The massive number of European immigrants that entered into America’s east coast from the late 1800’s and on forever influenced the growth and development of the country. Fleeing crop failure, famine, rising taxes, and land/job shortages, many immigrants journeyed to the United States because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. With hope for a brighter future, nearly 27 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1920. The majority of the immigrants entered through Ellis Island, leading it to become the gateway to America and become recognized as a national symbol. Many of the immigrants, not knowing the way America worked, didn’t stray too far from the East Coast and moved into areas filled with people of similar languages, traditions, and beliefs.
These riots began on Monday, July 13, 1863 because the president at the time, Abraham Lincoln, called for the institution of a draft because both the Confederate and the Union militaries needed troops to fight in the Civil War which was highly disliked. On the day of the draft lottery one of the firefighters from Fire Engine Company Number 33, otherwise known as the “Black Joke”, was selected during the draft. The fire company believed that they should be exempt from the draft because they saw themselves as part of the military. They stopped the lottery and broke into the marshal’s office on Third Ave and 47th Street (Hamberger 95). When the fire company broke into the marshal’s office where the draft was being held the smashed the selection wheel and set fire to the building which is ironic because they put out fires.
In this essay, I will be discussing the experiences of the Irish, African Americans, and Native Americans. I will first begin by talking about the Irish and African American immigration to the United States and how their During the potato famine, which was from 1840 to the Civil War, the Irish were the oppressed race and already had competition from blacks for jobs in the workforce. Both struggled to succeed in the United States. From the Irish perspective, they felt that the only way to succeed was to oppress their competitiors, which were the Northern Blacks. Their way to gaining acceptance in the United States from whites was to join the whites in continuing to oppress the African American race.
Since we have a volunteer military that is taking care of the job, a draft would be pointless. A draft is a way of forcing men to fight for something they may not agree with. The draft was never a good decision in the past, and it would have the same outcome in the present. Drafts have caused problems dating back all the way to the 1860s. In July of 1863 New York City witnessed the most violent insurrection in American History due to draft riots.
The Irish did have a resource that free American Americans lacked: an ability to organize and a penchant for violence honed through 200 years of clandestine resistance to British occupation of Ireland. In order to gain acceptance into mainstream American society, Irish immigrants embraced American racism as a way of establishing its whiteness and engaged African Americans in street violence that usually ended with the Irish victorious. Since Irish immigrants at times were viewed as inferior to African Americans, especially in New Orleans where Irish workers performed tasks such as dock building deemed dangerous to slaves. The rationale was that if a slave was injured or killed, his owner would have to be compensated. If an Irish labor was killed, another would just as quickly take his place.
In the south over $4.5 billion was spent creating factories that made war goods, yet those who were hiring were reluctant to give jobs to black people and so after the threat to lead a march to Washington by A. Philip Randolph, President Roosevelt issued the Fair Employment Practices Commission (1941) which forced employers to not discriminate on the grounds of “race, creed, colour or national origin” this ultimately led to the migration of a vast number of Black Americans from the rural areas to the cities to get work. The Second World War impacted the economic situation of black Americans in several ways, for example; as they moved to the cities to help with the war effort they were paid more than if they lived and worked in the rural areas, over 500,000 African Americans migrated to the north to work in industrial environments, this as well as the fact that over 1.2 black men went to work in the army, resulted in the number of unemployed African Americans from 937,000 in 1940 to 151,000 in 1945. This shows that the war had an effect on the lives of black
By this point the strongest opposition of the War was becoming the soldiers. From 1960 to 1973 over five hundred thousand soldiers had abandoned their duties in War in protest. There was one demonstration in particular that rattled the morality of the American government; ‘Vietnam Veterans Against the War’ was the name of the event that happened in 1967. Old crippled, dismembered and injured soldiers from the War had come on television throwing away their badges and medals of Honour, saying that they were medals of murder. Many stated after that they, one day would like to go back to Vietnam and help rebuild the country that the helped destroy.
The Irish would take any unskilled jobs they could find in order to earn money; however, there were only a limited amount of unskilled jobs (historyplace.com). The Americans became so overwhelmed with the amount of Irish immigrants that they started to hang “no Irish need apply” signs in the stores, factories, and workshops to keep the Irish from finding jobs and earning money. This type of redlining kept the Irish from finding jobs and care for their children properly. Many Irish lost their children due to illnesses caused by the poor living conditions the Irish were forces to live in. Many Irish were also uneducated and therefore would turn to the streets in order to earn money, and many Irish children would beg in the streets for
The flood of immigration caused a serious case of religious and cultural discrimination. Life in the 1840’s and 50’s was physically and emotional taxing on the Irish citizens, even after they escaped to America. The famine shaped a culture and changed American society as we know it today. Works Cited "Irish Immigration." Spartacus Educational.
The image of Irish-American in American Literature In Engle’s (2001) opinion an image of an Irish immigrant in American literature appears to be a negative one. For instance, in the nineteenth-century when Irish mass immigration to the United States began, a motive of the uneducated, ill-mannered Irish worker became extremely popular in American culture and literature. Engle refers to the research conducted by a historian Dale Knobel, in which he examines approximately 1600 references to Irish-Americans from 1820 to 1860. As a result of his thorough study of press, popular fiction and government documents, an image of the "Paddy stereotype" has been formed. Yet, it needs to be pinpointed that it was overwhelmingly negative due to the fact that it stressed violent nature as well as lacking intellect.