factors leading to the independence movement of Latin American colonies. Students will manipulate thematic layers using a geographic information system. Teachers must transfer the questions and instructions to a new document because the answers are included on the pdf linked here.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive, Lecture, Lesson, Reference Material
Explore the ethnic diversity of U.S. states and neighborhoods. Book: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. *Students will explain how scale (the granularity of information) changes our understanding of a place. *Students will identify how the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of suburban Chicago influenced Cisneros’ childhood and her writing.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This episode of Chicano! examines the beginnings of a national movement for social justice by profiling Reies Lopez Tijerina and the 1966–1967 land grant movement in New Mexico.
Material Type: Reference Material
This episode of Chicano! chronicles the efforts of farm workers to form a national labor union under the nonviolent leadership of César Chávez.
Material Type: Reference Material
This episode of Chicano! paints a picture of the struggle to reform an education system that failed to properly education Mexican American students.
Material Type: Reference Material
This episode of Chicano! focuses on the emergence of Mexican Americans political activism and the creation of a third political party, La Raza Unida.
Material Type: Other
LATINO AMERICANS is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape North America over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S
Material Type: Other
