The Melting Pot of Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Instruct students that they will now look at the immigrant experience by exploring the writings of actual immigrants and native-born Americans living at the turn of the 20th century. This document is titled Immigration Primary Texts. These stories are primary documents from this period in history and are provided as handouts. Instead of making students read all of the stories, use the Jigsaw strategy for the reading:

1. Assign each student one of the readings to jigsaw primary sources detailing the immigrant experience and the American response.

2. The documents consist of six excerpts:

   1. Chinese Immigrant Lew Chew Denounces Prejudice in America, 1882;

   2. Italian immigrant Rocco Corresca writes about American opportunity, 1902;

   3. Jane Addams: "Immigrants and Their Children," Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes, 1911;

   4. Alzina Parsons Stevens: "Life in A Social Settlement—Hull House, Chicago," March 1899;

   5. Metropolitan Temple, Chinese exclusion, 1902;

   6. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 1916.

3. Ask students to read these documents, noting either the push or the pull factors that were a part of the immigrant experience (for the immigrant documents) or the attitude toward immigrants and the rationale (for the American documents).

Once they have all had time to read their assigned pieces, allow students to get into pairs or groups of three or four. They should group up with peers who had the same reading as their own. Give students a few minutes to discuss the reading with their partners or groups.

Once students have had time to discuss their primary documents, inform them that they are going to use an H-chart to make connections between that document and a poem written during this historical period. Give students the H-chart handout or have them draw an "H" on their paper. Ask them to write down some of the most significant aspects from their primary document onto the left-hand side of the H-chart.

Distribute the poem "New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus. With their group, students should read the poem, and then they should write down significant aspects from the poem into the right-hand side of the H-Chart.

The last component of the H-chart requires students to build some type of synthesis from the two different texts. This should go beyond basic compare and contrast. Students should analyze both texts to construct their own understanding of immigration within this time period.

If time allows, ask students to share their H-Charts with the class. Since the readings were jigsawed, this will enable the class to hear different historical perspectives and also form a cohesive understanding of the poem.