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Full-text articles to support research in history and genealogy and lesson plans to support student learning.
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With more than three million foreign-born residents today, New York has been America's defining port of entry for nearly four centuries, a magnet for transplants from all over the globe. These migrants have brought their hundreds of languages and distinct cultures to the city, and from there to the entire country. More immigrants have come to New York than all other entry points combined. City of Dreams is peopled with memorable characters both beloved...
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"In 1845, a fungus began to destroy Ireland's potato crop, triggering a famine that would kill one million Irish men, women, and children--and drive over one million more to flee for America. Ten years later, the United States had been transformed by this stupendous migration, nowhere more than New York: by 1855, roughly a third of all adults living in Manhattan were immigrants who had escaped the hunger in Ireland. These so-called "Famine Irish"...
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"By bringing us the inspiring and sometimes unsettling tales of Ellis Island, Vincent Cannato's American Passage helps us understand who we are as a nation." - Walter Isaacson
The remarkable saga of America's landmark port of entry, from immigration post to deportation center to mythical icon.
For most of New York's early history, Ellis Island had been an obscure little island that barely held itself above high tide. Today the small island stands...
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A classic early example of "muck-racking" journalism, or reporting by reform-minded American journalists who attacked established institutions and leaders as corrupt, "How the Other Half Lives" is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York endured at the end of the 19th century. Danish immigrant Jacob A. Riis saw first-hand the horrible conditions of the Lower East Side of Manhattan following his immigration...
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"In November 1909, thousands of factory workers walked off the job to protest the terrible working conditions in New York City factories. Joining the picket lines was dangerous, with thugs and police officers harassing picketers, but the protests stirred action. Many factory owners finally agreed to some of the workers' demands and improved conditions. But nothing changed for workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and those workers would pay...
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"Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Cubans migrated to New York City to organize and protest against Spanish colonial rule. While revolutionary wars raged in Cuba, expatriates envisioned, dissected, and redefined meanings of independence and nationhood. An underlying element was the concept of Cubanidad, a shared sense of what it meant to be Cuban. Deeply influenced by discussions of slavery, freedom, masculinity, and United States imperialism,...