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Black people who migrated during the second phase of the Great Migration were met with housing discrimination, as localities had started to implement restrictive covenants and redlining, which created segregated neighborhoods, but also served as a foundation for the existing racial disparities in wealth in the United States.

Records in this topic cover migratory information and trends captured by various branches and agencies of the government, including employment and housing. There are also records reflecting cultural and social aspects of the lives of those who participated and were impacted by the Great Migration.
Search the Catalog for Records relating to the Great Migration (1910-1970)
Resources

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Black people who migrated during the second phase of the Great Migration were met with housing discrimination, as localities had started to implement restrictive covenants and redlining, which created segregated neighborhoods, but also served as a foundation for the existing racial disparities in wealth in the United States.

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Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

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Reviewing Pakistan’s Peace Deals with the Taliban - Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

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By the end of 2014, normal U.S. combat forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan. As this departure date approaches, Afghanistan and its U.S.-led allies continue to explore potential peace deals with the Afghan Taliban. At the same time, the Pakistani government is reportedly considering its own peace talks with factions of the Pakistani Taliban—the … Continued

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Description

WWI created a farm labor shortage in California as European immigration became restricted and Anglo American men were recruited into the military. During WWI the market for American crops expanded to meet Europe's needs. After the war's end in 1919, the 1924 Immigration Act ended all Asian immigration to the U.S. and created an even greater farm labor shortage in California, where many Japanese laborers were employed.

Many Mexicans, pushed out of Mexico due to the ravages of the Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920, were now pulled into the U.S. to work in Southwest agribusiness. A wave of up to one million refugees sought employment throughout California while fleeing Mexico's political instability, social turmoil, and poverty. By the 1920s, the California agricultural labor force became "Latinized," with 82% of the jobs filled by ethnic Mexicans.

Mexican immigrants soon filled the labor gap, traveling-and working along the way-by rail and later car. Most Mexican Revolution refugees traveled to the U.S. by train through El Paso. There was no rigid border between the U.S. and Mexico until the Labor Appropriation Act of 1924. Refugees joined Mexican traqueros or track workers, who had been working on U.S. railroads since the end of the 19th century. Not only did the Mexican Revolution refugees work on the railroads, but they also sought seasonal jobs in agriculture, working their way north to Chicago and west to New Mexico, Arizona, and California. The Mexican American path of agricultural migration throughout the U.S. had begun. According to historian Stephen Pitti, approximately 82% of all the ethnic Mexicans laboring in Santa Clara County in the 1920s and 1930s worked in unskilled and seasonal agricultural work.

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Description WWI created a farm labor shortage in California as European immigration became restricted and Anglo American men were recruited into the military. During WWI the market for American crops expanded to meet Europe's needs. After the war's end in 1919, the 1924 Immigration Act ended all Asian immigration to the U.S.

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Malala Yousafzai: Fearless Voice for Education & Nobel Peace Laureate

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Mullah Fazlullah, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, first came to prominence in the 2000s with his fiery radio tirades against the Pakistani government, education and the polio vaccine.

The 44-year-old is a passionate ideologue, a cleric implacably opposed to any rapprochement with the Pakistani state. He has appeared in numerous militant videos wielding knives and guns as soldiers are slaughtered in the background.

Fazlullah claimed ultimate responsibility for ordering the shooting of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai in 2012 and also said he was behind the killing of high-ranking army officer Maj-Gen Sanaullah Niazi in September 2013.

Some US and Pakistani officials have also blamed Fazlullah for the Peshawar school attack in 2014, which killed 141 people in north-east Pakistan.

A BBC correspondent who met Fazlullah in 2009 in the Tirah Valley was struck by his intensity and his commitment to bringing Sharia law to Pakistan. Although a fighter, he viewed himself primarily as a scholar.

"He has a forceful personality, very serious and radical. He was friendly, but absolutely committed to communicating his cause," the correspondent reported.

Tall and powerfully-built, Fazlullah was surrounded by his fighters when our correspondent met him and clearly enjoyed interacting with the media.

But he was also highly respected by previous Taliban leaders Baitullah and Hakimullah Mehsud.

Analysts view him as even more ruthless than his predecessor, Hakimullah, who was killed in a US drone strike.

However, he clashed with his deputy Khalid Mehsud, who refused to accept his leadership of the Pakistani Taliban because he was not from the tribal region.

Radio mullah

When Fazlullah was picked as leader in 2013. it was the first time that the Pakistani Taliban had chosen someone to head their group who did not come from the country's volatile tribal belt - or from the Mehsud or Wazir tribes.

Fazlullah is the head of the Swat faction of the Taliban and grew up in the mountainous Swat valley in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

It was there as a young man that he became close to Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the founder of the militant group Tehrek-i-Nehfaz Shariat-i-Mohammedi (TNSM) which aims to enforce Sharia law in Pakistan.

It was this militant faction that spearheaded the Taliban uprising under Fazlullah in northern Pakistan. They were effectively in control of the scenic Swat valley from 2007 and in early 2009 they gained de facto control of the entire Malakand division until an army offensive ejected them in the summer.

He has a forceful personality, very serious and radical. He was friendly, but absolutely committed to communicating his cause
BBC correspondent who met Mullah Mazlullah

Reports say Fazlullah got his first taste of frontline combat experience in 2001 when his mentor Maulana Sufi Mohammad took him along with thousands of others to Afghanistan to fight the Americans. On his return, Fazlullah was arrested and jailed for 17 months.

After his release and as militancy was on the rise in Pakistan, Mullah Fazlullah began daily sermons on illegal FM frequencies. He installed several dozen FM transmitters and used them to spread his message throughout the region - possibly the first cleric to put religion on radio.

These were hate speeches directed against the Americans, the Pakistani state, female education, the polio vaccine and promulgating the militants' extreme interpretation of Sharia law. Charismatic and lyrical, these broadcasts saw him gain followers in the region and earned him the moniker Mullah Radio.

Some, after listening to his sermons, threw their television sets out because he described them as "un-Islamic". Many Swatis grew beards because of his lectures.

Close to the Afghan Taliban

Fazlullah is thought to have hidden in Afghanistan after Pakistani military offensives against the Taliban.

Correspondents say that Fazlullah is extremely close to the Afghan Taliban and was always their preferred choice as the Taliban leader in Pakistan.

Analysts say they respect his credentials as a scholar and a cleric and believe that he is the most likely to act in concert with their interests.

Although the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban have their own domestic agendas, analysts say the Taliban in Afghanistan believed Mullah Fazlullah was the most likely of all the Pakistan candidates to accept the supremacy of Mullah Omar, the spiritual founder of the Afghan Taliban.

Fazlullah has been falsely reported killed numerous times - and has been known to telephone the media to personally deny reports of his death.

He reportedly narrowly avoided a US drone strike in November 2014 aiming to kill him.

In March 2018, the US added Fazlullah to its Rewards for Justice list, offering a reward of up to $5 million (£3.8m) for information that could help them hunt him down.

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Mullah Fazlullah, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, first came to prominence in the 2000s with his fiery radio tirades against the Pakistani government, education and the polio vaccine. The 44-year-old is a passionate ideologue, a cleric implacably opposed to any rapprochement with the Pakistani state.

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Trail of Tears: Definition, Date & Cherokee Nation | HISTORY

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The Trail of Tears was the deadly route used by Native Americans when forced off their ancestral lands and into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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Trail of Tears for Kids | Indian Removal Act | Bedtime History

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Ojibwe Treaty Rights | Milwaukee Public Museum

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The first U.S. treaty the Wisconsin Ojibwe signed was in 1825 at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, involving the Ojibwe and other Great Lakes and Midwestern tribes.

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A Brief Introduction to Ojibwe Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa

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Symbolic Petition of the Chippewa Chiefs, 1849

Contemporary elders say that the lines from the hearts and eyes of the Catfish, Man-fish, Bear, and the three Martens to the heart and eye of the Crane signify that all the headmen shared the same views. The last line, going out from the Crane's eye, indicated that the entire group had authorized Chief Buffalo (Crane Clan) to speak to President Fillmore on their behalf. View the original source document: WHI 1871

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Location of Indian Settlements in Wisconsin, 1962 ca.

A map showing the location of Indian settlements in Wisconsin, indicating the settlements of the Chippewa, or Ojibwe, at St. Croix, Lac Courte Oreilles, Red Cliff, Bad River, Lac du Flambeau, and Mole Lake, and settlements of the Potawatomi, Menominee, Oneida, Stockbridge, and Winnebago, or Ho-Chunk are shown. The map also shows the counties in the state. View the original source document: WHI 91434

The Ojibwe who remained in the Madeline Island area became known as the La Pointe Band, which represented over a dozen bands in the south shore of Lake Superior.

In 1854, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs arranged a treaty council in an attempt to get the Chippewa Indians to give up their titles to certain pieces of land on Lake Superior. Several Ojibwe chiefs responded to the call, and they convened in the town of La Pointe on Madeline Island, one of the 22 Apostle Islands in the Chequamegon Bay of Northern Wisconsin. Chiefs from all over traveled to this council, including Chief Buffalo, a La Pointe leader who converted to Christianity. Chief Buffalo was the founder of the Red Cliff reservation, an advocate for Ojibwe people who had traveled to Washington, DC in 1852 to persuade President Fillmore to stop a removal order and laid the groundwork for permanent Ojibwe reservations. The Red Cliff reservation was 7,321 acres, negotiated in the 1854 treaty populated by Roman Catholic Ojibwe.

By the mid 1800s, many Red Cliff Ojibwe were surviving by harvesting fish for the American Fur Company but later had to work for large commercial fishing enterprises in Bayfield, WI. In the late 1800s, the logging began in Red Cliff, including the Red Cliff Lumbering Company which hired many tribal members. Unfortunately, the logging practices were unsustainable, and the timber was gone within ten years, leaving stump-covered land unfit for farming. The economy was very depressed for many decades, Red Cliff Ojibwe found work in Great Lakes shipping yards, factories, farms and shops.

In recent years, since the late 1980s, Red Cliff has seen an improvement in their economy thanks to the gaming industry, which has created jobs and helped fund public programs. Tribal programs and departments to help the Red Cliff community include language preservation, education, natural resources, health and family services.

Learn More
Visit the Red Cliff Band's web site View Images on Wisconsin Historical Images related to the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa was established geographically with the 1854 treaty that created their 120,000 acre reservation on the south shores of Lake Superior, in current day Ashland and Iron counties. In 1856 a small Christian boarding school was started to educate Ojibwe boys and girls, and in 1883 a larger Catholic school, St. Mary's was constructed. In the early 1900s, Stearns Lumber Company was a large company that held a monopoly in Bad River, controlling all major businesses and and conspiring with the Indian Agent to extort tribal members and illegally gain land for logging.

Today in Bad River, the primary clans are the Crane, Loon, Eagle, Bear, Marten, Lynx, Bullhead, Sucker and Turtle. A person's clan membership originally denoted what function in society the family and individual would fulfill, and membership was passed down through the father. The primary employer in Bad River is tribal government, in the areas of government operations, social programs and other enterprises like gaming. Their many departments include education, housing, health and natural resources - a department that is especially important in examining threats to the environment from large scale iron mining.

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Visit the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe's web site View images related to the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribe
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

Lac du Flambeau, in Chippewa, is Wasswagani-Sagaigan, meaning torch lake, from "wassawagan" (a torch). French traders, witnessing the practice of spearing, called the village Lac Du Flambeau meaning "Lake of the Torches."

Lac du Flambeau has been a permanent settlement of the Chippewa Indian nation since about 1745, when Chief Keeshkemun led his band to the area. Nearby lakes furnished a setting for the tribe's life, with wild rice in season and plentiful fish which were taken at night by the light of flaming torches. The tribe was loyal to the American colonies, never taking sides with the British or French and fought with the Union forces in the Civil War. Old Abe, American Eagle mascot of the Eighth Wisconsin in the Civil War, was captured a few miles below this point by a Cheif Sky and given to Dan McCann who later presented the eagle to Union soldiers.

The 1854 agreement negotiated Sept. 30 at LaPointe, WI, with the Ojibwe settled the ownership disputes left from the 1837 and 1842 treaties and established the Bad River, Lac Courte Oreilles, Red Cliff, and Lac du Flambeau reservations.

In 1792 the Northwest Fur Trading Co. established the Lac du Flambeau department for the Wisconsin River area trade. Forts and posts remained on this shore for about fifty years. The federal government established a boarding school on the Lac Du Flambeau reservation in 1895. The brutal legacy of this school is still remembered today, but has been transformed into the facility for the Tribal Historic Preservation Office (Mikwendaagoziwag).

Today, the Lac du Flambeau Reservation has 260 lakes, 65 miles of streams, lakes and rivers, and 24,000 acres of wetlands. The Tribal Fish Hatchery has restocked the lakes with millions of walleye. Gaming in the form of bingo and casino operations have increased economic operations and social development. Education, health, natural resources and cultural services are just a few of the departments available to the tribe.

Learn More
Visit the Lac du Flambeau Band's web site View Images on Wisconsin Historical Images related to the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

The Sokaogon Chippewa Tribe of Mole Lake, Wisconsin is located in south western Forest County, near Crandon, Wisconsin. As the Ojibwe migrated to other parts of the Great Lakes region, a group known as the "Post Lake Band" under the leadership of Ki-chi-waw-be-sha-shi settled on land near current-day Rhinelander. This area was rich in wild rice, waterfowl and forests and the band grew to 700 members. In 1806, the Battle of Mole Lake took place between the Ojibwe and Sioux, claiming over 500 lives. They fought over control of the plentiful rice beds in the area. Ki-chi-waw-be-sha-shi was succeeded by Miigiizi, who was unable to attend the signing of the 1854 La Pointe Treaty, but sent a surrogate. Much confusion surrounded the signing of the treaty, and later, both copies of a 12 mile land agreement negotiated by Miigiizi were lost. The Sokaogon became a "Lost Band" in Wisconsin, without land or resources, struggling to survive for decades. The band received federal recognition and reservation status in 1937 under the leadership of Chief Willard Ackley, gaining lands to the east of Rice Lake.

Learn More
Visit the Sokaogan Chippewa Community of Wisconsin's web site
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

The St. Croix Band settled in the St. Croix River valley as the Ojibwe dispersed over the Wisconsin and Minnesota area. At the signing of treaties in 1837 and 1842, the St. Croix band had a "distinct identity," providing chiefs and warriors to sign both documents. Later, on the Treaty of 1854, there are no St. Croix signatures. As a result, the St. Croix band beca me a "Lost Band," similar to the Sokaogan, with no land base to call their own until the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. For eighty years, the St. Croix band faced challenges in loss of land and hunting rights, as white settlers began to increase. Resources diminished as logging increased, though the industry provided jobs for some St. Croi x men.

Once the IRA was passed, the band was able to establish reservation lands. The St. Croix Reservation is made up of small areas of lands representing communities in Barron, Burnett, Polk and Douglas Counties totaling 4,689 acres and nearly 3,000 people. The five major communities are Sand Lake, Danbury, Round Lake, Maple Plain, and Gaslyn. Today, the community is governed by a Tribal Council. The largest area employers include casinos, hotels and government offices. The tribe employs many members at their Tribal Center buildings, which include a Health Department, Family Resource Center, Housing Authority, Construction Company, Historic Preservation Department, Youth Center and the other departments.

Learn More
Visit the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin's web site View Images on Wisconsin Historical Images related to the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

In about 1745, a group of Ojibwe families settled near the east shores of Lac Courte Oreilles Lakes, an area with near present-day Hayward. Despite threats from other tribes, the groups stayed in their settlement and were soon joined by more Ojibwe people. The band lived by hunting, fishing, gathering and trading with fur traders. As with other Chippewa bands, lands were ceded in treaties in the 1830s and 1840s in exchange for annuities. In the Treaty of 1854, under threat of removal from the US government, the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation was established.

Their most valued resources, water and rice beds, came under threat from the federal government and timber companies. Companies began cutting down Pine Forests near the reservation, then within the reservation after the Bureau of Indian Affairs granted contracts to lumber companies following the General Allotment Act. Dams were built on the Chippewa River after 1854, and flood control and hydroelectric power continued to be large issue in the Lac Courte Oreilles community. Beginning plans in 1912, and finally carrying them out in 1923, the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light & Power Company built a dam and flooded 5,600 acres of reservation land including rice beds, cemeteries, and an entire village. The tribe was unable to plant new rice beds, and the remains of hundreds of deceased Ojibwe were disturbed, despite promises by the W-MLP Company to avoid both of these results. In 1971, members of Lac Courte Oreilles band, along with American Indian Movement activists, protested the Northern States Power Company and occupied the dam. The Winter Dam Protest resulted in concessions from the NSP Company.

Today, the Lac Courte Oreilles forests and resources are recovering after a long history of abuse. The Lac Courte Oreilles reservation is comprised of several communities including Chief Lake, Little Round Lake, New Post, Northwoods Beach, and Reserve. The Tribal government includes a health center, legal department family services and more. The community values education from childhood to adulthood with the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe School, Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion School and the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College.

The mission statement of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is: "We, the Anishinabeg, the people of Odaawaa-Zaaga'iganiing, the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe, will sustain our heritage, preserving our past, strengthening our present, and embracing our future. We will defend our inherent sovereign rights and safeguard Mother Earth. We will provide for the educational, health, social welfare, and economic stability of the present and future generations."

Learn More
Visit the Lac Court Oreilles Band's web site
Source: Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2001).

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Lake Superior Chippewa Bands (Ojibwe) | Wisconsin Historical Society

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A Brief Introduction to Ojibwe Bands of Lake Superior Chippewa Enlarge Contemporary elders say that the lines from the hearts and eyes of the Catfish, Man-fish, Bear, and the three Martens to the heart and eye of the Crane signify that all the headmen shared the same views.

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click on the bark above to return to the East quadrant front page

The History of Ojibwe and Other Wisconsin Tribes in the Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, with the arrival of American settlers and lawmakers in the area of Wisconsin, conditions turned worse for Ojibwe and other Wisconsin tribes. Government representatives forced eastern tribes like the Menominee to declare the borders of their lands and to cede territory in 1827 and 1831, and the 1832 Black Hawk War aimed at destroying Native resistance in southern Wisconsin to forced removal into Iowa. In 1825 US government officials invited Ojibwe, Dakota, and other Native groups to Prairie du Chien for a meeting in which they, too, were obliged to declare their borders and begin negotiations for ceding territory. The 1830 Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson declared that all Indians must be removed to areas west of the Mississippi River, with the Chocktaw and Cherokee subjected to deportation already in 1831. The Potawatomi of Illinois were removed to Kansas in 1833. By 1890, some thirty nations had been removed to Oklahoma Territory. Two present-day Wisconsin tribes arrived in Wisconsin as a product of removal and relocation processes: the Oneida and the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, both of which came to Wisconsin from farther east, chiefly New York state.

In the coercive negotiations that aimed at securing lands for white settlement, Ojibwe were forced to cede lands in 1837 and 1843. Ho-Chunk people were removed to Nebraska in 1874 but repeatedly returned to Wisconsin, until eventually, in 1881, the government allotted them scattered forty-acre homesteads in the state. While surrendering ownership of vast tracts of lands in northern Wisconsin, Ojibwe bands reserved the right to continue to fish, hunt, and gather on ceded territory, a guarantee that was again stated in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe.

Removal policies reached the Ojibwe of northern Wisconsin in 1850, when President Zachary Taylor signed an order to remove Wisconsin Ojibwe to Minnesota Territory. In order to force Ojibwe to relocate, the government announced that annuity payments would no longer be paid at La Pointe, Madeline Island, but instead in a distant Sandy Lake, Minnesota. When some 3000 Ojibwe men, women, and children made the journey to Sandy Lake in the fall of 1850, they found no provisions for their new life there. A government representative notified them that their payments had not been appropriated by the government. Starvation, disease, and inadequate conditions led many Ojibwe to grow sick and die, and others perished in their desperate mid-winter attempt to return to Wisconsin. All in all, some 400 Ojibwe died as a result of the bungled policy, which has been known as the "Sandy Lake Tragedy."

In 1852, in the aftermath of this tragedy, an aged La Pointe Chief Buffalo (Kechewaishke) undertook a bold but brilliant act of statesmanship. Setting out by foot, wagon, train, and boat with some fellow Ojibwe leaders and an able interpreter (his adopted son Benjamin Armstrong), Kechewaishke reached Washington D.C., where he personally met with President Millard Fillmore and convinced the president to rescind his predecessor's removal order. In the Treaty of La Pointe of 1854, the Lake Superior Chippewa were able to negotiate four separate reservations at Red Cliff, Bad River, Lac du Flambeau, and Lac Court Oreilles. They also wisely insisted that Ojibwe rights to fish, hunt, and gather on all ceded lands would continue to be respected. Although in this process the Ojibwe lost a tremendous amount of land and waters, they remained on their sacred ancestral grounds, a dignity denied most other tribes during the era.

In 1887, US government officials decided that the reservation system had proved a barrier to assimilation of Indians into American society. The General Allotment Act (or "Dawes Act") of that year privatized reservation lands, awarding small 80-acred allotments of land to individual tribal members and selling off other tribal lands to white settlers. Indians who could not make a living with the diminished resources of the region often sold their land allotments off when leaving the area, leading to a further erosion of lands possessed by the tribal members. By the 1930s, some forty percent of reservation lands had been lost to Indian communities in these ways. On the Lac du Flambeau reservation, for instance, a key sacred place: the island known as Strawberry Island, in the very center of the reservation, passed into private ownership in 1910 as a result of the Dawes Act and remained private property until the tribe was able to reacquire it in 2014. The island holds tremendous importance for Ojibwe, as it was the site of the final battle in the eighteenth-century struggle between the Ojibwe and the Dakota-Sioux for the lands of northern Wisconsin. The island is a burial ground for numerous warriors killed in that important battle. Being able to reacquire the island and guarantee that it would not be inappropriately developed was both an historical and a spiritual victory for Ojibwe people.

Loew, Patty. 2001. Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press.

Mason, Carol I. 1988. Introduction to Wisconsin Indians: Prehistory to Statehood. Salem, WI: Shefflied Publishing Company.

Continue reading about Ojibwe history and the history of other Wisconsin tribes on the

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click on the bark above to return to the East quadrant front page In the nineteenth century, with the arrival of American settlers and lawmakers in the area of Wisconsin, conditions turned worse for Ojibwe and other Wisconsin tribes.

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The Mexican Revolution, which began on November 20, 1910, and continued for a decade, is recognized as the first major political, social, and cultural revolution of the 20th century. In order to better understand this decade-long civil war, we offer an overview of the main players on the competing sides, primary source materials for point of view analysis, discussion of how the arts reflected the era, and links to Chronicling America, a free digital database of historic newspapers, that covers this period in great detail.

Background

Prior to the arrival of European conquistadors, the region now known as Mexico was home to one of the world's most advanced Empires: the Aztecs. After a brutal period of colonialism and eventual conquest in 1521, the most powerful citizens were European, Spanish-born citizens or the peninsulares living in the New World. Three centuries later, in 1821, the war for Independence (starting in 1810) ended, freeing Mexico from New Spain. This was a war that, however, benefited mainly the criollo (Spanish-blooded upper class) minority. A century later, in 1910, the majority of the population of Mexico were , half-indigenous and half-Spanish-blooded Mexicans, and these indigenous peoples again rose up in a violent armed struggle, the Mexican Revolution.

The motives for waging the Mexican Revolution grew out of the belief that a few wealthy landowners could no longer continue the old ways of Spanish colonial rule; a feudal-like system called la encomienda. That system needed to be replaced by a modern one in which those who actually worked the land should extract its wealth through their labor.

Two great figures, Francisco "Pancho" Villa from the north of Mexico and Emiliano Zapata from the south, led the revolution and remain key cultural and historical symbols in this fight for social reform. The (supporter of land reform) ideals of Zapata and his followers, the Zapatistas, are summarized in their mottos: "Tierra y Libertad" ("Land and Freedom") and "La tierra es para el que la trabaja" ("The land is for those who work it"). These slogans have not ceased to resonate in Mexican society.

The Mexican Revolution started in 1910, when liberals and intellectuals began to challenge the regime of dictator Porfirio Díaz, who had been in power since 1877, a term of 34 years called El Porfiriato, violating the principles and ideals of the Mexican Constitution of 1857.

In late 1910, Francisco I. Madero, in exile for his political activism, drafted the Plan de San Luis Potosí (Plan of San Luis Potosí), which was widely distributed and embraced by rebel movements across the nation. In this plan, Madero called for an uprising starting on November 20, 1910, to restore the Constitution of 1857 and replace dictator Díaz with a provisional government. Its main purpose was to establish a democratic republic and to abolish unlimited presidential terms. By early 1911, a large armed struggle was underway in the northern state of Chihuahua led by local merchant Pascual Orozco and Francisco "Pancho" Villa. The success of the northern troops, or La División del Norte, sparked uprisings against terratenientes across the country. (For this and other key terms see glossary).

In the southern state of Morelos, as early as 1909, Emiliano Zapata had started recruiting thousands of peasants to fight for land reform in support of El Plan de Ayala, approved by Zapata's supporters in 1911. Under this plan land reform to help campesinos (landless peasants) by re-distributing the land back to the peasants and away from powerful landowners was paramount.

On May 25, 1911, Mexican President Porfirio Díaz resigned and left the country. Former exile, Francisco I. Madero, author of the Plan of San Luis Potosí (mentioned above) became president after the elections in 1911. He was assassinated in early 1913 by a commander of the federal forces, Victoriano Huerta, who joined the counterrevolutionaries led by Porfirio Díaz's nephew in order to seize power. Huerta dissolved the congress after the assassination of Madero and assumed power, but faced heavy opposition. In 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent American Marines to Vera Cruz, Mexico, to support the revolutionaries. Students can examine this intervention via the EDSITEment lesson " To Elect Good Men": Woodrow Wilson and Latin America." Loosing key battles to revolutionary troops, Huerta resigned in the same year and left the country.

After the end of the Huerta's presidency, Venustiano Carranza, a wealthy landowner and chief of the Northern Coalition, gathered revolutionary and military leaders to a conference to determine the future of Mexico. Villa, Zapata, and their followers supported the Plan de Ayala for land reform (see above), in opposition to Carranza and his supporters, all of whom supported the Plan de San Luis Potosí.

Eventually, Carranza (now supported by the United States) and his followers, called for a constitutional convention to draft a supreme law of Mexico, which was later presented to congress. The final version was approved in 1917, enshrining agrarian reform and unprecedented economic rights for the Mexican people. After approval of this constitution, in 1917, Carranza as the president of Mexico proceeded to ignore its promises. As a consequence, the revolution continued until 1920. Carranza was assassinated and General Álvaro Obregón rose to power.

Art, Literature, and the Revolution

The Mexican Revolution gave birth to a variety of new artistic currents in literature, the visual arts, and music. The literature of the Mexican Revolution is a rich field and includes works recognized as masterpieces of Latin American literature such as Los de abajo ( The Underdogs) by Mariano Azuela, which was published in 1915 and remains a literary classic.

Born in 1873, Azuela was a field physician with the revolutionary troops of the north. His own experiences and the circumstances that drove people to fight in the revolution, as well as the often brutal conditions of war, are depicted in his novel with sometimes crude realism. The novel narrates the story of Demetrio Macías, who is considered an enemy to the local terrateniente and has to escape persecution. He leaves his family and escapes to the mountains, gathering a group of people to fight in the Mexican Revolution against the troops of General Huerta. The different kinds of people who are part of the Demetrio Macías group represent the diverse factions that fought in the revolution: the educated and idealistic men; the desperate and poor campesinos; and the different types of women who joined the struggle. Towards the end of the book, the revolutionaries appear to have lost sight of their initial goals and ideals and morale disappears.

A more recent novel, Pam Muñoz's Esperanza Rising, tells the story of the migrants who fled to United States from a teenage girl's point of view. The EDSITEment lesson Esperanza Rising: Learning Not to Be Afraid to Start Again (also available in a Spanish version) will be useful for teachers who want to reflect on the human costs of the Mexican Revolution.

Other forms of cultural expression dealing with the Mexican Revolution include the muralist movement in painting and music. It is worth to also note that some of the most popular foods in Mexico (and outside of Mexico) come from the days of the Mexican Revolution, including famous "foods-on-the-run," such as "" or "tacos de discada norteña."

Mexican Muralist Movement: Art for the People, Telling the People's Story

Once the armed struggle ended, it was necessary to rebuild a shattered nation. Newly elected president, General Álvaro Obregón named José Vasconcelos secretary of public education. Vasconcelos had a serious challenge: How to succeed in educating the people of a country in which the overwhelming majority were illiterate? Public art was to be part of the answer, and a solution to start educating the nation was attempted through the Muralist Painting movement. Among the most important muralists are " Los tres grandes" ("The Three Great Ones"): Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The Muralists viewed art not primarily as an aesthetic or expressive product but as an educative one, an art of the people.

The Muralist Movement lasted approximately half a century, from the early 1920s to the 1970s. Through it, both the art and culture of Mexico were put at the service of society and the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. Muralist painters, many of whom were no strangers to political activism, used the walls of public buildings, palaces, universities, and libraries to tell both the story of the revolution and of the daily life of the people. The mural paintings defined the nation's identity and recognized Mexico's indigenous ancestry. They documented the suffering of the indigenous at the hands of the Spanish conquistadores, while also recognizing Mexico's shared history and culture. The Mexican muralists influenced artists throughout the Americas, and some murals were painted in the United States, including the Epic of American Civilization by José Clemente Orozco at Dartmouth College.

The Corridos: A Musical Legacy of the Mexican Revolution

The tradition of the of the Mexican Revolution can be traced to medieval Europe's mester de juglaría (ministry of troubadours). The -the recording of events in song-are stories told in poetic form and sung to simple music, much like English ballads, that use colloquial language. The corridos grew in popularity in Mexico during the 1800s, but the Mexican Revolution, which took place in a predominantly illiterate nation with a dismantled infrastructure, gave birth to a large number of them that narrated a variety of events, such as important battles, or celebrated great leaders and fighters of the revolution.

Therefore, the corridos became a way to record, celebrate, or mourn events, places, or people during the revolution: very much like a newspaper put to music. The corrido tradition documents aspects of Mexico's culture and identity on a wide variety of subjects. For instance, each state of Mexico has its own corrido documenting important characteristics, products, regions, and people. There are also corridos dedicated to the soldaderas, the storied, iconic female soldiers of the revolution-and even to famous horses.

In a corrido, the singer, or corridista, generally prefaces the performance by supplying the place, date, and lead character of the corrido to the audience, and then develops a story about him/her told in song. The corrido usually ends with a friendly farewell. Corridos do not hesitate to praise and romanticize great leaders as heroes, and label as "traitors" those who opposed the revolution. General Victoriano Huerta, who was president of Mexico for less than one year, is referred to in the corrido "The Taking over of Zacatecas," as a "drunkard" with "twisted feet."

Listen to corridos, and see the lyrics (bilingual), while singer Antonio Aguilar performs, accompanied by .

"La toma de Zacatecas" (VIDEO) commemorates, celebrates and documents an important battle during the Mexican Revolution.

"El centauro de oro" (VIDEO) is dedicated to Francisco "Pancho" Villa, calling him by his nickname. His soldiers were called "Los dorados" ("The Golden Ones"). This celebrates Francisco Villa and his immortality in the history of Mexico.

"Corrido del general Zapata," (VIDEO) is a corrido to honor Emiliano Zapata, also called "El Atila del Sur" ("Atila of the South"). This celebrates the great revolutionary leader of the south.

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The Mexican Revolution: November 20th, 1910

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The Mexican Revolution, which began on November 20, 1910, and continued for a decade, is recognized as the first major political, social, and cultural revolution of the 20th century.

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A complex set of interacting forces both economic and ecological brought the migrant workers documented in this ethnographic collection to California. Following World War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops and caused Great Plains farmers to increase their productivity through mechanization and the cultivation of more land. This increase in farming activity required an increase in spending that caused many farmers to become financially overextended. The stock market crash in 1929 only served to exacerbate this already tenuous economic situation. Many independent farmers lost their farms when banks came to collect on their notes, while tenant farmers were turned out when economic pressure was brought to bear on large landholders. The attempts of these displaced agricultural workers to find other work were met with frustration due to a 30 percent unemployment rate.

Frank and Myra Pipkin being recorded by Charles L. Todd at Shafter FSA Camp, Shafter, California, 1941. Photo by Robert Hemmig.

At the same time, the increase in farming activity placed greater strain on the land. As the naturally occurring grasslands of the southern Great Plains were replaced with cultivated fields, the rich soil lost its ability to retain moisture and nutrients and began to erode. Soil conservation practices were not widely employed by farmers during this era, so when a seven-year drought began in 1931, followed by the coming of dust storms in 1932, many of the farms literally dried up and blew away creating what became known as the "Dust Bowl." Driven by the Great Depression, drought, and dust storms, thousands of farmers packed up their families and made the difficult journey to California where they hoped to find work. Along with their meager belongings, the Dust Bowl refugees brought with them their inherited cultural expressions. It is this heritage that Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin captured on their documentation expedition to migrant work camps and other sites throughout California.

Why did so many of the refugees pin their hopes for a better life on California? One reason was that the state's mild climate allowed for a long growing season and a diversity of crops with staggered planting and harvesting cycles. For people whose lives had revolved around farming, this seemed like an ideal place to look for work. Popular songs and stories, circulating in oral tradition for decades (for more on this topic see " The Recording of Folk Music in Northern California" by Sidney Robertson Cowell), exaggerated these attributes, depicting California as a veritable promised land. In addition, flyers advertising a need for farm workers in the Southwest were distributed in areas hard hit by unemployment. An example of such a flyer, publicizing a need for cotton pickers in Arizona, is contained in Charles Todd's scrapbook. Finally, the country's major east-west thoroughfare, U.S. Highway 66 -- also known as "Route 66," "The Mother Road," "The Main Street of America," and "Will Rogers Highway" -- abetted the westward flight of the migrants. A trip of such length was not undertaken lightly in this pre-interstate era, and Highway 66 provided a direct route from the Dust Bowl region to an area just south of the Central Valley of California.

Myra Pipkin, age 46, holding grandchild, Shafter FSA Camp, Shafter, California, 1941. Photo by Robert Hemmig.

Although the Dust Bowl included many Great Plains states, the migrants were generically known as "Okies," referring to the approximately 20 percent who were from Oklahoma. The migrants represented in Voices from the Dust Bowl came primarily from Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Most were of Anglo-American descent with family and cultural roots in the poor rural South. In the homes they left, few had been accustomed to living with modern conveniences such as electricity and indoor plumbing. The bulk of the people Todd and Sonkin interviewed shared conservative religious and political beliefs and were ethnocentric in their attitude toward other ethnic/cultural groups, with whom they had had little contact prior to their arrival in California. Such attitudes sometimes led to the use of derogatory language and negative stereotyping of cultural outsiders. Voices from the Dust Bowl illustrates certain universals of human experience: the trauma of dislocation from one's roots and homeplace; the tenacity of a community's shared culture; and the solidarity within and friction among folk groups. Such intergroup tension is further illustrated in this presentation by contemporary urban journalists' portrayals of rural life, California farmers' attitudes toward both Mexican and "Okie" workers, and discriminatory attitudes toward migrant workers in general.

Todd and Sonkin also held recording sessions with a few Mexican migrants living in the El Rio Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp. Unfortunately, the glass-based acetate discs on which the Spanish-language musical performances were recorded did not survive. However, photos from El Rio and interviews with Jose Flores and Augustus Martinez provide a glimpse into the lives and culture of non-Anglo farm workers. This material illustrates that Mexican immigrants had long been an integral part of agricultural production in the United States and were not newcomers on the scene even in 1940. In fact, when the Dust Bowl families arrived in California looking for work, the majority of migrant farm laborers were either Latino or Asian, particularly of Mexican and Filipino descent. Voices from the Dust Bowl is particularly relevant for us today since it demonstrates that living and working conditions of agricultural migrant laborers have changed little in the intervening half century.

Children of Mexican migrant workers posing at entrance to El Rio FSA Camp, El Rio, California, 1941. Photo by Robert Hemmig.

California was emphatically not the promised land of the migrants' dreams. Although the weather was comparatively balmy and farmers' fields were bountiful with produce, Californians also felt the effects of the Depression. Local and state infrastructures were already overburdened, and the steady stream of newly arriving migrants was more than the system could bear. After struggling to make it to California, many found themselves turned away at its borders. Those who did cross over into California found that the available labor pool was vastly disproportionate to the number of job openings that could be filled. Migrants who found employment soon learned that this surfeit of workers caused a significant reduction in the going wage rate. Even with an entire family working, migrants could not support themselves on these low wages. Many set up camps along irrigation ditches in the farmers' fields. These "ditchbank" camps fostered poor sanitary conditions and created a public health problem.

Arrival in California did not put an end to the migrants' travels. Their lives were characterized by transience. In an attempt to maintain a steady income, workers had to follow the harvest around the state. When potatoes were ready to be picked, the migrants needed to be where the potatoes were. The same principle applied to harvesting cotton, lemons, oranges, peas, and other crops. For this reason, migrant populations were most dense in agricultural centers. The territory covered by Todd and Sonkin in this project ranged from as far south as El Rio, just north of Oxnard, to as far north as Yuba City, north of Sacramento. Much of the documentation was concentrated in the San Joaquin Valley.

The Arvin Migratory Labor Camp was the first federally operated camp opened by the FSA in 1937 and the starting point of the Todd/Sonkin expedition. The camps were intended to resolve poor sanitation and public health problems, as well as to mitigate the burden placed on state and local infrastructures. The FSA camps also furnished the migrants with a safe space in which to retire from the discrimination that plagued them and in which to practice their culture and rekindle a sense of community. Although each camp had a small staff of administrators, much of the responsibility for daily operations and governance devolved to the campers themselves. Civil activities were carried out through camp councils and camp courts. Proceedings of council meetings and court sessions can be found among the audio files in this online presentation. Project fieldnotes provide further information about the composition, operation, and context of these bodies as well as details about camp occupancy and organization.

When they were not working or looking for work, or tending to the civil and domestic operations of the camp, the migrants found time to engage in recreational activities. Singing and making music took place both in private living quarters and in public spaces. The music performed by the migrants came from a number of different sources. The majority of pieces belong to the Anglo-Celtic ballad tradition. Songs such as " Barbara Allen", " The Brown Girl", " Nine Little Devils", " Father Rumble", " Lloyd Bateman ", " Pretty Molly ", and " Little Mohee" all reflect this tradition. Gospel and popular music are other sources from which migrants took their inspiration. The minstrel stage, tin pan alley, early country, and cowboy music were all popular music sources that fed the performers' repertoires. The works of the Carter Family, Jimmy Rodgers, and Gene Autry were particular favorites of the migrants. Although all the music in this collection gives us a sense of the informants' cultural milieu, those pieces that document the migrant experience are especially poignant. Songs like Jack Bryant's " Sunny Cal" and Mary Sullivan's ballads " A Traveler's Line" and " Sunny California" all speak of hardship, disappointment, and a deeply cherished wish to return home. In addition to songs and instrumental music, the migrants enjoyed dancing and play-party activities (singing games accompanied by dance-like movements). Included in this online presentation are square dance calls, such as " Soldier's Joy" and " Sally Goodin", and play-party rhymes like " Skip to My Lou" and " Old Joe Clark." Newsletters produced by camp residents provided additional details about camp social life and recreational activities.

As World War II wore on, the state of the economy, both in California and across the nation, improved dramatically as the defense industry geared up to meet the needs of the war effort. Many of the migrants went off to fight in the war. Those who were left behind took advantage of the job opportunities that had become available in West Coast shipyards and defense plants. As a result of this more stable lifestyle, numerous Dust Bowl refugees put down new roots in California soil, where their descendants reside to this day. Voices from the Dust Bowl provides a glimpse into the everyday life and cultural expression of a group of people living through a particularly difficult period in American history. Charles L. Todd's articles " The Okies Search for a Lost Frontier" and " Trampling out the Vintage: Farm Security Camps Provide the Imperial Valley Migrants with a Home and a Hope" give an overview of the historical, economic, and social context in which this collection was created.

Robin A. Fanslow
American Folklife Center
Library of Congress
April 6, 1998

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The Migrant Experience | Articles and Essays | Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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A complex set of interacting forces both economic and ecological brought the migrant workers documented in this ethnographic collection to California. Following World War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops and caused Great Plains farmers to increase their productivity through mechanization and the cultivation of more land.

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Cherokee Chief John Ross
Library of Congress

In the 1830s the United States government forcibly removed the southeastern Native Americans from their homelands and relocated them on lands in Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). This tragic event is referred to as the Trail of Tears. Over 10,000 Native Americans died during removal or soon upon arrival in Indian Territory.

Since its inception, the United States government struggled with a problem: greedy citizens and politicians in the southeast were bent on acquiring the valuable lands occupied by the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, and other Native American nations. After the Louisiana Purchase (an enormous acquisition of territory west of the Mississippi in 1803), President Jefferson presumed that the Native Americans could be persuaded to give up their homes in exchange for land further west.

Following Jefferson's lead, President Andrew Jackson pushed for the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The act provided funds for the United States government to negotiate removal treaties with tribes. The federal government coerced tribal leaders to sign these treaties. Factions arose within the tribes, as many opposed giving up their land. Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross even traveled to Washington to negotiate alternatives to removal and pleaded for the government to redress the injustices of these treaties. The United States government listened, but did not deviate from its policy.

Although President Jackson negotiated the removal treaties, President Martin Van Buren enforced them. The impact of the removal was first felt by the Choctaw. Starting in 1831, they were forced off their lands in Mississippi. The years 1836-38 saw the Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Seminoles forced from their homes and removed to Indian Territory.

Some United States citizens disagreed with the actions of the government. Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee sided with the Native Americans. Christian missionaries also opposed the Indian Removal Act. They denounced the injustice of the policy. "Will not the people in whose power it is to redress Indian wrongs awake to their duty? Will they not think of the multitudes...swept into Eternity by the cupidity of the 'white man' who is in the enjoyment of wealth and freedom on the original soil of these oppressed Indians?" wrote Lucy Ames Butler to her friend Drusilla Burnap in 1839. Lucy's husband was the noted missionary Elizur Butler. He accompanied the Cherokee and served as their doctor and estimated that over 4,000 (a fifth of the Cherokee population) died along the trail.

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Stories of the Trail of Tears - Fort Smith National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

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In the 1830s the United States government forcibly removed the southeastern Native Americans from their homelands and relocated them on lands in Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma). This tragic event is referred to as the Trail of Tears. Over 10,000 Native Americans died during removal or soon upon arrival in Indian Territory.

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Learn California agricultural strikes of 1933 facts for kids

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Learn California agricultural strikes of 1933 facts for kids

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Twinkl Teaching Resources - United States

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The Civil Rights Movement for Kids | What is Segregation? | Black History Month | Twinkl USA

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History

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Written By: Ben Cosgrove

In late 1956, over the course of several months, LIFE published what the magazine described as "a series of major articles on the background of the crisis brought about by the school segregation decision [Brown v. Board of Education] of the Supreme Court. . . . Although the ground that is to be covered in the series is not wholly new to Americans, it is unfamiliar as a subject of moderate and unprejudiced consideration."

The series, titled The Background of Segregation, explored that emotionally and politically charged issue. For one riveting segment of the monumental five-part series, "Voices of the White South," LIFE dispatched the great photographer Margaret Bourke-White to Greenville, South Carolina, where she documented citizens from varying walks of life who unapologetically supported the legacy and the practice of open, legal segregation.

Here, in striking color photographs that, at times, convey an unsettling intimacy, Bourke-White's work opens a window on an era that, for better and for worse, helped define 20th-century America. The "Voices of the White South" article, which won praise and awards when published, was extraordinary for, among other things, the utterly non-sensational methodology and tone of its reportage. While much of the national debate over desegregation was dominated in the mid-1950s by often (and often understandable) heated language and actions "Voices" was a measured take on the issue. Far from emphasizing its own pro-integrationist sensibility, LIFE allowed Southerners to discuss their own pro-segregationist views in their own words, at length and created a portrait of the South far more nuanced than the depiction usually found in the liberal "Yankee" press.

The article was not, in the end, an anti-segregationist screed, but instead an honest glimpse into the heart of a culture frightened of what the future might hold.

"Outside the South," LIFE wrote, "the white Southerner who believes in segregation is sometimes pictured as a latter-day Simon Legree who now does with law what used to be done with a whip. If he no longer runs around wearing a bed sheet and setting fire to crosses, he doubtless belongs to a 'Citizens Council,' which Hodding Carter [then a prominent newspaper editor from Mississippi] has described as 'the uptown Ku Klux Klan.' There are Southerners who fit this picture, but there are many more who are thoughtful, pious gentlefolk and who are still in favor of segregation."

LIFE's Dick Stolley, who would go on to become the magazine's managing editor and the founding Managing Editor of People, among many other roles, worked on the Background of Segregation series as an Atlanta-based correspondent for the magazine. He told LIFE.com that, considering how despised the magazine was across the South for its solidly pro-integration editorial stance, he was "astonished at the time, and I remain astonished today, that I was able to find five Southern whites who were willing to talk to LIFE about their reasons for so adamantly opposing integration."

While the "Voices" article was striking not only for its powerful color photographs and the (largely) subdued tenor of its language-especially in light of the politically and emotionally explosive nature of the topic at hand-a few of the observations made in the piece, encountered six decades later, are beyond jarring. Some of them, in fact even when read with an awareness of the era in which they were written are nothing less than shocking to contemporary ears.

LIFE reminded its readers that ex-Governor Herman Talmadge of Georgia was only one of countless prominent Southerners "who feel that segregation must be preserved." Talmadge, LIFE wrote, believed that "to destroy segregation would be to destroy the South. . . ."

[His] viewpoint is traditional and has, in the eyes of many white Southerners, the honor that attaches to a great past. "God advocates segregation," Governor Talmadge maintains. "There are five different races and God created them all different. He did not intend them to be mixed or He would not have separated or segregated them. Certainly history shows that nations composed of a mongrel race lose their strength and become weak, lazy and indifferent. They become easy prey to outside nations. And isn't that just exactly what the Communists want to happen to the United States?" This is a viewpoint that has been expressed by generations of southern political leaders and remains widely accepted in the rural South today.

In the "Voices" article, a 38-year-old white sharecropper in North Carolina summed up his support of segregation and his views on his black neighbors and fellow farmers this way:

"We're working to own our farm. We want to hurry up and get someplace. But they just don't work. They just don't care. All they're looking for is the end of the week when the landlord will shoot 'em a little money. [T]hey take a bath once a month, and their fields don't look like they's hardly tending them." At the same time, according to LIFE, the sharecropper's approval of segregation was "based as much, or more, on personal pride than notions of color. He would rather have a Negro living next door than he would a white 'redneck' or 'peckerwood.' In his view, 'there's nothing sorrier than a sorry white man.'"

The white sharecropper's wife, LIFE wrote, "also approves of segregation and will not let her 9-year-old daughter play with an 8-year-old Negro neighbor. This is the reason she gives: 'If our landlord came down here and saw her playing with a colored boy, he wouldn't respect us. Only poor class whites do that. We're trying to keep our self-respect and keep the highest level socially we can. We're willing to work with the Negroes, but that's as far as we'll go."

Another quote from the article that shares the sentiment and even the vocabulary of pronouncements that for decades have sent chills through men and women involved in the struggle for justice and equal rights came from Greenville's white mayor, Kenneth Cass. "There is no race trouble here," he told LIFE, "and there won't be, unless an agitator comes in and stirs it up."

One man quoted at some length in the "Voices" article was Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. "'There are those who insist that segregation protects the 'integrity' of both races," McGill said. "There are others who believe, with deep sincerity, that Negroes are 'better off' under it. Conceivably this might be argued with some logic. It does not matter. The world . . . has moved on. Segregation by law no longer fits today's world.... Segregation is on its way out, and he who tries to tell the people otherwise does them a great disservice. The problem of the future is how to live with the change.'"
_________________________________________________________________________

- Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

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Civil Rights and Segregation: Rare Color Photos, South Carolina, 1956

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Color photos by Margaret Bourke-White, shedding light on an era that helped define America in the middle part of the 20th century.

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In the fall and early winter of 1850, the US government forced thousands of Lake Superior Ojibwe to leave their homeland in Wisconsin and gather at Sandy Lake, in Minnesota Territory, to receive an annual treaty payment. When the money never arrived and the government provided spoiled rations, many tried to return to Wisconsin.

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The Heavy Woods at the Center of New York

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Take a Walk Back in Time: Exploring Bushwick History From the Early 1600s to Today : Bushwick Daily - BikeNewzz

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Bushwick History | THE FOOD COMMUNITIES OF NYC

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Founded in 1638, chartered by Peter Stuyvesant in 1661, Bushwick was originally Boswijck. It consisted of modern day Bushwick, Williamsburg, and Greenpoint. It was a Dutch settlement until 1683, when the British crown would take over Bushwick, along with other towns, and unite them under the name Kings County.