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It is a cliché that America is a land of immigrants. But there is truth
behind this cliché. From the migrating hunters
who crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago to
the Mayflower’s English passengers of 1620 to the
Ukrainian, Mexican, and Vietnamese immigrants of today,
America’s people have been travelers to a new land
and a new life. No matter how many generations ago, each
of our families began with a voyage to that new land.
This issue of HISTORY NOW, which is devoted to narrating
this ongoing story of immigration, uses three groups whose
arrivals span the centuries from colonial times to the
present as the lens through which to view the immigrant
experience. In addition to these essays on African American,
Eastern European, and Puerto Rican immigration, we have
included an essay that explores how immigrants engage
the struggle between acculturation and the preservation
of their ethnic or religious identities through the literature
they produce. Finally, we have devoted our interactive
feature to several landmark legal cases that address the
critical question: who can claim American citizenship
and who, at times in our history, has been denied that
opportunity.
Why is the study of immigration such an important element
of our curriculum on every level of education? In part,
because the students in many of our classrooms mirror
the diversity of American society that these essays
highlight. In the halls of my own college, students
speak to one another in their native Russian, Spanish,
Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew; in my classes, they bring
to the study of American history a rich array of analogies
to and revealing differences from lives begun in distant
countries. For these students, the study of immigration
is reassuring, reminding them that others have gone
through the same experiences, both difficult and exhilarating,
of becoming American. But even students whose families
arrived many generations or centuries ago benefit from
a close examination of our diverse origins. The study
of immigration provides these students with an opportunity
to reconnect with their own past and to understand the
process that led to their becoming “native Americans.”
And for all our students, the study of immigration reminds
them that who and what we are as a nation is the sum
total of our multiple traditions, customs, beliefs,
and talents, that e pluribus unum means the
creation of a new, collective national identity out
of many diverse identities.
As always, we look forward to hearing from you at our
“Digital Drop Box,” where you can submit
questions, comments, and stories from your classroom.
Sincerely,
Carol Berkin
Editor
Carol Berkin is
Professor of History at Baruch College and The Graduate
Center, City University of New York. She is the author
of several books including Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey
of an American Conservative, First Generations:
Women in Colonial America, A Brilliant Solution:
Inventing the American Constitution, and Revolutionary
Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence.
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