Posted on

#36: NMAP Will Explore a Peopling of America Program to Mark Significant US Immigration Sites

A Peopling of America program would consist of scholars at the National Museum of the American People working with National Park Service officials to identify sites throughout the nation where events of significant migration and immigration history took place. The sites would be marked with special plaques designating them as “Peopling of America National Historic Landmarks.”

The most famous immigration site in America is Ellis Island, although the ancestors of most people in our nation came before Ellis Island opened in 1892, after it closed in 1954, came through other ports, or were already on land that the U.S. took over. On the West Coast, for example, Angel Island, not far from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, is where many immigrants from Asia arrived in the United States.

As sites are designated, and markers placed, Peopling of America themed maps could be created for the public based on regional designations and specific ethnic designations. Members of ethnic groups could tour the nation to see first hand where people from their homelands landed in the U.S. Families could tour their regions to learn about the special places where different peoples first arrived to become Americans.

The Peopling of America idea was initiated by Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka 20 years ago but was never implemented. With heightened interest in genealogy and using DNA to trace ancestors, this would be another way to trace one’s personal roots.

The Peopling of America National Historic Landmarks would also be used to designate original settlements and paths that were followed by groups as they moved across the country. The Landmarks will describe the key events in the immigration and migration histories of these groups.

The Peopling of America program will provide a basis for the preservation and interpretation of the movements of groups that shaped the nation, including groups that arrived on the land before our nation existed. The process could also lead to more structures and places nominated to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Significant sites of First Peoples and the sites of both early and current tribal cultures would be marked. Trails leading westward such as the Mormon Trail, the Trail of Tears and the Santa Fe Trail could be designated for their role in the peopling of America. So too could the Underground Railroad which was followed by Southern slaves to free themselves in the North and the actual railroads that helped to move the population center of the U.S. westward.

Sites all along the Canadian and Mexican borders with the U.S could be marked as could ports and beaches throughout the U.S. and its territories.

By making Americans more aware that the places that mark our immigration and migration journeys are all around us, the National Museum of the American People will enhance our understanding of that central aspect of our nation’s uniqueness.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

# 32 – The Timeframe for Chronological Storytelling Exhibitions Can Range from a Day to Billions of Years

History museums that tell their story along a chronological path seem to capture their visitors’ engaged attention for longer periods of time than any other type of museum. Whether the subject is military history, astronomical history, natural history, Holocaust history, the history of a terrorist attack or the history of a people or a nation, audiences are mesmerized and become immersed in the story being told.

The time range for these histories vary wildly from a day to billions of years. The 9/11 Museum, for example, guides the visitor through one of the worst days in U.S. history from sunrise on a beautiful New York City morning through the devastating events of that day and it incorporates a memorial to its victims. At the other extreme, the Cosmic Pathway in the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History explores the history of the universe starting with the smallest particle imaginable and its incredible expansion over the first second of time through the current status of the universe today more than 13 billion years later.

Another exhibition at the AMNH in its Hall of Human Origins depicts the history of humans starting with our early ancestors some six million years ago to modern humans who made their appearance an estimated 150-200,000 years ago and spread throughout our planet. The National Museum of the American People picks up that story approximately 20,000 years ago when the first modern humans are believed to have come to the Western Hemisphere.

The NMAP will tell its story along four chronological paths telling about all of the ethnic, nationality and racial groups coming to this land and nation:

  1. The first chapter is from the first peoples in the Western Hemisphere to the first permanent settlement in what became the United States at Jamestown, VA in 1607 and includes first contact between natives and Europeans.
  1. The Museum’s second chapter from 1607 to 1820 depicts Western Europeans coming, slavery, establishment of the nation and its westward expansion via the Louisiana Purchase taking in new peoples.
  1. The third chapter from 1820 to 1924 covers the nation’s major century of expansion to the Pacific including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The nation becomes the destination for millions of immigrants from throughout Europe and Asia and incorporates Hispanic lands in the Southwest.
  1. The final chapter takes us from 1924 through today focusing on refugees and immigrants arriving in the U.S. from every part of the world.

Other American chronological history museums focus on other events or peoples that the National Museum of the American People will also explore. The Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia takes place along a 29-year path starting with the roots of the revolution from 1760 to 1776, the war until its end at Yorktown in 1781, and the struggle to create a lasting government based on principles of democracy, freedom and liberty that culminates with the U.S. Constitution in 1789.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture tells its story over a 500-year path starting with the beginning of slavery by Europeans in Africa in the 1500s through slavery, Jim Crow and the civil rights movement to achievements of African Americans through today.

While the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History doesn’t have a central chronological exhibition depicting American history, it recently announced plans to open a permanent Latino exhibition space in 2021 where it would tell the story of Hispanic and Latino history in the United States. The NMAP will also be telling these stories through all four of its chapters in the context of all Americans coming or being incorporated into the United States.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was one of the first major American museums to devote a permanent exhibition telling a story along a path for visitors. Its story is along a 14-year history of the Holocaust from 1932 until its end in 1945 and includes the American connection to those events.

When the Holocaust Museum was built, studies showed that the average visit to museums, whether an art, history or science museum, lasted about an hour and a half. The USHMM found that the average visit through its permanent exhibition was three hours and many visitors spent five hours going through its story. The National Museum of African American History and Culture which is less than three years old has also found that many visitors need well over three hours to explore its permanent exhibition.

The National Museum of the American People also expects visitors to become immersed in its story about the making of the American People. For all Americans, it is their story.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#31: In the 21st Century Immigration Has Become a Major Issue in the US and the World

As the 21st Century dawned, the U.S. was attacked by foreign terrorists in New York and Washington using hijacked aircraft as weapons. Wars in the Middle East in response to those attacks led to a refugee crisis that has engulfed much of Europe. In the U.S., a crisis has been building on our southern border for an even longer period. There has been a steady focus on immigration over the last two decades.

The National Museum of the American People will be monitoring and marking events such as these, and events we don’t now anticipate, in future years as each move has a role in defining the American People.

In the wake of the 9/11 attack the U.S. passed the Patriot Act that broadened terrorism-related criteria for deportation and broadened inadmissibility rules for noncitizens. In addition it established a foreign student monitoring program.

A year later the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act streamlined electronic border control systems for those entering and leaving the country. In 2002 the Department of Homeland Security was created and established three new agencies to monitor and protect our borders: the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 added more reasons to not admit and to deport noncitizens and increased penalties for alien smuggling. The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 criminalized violations of federal immigration law.

In 2006 the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill but the House refused to consider it. The issue of immigration reform has been simmering since then. But Congress did enact the Secure Fence Act that called for more than 700 miles of reinforced fence to be built along the Mexican border in places where there had been a high level of drug trafficking and illegal immigration. In 2006, 6,000 National Guard troops were sent to the Mexican border to assist Border Patrol agents.

After Congress failed to pass an immigration reform bill in 2012, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy to allow those entering the U.S. before the age of 16 to apply for a work permit and two-year protection against deportation. In 2014 President Obama took executive action to delay the deportation of 5 million undocumented immigrants after meeting various conditions and he broadened the DACA program.

In 2017, as one of his first acts in office, President Trump moved to impose new restrictions on immigration from several Muslim-majority countries in conflict regions. Starting in 2018, and continuing today, the President’s effort to build a significant border wall along the Mexican border has emerged as a major national issue.

When the National Museum of the American People opens it will mark all of our nation’s significant actions to determine who the American People are … and who they will be.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#29: After 1924 US Doors Closed, Then Opened; Today Immigration Laws Are on America’s Front Burner

In our last few posts we’ve talked about immigration laws before the modern era. This blog discusses immigration laws over most of the 20th Century that have shaped the country we are now. During this period, coinciding with the 4th chapter of the National Museum of the American People’s story, the doors to the United States were all but closed to overseas immigrants in 1924, though the Indian Citizenship Act of that year granted U.S. citizenship to American Indians.

In 1929 as the Great Depression set in, Congress tightened overseas immigration even more by cutting the number of immigrants allowed annually to 150,000. It also linked a 2% nationality quota to the 1920 Census, limiting immigrants from eastern and southern Europe even more than at the end of the Museum’s  3rd Chapter.

Even without these harsher immigration laws, the Great Depression in the 1930s was slowing immigration to a trickle. During the deepest years of the Depression there were more people leaving the United States than entering it.

The political leanings of immigrants became an issue in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1940 the Alien Registration Act required all immigrants above age 13 to register with the government and be be fingerprinted, while it banned “subversives” from immigrating at all. The 1950 Internal Security Act allowed the U.S. to deport immigrants who were ever members of the Communist Party.

During World War II, the U.S. faced a shortage of farm workers and the so called Bracero Program was instituted in 1942 allowing Mexican manual laborers into the U.S. to work on farms. Over the following 22 years, about 5 million Mexican workers participated in the program.

Also during World War II the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed though the annual quota was only 105 and in 1946 the repeal was extended to cover Filipinos and Indians.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, the War Brides Act was enacted in 1945 to allow alien spouses, natural children and adopted children of members of the Armed Forces to become citzens. More than 100,000 entered the U.S. via this route.

The war also led to a massive worldwide increase of refugees and the U.S. passed the Displaced Persons Act in 1948 allowing up to 200,000 refugees into the country. In 1952 the Immigration and Nationality Act consolidated earlier laws and eliminated race as a basis for exclusion. However the quota system remained in place and immigration remained at low levels.

The Immigration Act of 1965 changed all that. While annual immigration from overseas was limited to 170,000 with a maximum of 20,000 from any one country, and immigration from the Western Hemisphere was limited to 120,000, a preference system was established for family members of U.S. citizens and immigrants with special skills. Those two features had no numerical restrictions and led to a major increase in immigrants over subsequent decades.

Special laws were enacted to facilitate refugees from Cuba (1966) and then Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos (1975-76). In 1980 the Refugee Act was adopted to facilitate a variety of refugee issues around the world. Those fleeing their country on account of race, religion, nationality or politics were made a different category of immigrants and increased the number of people who could be admitted to the United States under this category.

A 1986 Immigration Reform Act gave those who entered the U.S. before 1982 a path to citizenship provided that they met a list of criteria. It also legalized certain seasonal agricultural undocumented immigrants, and made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit undocumented immigrants.

Four years later, the Immigration Act of 1990 set an annual ceiling of 700,000 immigrants for three years and 675,000 after that. As the number of undocumented immigrants swelled during the 1990s, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 allowed deportation of immigrants for a wider range of crimes and applied the law retroactively. The number of Border Patrol agents was also increased.

Over the last two decades immigration has remained a major national political issue. The National Museum of the American People will be continuously updated to bring the story of the making of the American People up to date. In a future blog we will discuss immigration issues that have emerged in the 21st Century.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#28: US Laws and Constitutional Amendments Between 1820 and 1924 Govern Who Is an American

The National Museum of the American People’s third chapter covering the period from 1820 to 1924 saw a slow but steady stream of immigrants to the U.S. up to the Civil War, predominantly from Western Europe, especially from Germany and Ireland.

In the wake of the Civil War, the Constitution was amended to abolish slavery, make all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. citizens, and prevents the U.S. from denying the vote due to race, color or previous condition of servitude.

As the Industrial Revolution gathered steam during the second half of the 19th Century and early 20th Century, immigration soared. Newcomers were now arriving in large numbers from southern, central and eastern Europe as well as eastern Asia.

The first immigration law enacted during this period was the Naturalization Act of 1870 that allowed aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent to become U.S. citizens.

In 1875, the Page Act became the first immigration law to exclude a group from entering the country. In this case it was Chinese contract laborers and it was the first of many laws discriminating against Asians. Seven years later the Chinese Exclusion Act banned skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in the mining industry from entering the country for 10 years and denied Chinese immigrants a path to citizenship.

Then in 1888 the Exclusion Act was amended to ban Chinese workers from re-entering the U.S. after they left. For years after that Chinese laborers were required to carry a resident permit at all times or face deportation or a sentence to hard labor. The citizen ban was also extended for another 10 years.

In 1907 the so called “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the U.S. and Japan ended the immigration of Japanese workers. The Immigration Act of 1917 instituted still more restrictions of people from Asia and the Pacific Islands.

While these anti-Asian laws were being promulgated over a period of more than 40 years, the U.S. passed laws during that same period excluding people engaged in a host of activities including criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, convicts, polygamists, beggars, and those who committed crimes of “moral turpitude.”

Also excluded were persons with a range of perceived characteristics or conditions. Various U.S. laws specifically mentioned: lunatics, idiots, persons likely to become public charges, the mentally ill, those with contagious diseases, epileptics, imbeciles, feeble-minded people, those with physical or mental disabilities, tuberculosis victims, children without parents, homosexuals, insane persons and alcoholics.

In 1907 a law was passed that said that women must adopt the citizenship of their husbands thus losing their U.S. citizenship unless their husbands became citizens. That law was repealed in 1922.

The Immigration Act of 1891 created the nation’s first agency dedicated to immigrants, the Bureau of Immigration in the Treasury Department. It also called for the deportation of people who entered the country illegally.

Ellis Island opened in 1892 and became the nation’s primary immigration station until it closed in 1954. It is estimated that 40% of Americans have a relative who passed through Ellis Island.

The Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization was created in 1906 and placed in the Commerce Department and in 1924 the U.S. Border Patrol was created.

This chapter of the story told by the National Museum of the American People ends with major laws passed in 1921 and 1924 closing the doors to immigration. While more than a million immigrants arrived in the U.S. during the peak years of this chapter, the Emergency Quota Law of 1921 limited the number of immigrants to the U.S. to 350,000 a year and implemented a nationality quota of 3% of the population of particular nationalities based on the 1910 census. This greatly reduced immigration from eastern and southern Europe.

The National Origins Act of 1924 reduced the number of immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. each year to 165,000 and set the nationality quota at 2% based on the 1890 census. While this quota system did not apply to immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, new immigrants practically disappeared until World War II. We will pick up those laws in the next blog.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#27: Immigration Laws Between 1607 and 1820

As visitors walk through the story of the making of the American People, they will encounter unique markers along their chronological path that will touch upon laws made in national capitals — London, Philadelphia, New York, Washington, DC — or in individual colonial and then state capitals that affected who could be a citizen and how they would be eligible to become one.

While there are no such markers in the Museum’s first chapter up to 1607, laws passed in the British Parliament affected their colonial outposts starting in the 1600s. English persons and their children in the colonies were considered subjects of the king. It generally took an individual act of Parliament for a non-English person to be a subject and even that exception was strictly limited to Protestants.

In the meantime colonialists were pushing for more open paths to bring people to the colonies and to promote settlement in them. The Plantation Act of 1740 made it easier for aliens to apply for naturalization within their colonies, but that was still limited to Protestants with some exceptions for Quakers and Jews. New York, Georgia and Rhode Island made it a matter of policy to grant rights to Jewish applicants and those are the colonies where Jews settled in the largest numbers.

Several colonies issued their own naturalization policies until Parliament cracked down on that practice in 1773. Pennsylvania led the way in opening its doors to aliens.

In our Declaration of Independence in 1776 one of the specific complaints listed against King George was that “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

After the Revolutionary War, the Articles of Confederation in 1781 allowed each colony to pass its own naturalization laws with the understanding that all of the colonies would accept persons so naturalized. Those laws generally required an affirmation of allegiance to an authority and a period of physical residence prior to obtaining the right of citizenship.

The Confederation was superseded by the Constitution in 1789 which provided a stronger central government for the United States. Article 1, section 8, gave Congress the authority “To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization” to cover the new nation.

The first naturalization law was passed in 1790. It limited naturalization to immigrants who were residents for two years and free white persons of good character thus excluding Native Americans, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks and later Asians. It also provided for citizenship for the children of U.S. citizens born abroad.

Five years later the law was changed to extend the residency period to five years for white persons of good moral character and to pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. In 1798 the residency requirement was extended to 14 years, but that was repealed four years later.

The next major changes to the definition of new citizenship came in the wake of the Civil War. We will explore that period in the next blog which covers immigration laws during the National Museum of the American People’s third chapter from 1820 to 1924.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

 

 

Posted on

#24: More Than 140 Scholars Support NMAP

The National Museum of the American People and the story it will tell about all of the peoples coming to this land will be scholarly-driven and ensure that the highest standards of scholarship are met.

Historians, anthropologists, sociologists, archeologists, ethnologists, human geographers, demographers, geneticists, linguists and others will help develop the story.

We anticipate that a feasibility study that the Museum backers are seeking will provide an outline of the story that the Museum will tell. Then the Museum itself will develop a detailed book about the making of the American People that will guide the development of the Museum’s permanent exhibition.

The story would follow a consensus of the scholars’ views and significant evidence-based historic and scientific alternative views could also be included. As scientific and historic consensus changes, appropriate changes could be made in the Museum. With force and clarity, the Museum will examine the story of the making of the American People.

About 30 of the scholars backing the Museum focus on general issues of immigration, migration and refugee history while others focus on particular groups of people. These scholars focus on European Americans (23), African Americans (17), Asian Pacific Americans (18), Hispanics/Latinos (22), Native Americans (8) and about two dozen others who concentrate on other aspects or peoples in the Museum’s story.

A complete list of scholars supporting the National Museum of the American People is here.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#22: Happy Presidents’ Day Weekend!

  1. George Washington — Can trace his family’s presence in North America from his great-grandfather John Washington who migrated from England to Virginia in 1694.
  2. John Adams — Born in Massachusetts in 1792, John Adams was a 4th-generation descendant of Henry Adams who immigrated from England to Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1636.
  3. Thomas Jefferson — His ancestor came from Wales to Virginia.
  4. James Madison — His paternal family line is of English descent.
  5. James Monroe — His paternal great-grandfather immigrated to America from Scotland in the mid-17th century.
  6. John Quincy Adams — Like his father John, he is a descendant of Henry Adams.
  7. Andrew Jackson — His genealogy shows that he descended from Richard Jackson (1505-1562) from England.
  8. Martin Van Buren — His ancestry was Dutch.
  9. William Henry Harrison — The Harrison family line comes from England.
  10. John Tyler — The Tyler family came to American from England.
  11. James K. Polk — Robert Pollock in 1659 emigrated from Ireland to Maryland accompanied by his wife and children. “Polk” was derived from Pollock.
  12. Zachary Taylor — He was a descendant of King Edward I of England, as well as Mayflower passengers Isaac Allerton and William Brewster.
  13. Millard Fillmore — His maternal side migrated to the United States from England in the early 17th century.
  14. Franklin Pierce — Thomas Pierce, an ancestor of the family, migrated from England to the US in the 17th century.
  15. James Buchanan — The Buchanans were Scotch-Irish; in 1783, James, Sr., emigrated from Ireland.
  16. Abraham Lincoln — The Lincoln family came to the United States in the 17th century from England.
  17. Andrew Johnson — His paternal side of the family descended from England.
  18. Ulysses S. Grant — Grant has English, Scottish and Irish lineage.
  19. Rutherford B. Hayes — Hayes is of English and Scottish descent.
  20. James A. Garfield — Garfield was born of English ancestry.
  21. Chester A. Arthur — His father was Scotch-Irish and his mother was of English and Welsh descent.
  22. Grover Cleveland — He is a descendant of ancestors from England.
  23. Benjamin Harrison — The Harrisons originate from England.  
  24. Grover Cleveland (See 22)
  25. William McKinley — The McKinleys were of English and Scots-Irish descent.
  26. Theodore Roosevelt — The Roosevelts were all descendants of Claes van Roosevelt, who was a part of the original Dutch immigrants who settled in New Amsterdam in the 1640’s.
  27. William Howard Taft — The first known ancestor of Taft came from Ireland and he also has some English lineage.
  28. Woodrow Wilson — Woodrow Wilson was the son of an immigrant mother from England, and the grandson of immigrant grandparents from Ireland and Scotland.
  29. Warren G. Harding — In the 17th century Warren G. Harding’s paternal side descended from England.
  30. Calvin Coolidge — The Coolidge family migrated to the United States in the 17th century from England.
  31. Herbert Hoover — Hoover (the family’s original name was Huber) was of German-Swiss and English ancestry on his father’s side and of Irish-Canadian ancestry on his mother’s side.
  32. Franklin D. Roosevelt — Franklin D. Roosevelt’s family history dates back to Claes van Roosevelt, the Dutch immigrant who brought the Roosevelts to New York City in the early 1600s.
  33. Harry S. Truman — His ancestry was predominantly English, with a few German, French and Scottish lines.
  34. Dwight D. Eisenhower — The Eisenhower family migrated to the United States from Germany.
  35. John F. Kennedy — The Fitzgerald family was from western Ireland. Between 1846 and 1855, they migrated to America to escape the devastating potato famine. JFK was the first Irish-Catholic President.
  36. Lyndon B. Johnson — Johnson was of English, German and Ulster Scots ancestry.
  37. Richard Nixon — The Nixon family immigrated to the United States from northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
  38. Gerald Ford — Ford is a descendant of Philip King, who emigrated from England to Philadelphia around 1730.
  39. Jimmy Carter — Thomas Carter, Sr. in 1637, came from England to Virginia.
  40.  Ronald Reagan — He was 50 percent Irish, 25 percent Scottish and 25 percent English.
  41. George H. W. Bush — The Bush family is primarily of English and German descent. The Bush family traces its European origin to the 17th century.
  42. Bill Clinton — Clinton has Irish ancestry from both parents and traces of PresidentEnglish, German and Ulster Scots ancestry.
  43. George W. Bush — (The same as 41).
  44. Barack Obama — Obama’s father was from Kenya and a member of Kenya’s Luo ethnic group. Obama’s mother is of Irish and English decent.
  45. Donald Trump — On October 7, 1885, Friedrich Trump, a 16-year-old German, bought a one-way ticket to America.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

Posted on

#20: Nation’s Founders Welcomed Immigrants to USA

Our nation’s founders had a profound vision for our new country. It would open its doors to nearly all comers escaping persecution in its many forms across the World.

While slavery was certainly a blind spot for them and natives were persecuted, the founders firmly established the principle that the United States would offer asylum to those persecuted from throughout the World.

Here are some quotations from our Founding Fathers:

George Washington

“I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”

Thomas Paine

“The United States should be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty.”

John Jay

“The portals of the temple we have raised to freedom shall be thrown wide, as an asylum to mankind. America shall receive to her bosom and comfort and cheer the oppressed, the miserable and the poor of every nation and of every clime.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Shall we refuse to the unhappy fugitives from distress that hospitality which the [natives] of the wilderness extended to our fathers arriving in this land? Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe? …. might not the general character and capabilities of a citizen be safely communicated to everyone manifesting a bona fide purpose of embarking his life and fortunes permanently with us.”

Patrick Henry

“Make it [the United States] the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, the happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed …. Let but this, our celebrated goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the old world–tell them to come, and bid them welcome.”

George Washington

“The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.”

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People

 

Posted on

#7: Ch. 2 – The Nation Takes Form: 1607–1820


This is the second of four blogs to describe how the National Museum of the American People will tell its story through four chapters.

The second chapter of the story that the National Museum of the American People will tell covers the major settlement groups who came to America from 1607 to 1820 and the consequences of this settlement on the native peoples in what is now the Eastern U.S. The chapter will also focus on the inflow of Western Europeans and Africans in the East, and Hispanics settling in what is now the U.S. Southwest. This chapter is bisected by the American Revolution and creation of the nation.

It will go on to explore the new nation’s westward expansion as it takes in new peoples with the Louisiana Purchase extending the nation to the Mississippi River and the annexation of Florida. The migration within what is now the United States by both settlers and natives will also be covered.

Chapter 2 begins with the first permanent English settlement in Jamestown in 1607. This is generally recognized as the beginning of the Colonial Period. While scholars will provide the essential history of this period, the NMAP will also explore myths and legends about these times, some of which persist.

Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries, as they pushed west across the continent, reported encountering pristine forests and massive herds of bison and believed that it was always thus. Now, our best evidence suggests that humans settled and dominated most of the land and kept the vegetation and bison in check long before Europeans arrived. In the two hundred years after the near demise of the native population due to disease and government policies, both before and after the nation was formed, the bison population exploded, the land went to seed and “virgin forests” spread.

As visitors walk through this history from 1607 to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 they will learn that about 600,000 Europeans who came and 300,000 Africans who were brought to the English colonies. Virtually all of the Africans came as slaves and about half of the Europeans were indentured servants or convicts.

While English immigrants dominated this influx and largely settled in Virginia, Maryland and New England, only a minority, even in New England — even on the Mayflower itself — were Pilgrims and Puritans. While some indeed came to escape religious persecution, most of the English came for economic opportunities. It took about a century before these colonies achieved a self-sustaining population.

The African slave trade with Europe began in the mid-15th Century, before Columbus’ voyage, with the Spanish and Portuguese importing slaves first to Europe and Atlantic islands and then to Spanish and Portuguese America.

It has been calculated that up to a third of all slaves taken out of Africa died aboard ships as they sailed across what was known as the Middle Passage. An unknown number of lives were also lost in Africa, mostly in a strip about 100 miles wide along the central West Coast, as a result of the slave trade from attempts to capture them and on their journey to ports of embarkation.

More than 10 percent of imported slaves — some 50,000 — came after Congress abolished the slave trade in 1810. Slaves brought to this land are the ancestors of more than 20 million Americans, the second largest group in the nation after German Americans.

This chapter also begins showing an inkling of the great diversity of peoples that will characterize the American people. By 1790 there were significant numbers of Scotch, Irish and German immigrants living side-by-side with the English colonists, with smaller numbers of Dutch, French, Swedish, Spanish and others. Each group added to and influenced the language, culture, economy and politics of the fledgling nation.

The Scotch settled primarily in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. The first Irish immigrants tended toward the middle and southern states. Few Germans went to New England and instead migrated to the middle states, with Pennsylvania getting most of them.

The Dutch went mostly to New York and New Jersey where the early colony of New Amsterdam had been. The French settled almost entirely in the Northwest Territories of modern Canada and on a long and narrow swath that ran from Detroit down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

The Spanish at this point were in territories in Florida, California and New Mexico. The largest of a small contingent of Swedes was in New Mexico. Jews were scattered throughout the colonies and established outposts in the port cities of New York, Newport, Savannah, Philadelphia and Charleston. Smaller numbers of many other European ethnicities came as well, mixed among other groups.

The National Museum of the American People will show where each group settled and how they contributed to the creation of the nation.

At the heart of this chapter is the story of the creation of the nation. The history about the relationship of the 13 colonies with England, the actions and reactions that led to that relationship souring to the point of being irreconcilable, the American Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States of America will all be told.

Groups that played significant roles in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, played a major role during the war, and were represented among the Founding Fathers are part of this story. The museum will also explore where the ideas came from for our founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution.

Facets of this chapter are told in partial ways at a variety of on-site museums and recreated exhibitions such as at Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Plimoth Plantation, Savannah and Charleston. The new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington tells the story about African slavery in the United States during this period and the new American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia tells the story about that war.

But there are no institutions that tell the full and comprehensive story about this phase of the making of the American people. The National Museum of the American People will be the first to do so.

NOTE: The material herein is based in part on the books 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels. Leading scholars will develop the museum’s story following the establishment of the museum.

This blog is about the proposed National Museum of the American People which is about the making of the American People. The blog will be reporting regularly on a host of NMAP topics, American ethnic group histories, related museums, scholarship centered on the museum’s focus, relevant census and other demographic data, and pertinent political issues. The museum is a work in progress and we welcome thoughtful suggestions.

Sam Eskenazi, Director, Coalition for the National Museum of the American People