The Native Americans, African Americans, and all other immigrants at one point had a difficult

obstacle to overcome some had more than others. The Native Americans had foreigners force
them off their land, kill them and their wild life, change their religion, languages, and cultural
identity. The African Americans were kidnaped from their homes, sold into slavery, and
discriminated against in every way.
For the Native Americans the first years of colonial life were relatively peaceful. In Quebec a
flourishing fur trade developed between the Indians and the French colonists, but as soon as it
became apparent that with the arrival of English colonists more and more land would be taken
from them, the Indians began to resist (Olson & Beal pg.25). Then with the different Acts like
the 1830 Indian Removal Act, Railroad Land Grants of 1850-1871, Dawes Act of 1887, and
Homestead Act of 1862 all forced Native Americans off their lands and into reservations and
then made the reservations smaller. In 1838, as the deadline for removal approached, thousands
of federal soldiers and Georgia volunteers entered the territory and forcibly relocated the
Cherokees. Americans hunted, imprisoned, raped, and murdered Native Americans. Cherokees
surviving the onslaught were forced on a 1,000-mile march to the established Indian Territory
with few provisions. Approximately 4,000 Cherokees died on this Trail of Tears
(loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/native
_american). For Native Americans, the environment was holy, possessing a cosmic significance
more important than its material riches (Olson & Beal pg.23).

Where the Cherokee trail crosses the Overland Trail History of

the American West: 1860-1920
(loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/native
_american).
They also had to endure the constant presence of white idealists bent on converting them to
Christianity (Olson & Beal pg.194). Reservation life also produced a burst of supernaturalism.
Sometime between 1869 and 1872, the Paiute prophet Wovoka announced a special revelation
from the great spirit, and his vision soon evolved into the Ghost Dance religion. The ceremony
consisted of four straight nights of exhausting dances and offered spiritual reassurance.
According to this theology, God had punished the Indians for their sins by sending whites to rape
the land and slaughter the people. Soon, however, with Indian repentance complete, God would
destroy whites, resurrect the Indian dead, and restore the buffalo herds (Olson & Beal pg.195).
Frustrated missionaries and government agents outlawed the Ghost Dance and the Sun Dance. In
a nation where religious freedom was sacred, Congress authorized government agents in 1884 to

cooperate with local missionaries in suppressing Native American religions (Olson & Beal
pg.197). Also there were boarding schools designed to remove Native American children from
the tribal environment and teach Christianity. Another thing missionaries and government agents
tried to change about the Native Americans is their language, they punished Native American
children for speaking native dialects and not English (Olson & Beal pg.197). They also taught
English to the rest of the tribe trying to assimilate them to the rest of the nation.
Reformers sincerely believed that cultural change would help Native Americans. Trying to
explain the continuing vitality of the culture, white reformers focused on government policy. The
real solution was to break up the tribes, distribute reservation land to individual families, and
turn the people into yeoman farmers. But once proud hunters viewed farming as demeaning
womans work (Olson & Beal pg.197-198). Reformers still wanted to divest Indians of their
cultures, frustrated missionaries and government agents outlawed the expression of Native
American culture. In New Mexico, Pueblos could not continue initiation rites for the young, and
Arapahos in Wyoming had to give up their funeral ceremonies. Federal narcotics officers
zealously suppressed peyotism. On reservations, government agents prohibited tribal dances,
drumming, and body painting. Reservation agents also dissolved plural marriages among Native
Americans, giving little thought to the plight of woman deprived husbands. Some Indian agents
even insisted that former warriors cut their hair (Olson & Beal pg.197).
Considering all of the horrible things the Native Americans have been through, they lost their
religion, language, tribal traditions, and integrity of their land. A once proud people beaten and
forced onto reservations forced to cut their hair, farm the land that they considered sacred, and
suppressed various ritual.
The African Americans have endured a lot of trials and tribulations throughout history. They
have been stolen from their homeland, sold into slavery, beaten, abused, killed, and discriminated
against.
In 1443, the first African slaves were taken by the Portuguese. Within a century, the Portuguese
forged the slave trade to supply Brazilian sugar plantations. The Atlantic slave trade included
three stages. First, slaves had to be captured, and European traders relied on other Africans for
the task. For centuries, West Africans had trafficked in slaves. Most were house servants who
shared their masters race and whose opportunities for adoption or freedom were relatively good.
Slavery was not harsh, exploitive institutions it became in the New World. At first, the slave
trade was a casual affair. By the eighteenth century, however, the trade had become a major cause
of war in Africa as coastal tribes competed to supply New World plantations (Olson & Beal
pg.95).
After plying the African coast for several months acquiring cargo, the slave ships turned west for
America. This was the third stage-the middle passage. Hundreds of slaves were crowded into
dark, damp holds of slave ships for months at a time, with little or no exercise, subsistence diets,
and no sanitary facilities. Mortality rates from flu, dysentery, pleurisy, pneumonia, and smallpox
skyrocketed. Thousands died from fixed melancholy, a form of mental depression so severe
that its victims lost the will to live. Perhaps 20 million slaves were taken from Africa to the

Western Hemisphere between 1600 and 1800. As many as 40 percent died in transit. It was, as
one European trader recalled, a dreadful business (Olson& Beal pg.96).
At first, the law viewed Africans as indentured servants, and they were released after seven to ten
years of work. Between 1619 and 1660, however, laws prohibiting interracial sex and the
possession of firearms by Africans appeared in Virginia. The length of service for Africans
gradually increased, distinguishing them from white indentured servants. In 1661, shortly
thereafter declared that the children of lifetime servants inherited their parents legal status. Soon
the law viewed slaves as property, people subject to the absolute legal control or their masters
(Olson & Beal pg.97).
Finally, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, liberation only the
slaves in the rebellious states. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in December 1865, extended
the Emancipation Proclamation to the border states. Slavery was dead (Olson & Beal pg.109110). Even though it was a huge step for African Americans it was by no means the end of the
road for discrimination. State legislatures enacted black codes segregating African Americans
in schools and public facilities, prohibiting them from carrying firearms or changing jobs,
imposing strict vagrancy and curfew regulations, and making it virtually impossible to enter the
skilled trades or the professions (Olson & Beal pg.110). It wasnt until the 1950s that various
desegregation cases of public places and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that helped African
Americans climb out of the clutches of oppression.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivering "I Have a Dream" at the

1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March. (wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream).
One of the other ethnic groups that had a difficult time being accepted in America was the
Filipinos. With passage of the immigration Nationality Act of 1965, immigration from the
Philippines increased, and by the 1980s and early 1990s Filipinos constituted the most rapidly
growing Asian immigrant group (Olson & Beal pg.288).
But in the 1980s poverty stalked them, large scale immigration guaranteed that most Filipino
Americans were newcomers with extremely limited resources, and unlike the Chinese and
Japanese immigrants, they had no organization like the hin kuan or the kenjinkai to provide
capital to finance businesses, and racist attitudes in many unions closed access to skilled jobs

(Olson & Bealpg.289). From 1898 to 1946, Filipinos, classified as American nationals, could
travel abroad with an American passport and could enter and leave the United States at will, until
the Tydings- McDuffie Act limited the number entering as immigrants to 50 a year. The
opportunity for most Filipinos to become American citizens before 1946 was closed to them by
the United Stated Supreme Court in its 1925 decision, Toyota v. United Stated. This decision
declared that only whites or persons of African descent were entitled to citizenship, thus closing
the opportunity for Filipinos to become United States citizens. Those Filipinos, however, who
had enlisted and served three years in the United States Navy, Marine Corps, or Naval Auxiliary
Service during World War I and who had received an honorable discharge could apply for
citizenship. In 1946, Congress passed a law that permitted Filipinos to qualify for American
citizenship. The inability to acquire citizenship, besides being a social stigma, presented serious
economic and political implications. Since most states required citizenship to practice law,
medicine, and other licensed professions and occupations, Filipinos were prohibited from these
occupations. Filipinos had no recognized voice of protest to speak for them, unlike immigrants
from other countries who had ambassadors and consults to support them
(everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Filipino-AmericansAcculturationandAssimilation).
Filipinos were frequently denied service in restaurants and barbershops and were barred from
swimming pools, movies, and tennis courts. They found that their dark skin and imperfect
English marked them, in the eyes of whites, as being different and therefore inferior
(everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Filipino-AmericansAcculturationandAssimilation). Another
thing that the Filipinos had to face were white Californians presented several contradictions that
confused Filipinos. Farmers and certain urban enterprises welcomed them because they provided
cheap labor. However, discriminatory attitudes relegated them to low-paying jobs and an inferior
social existence. Consequently, many other Californians criticized the Filipinos' substandard
living conditions and attacked them for creating health problems and lowering the American
standard of living. Faced with discrimination in real estate, Filipinos were forced into "Little
Manilas" in California cities. Filipinos in cities such as Chicago, New York, and Washington,
D.C., also clustered together (everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/FilipinoAmericansAcculturationandAssimilation).

Filipino immigrants came to the United States in the early 1900s looking for a better life
(everyculture.com/multi/Du-Ha/Filipino-AmericansAcculturationandAssimilation).

REFLECTION
During this class I have learned a lot about the different immigrants and the difficulties they face
in their homeland, their journey to America, and the obstacles in America. It seems that if you
were not a white protestant then you were discriminated against in one way or another.
The Native Americans had to face being forced off their land, death of tribal member and their
wild life, forced to change their religion, languages, and cultural identity. The 1830 Indian
Removal Act forced them off their lands. Then Various acts reduced the size of the land they
were forced move to like the Railroad Land Grants of 1850-1871, Dawes Act of 1887, and
Homestead Act of 1862
The African Americans were kidnaped from their homes, sold into slavery, and discriminated
against in every way. At first, the law viewed Africans as indentured servants, and they were
released after seven to ten years of work. Soon the law viewed slaves as property, people subject
to the absolute legal control or their masters (Olson & Beal pg.97). Other people with dark
colored skin were also discriminated against it didnt matter if they were from Asia, Filipinos,
Korea, Japan, India, or south Italy.
Another reason to be discriminated against even if you were white, was religion if people were
anything other than protestant then they were thought to be inferior. For centuries people and
governments have been discriminative towards Jews. With the assassination of Russian Tsar
Alexander II in 1881 ushered in a new era of violence and anti-Jewish sentiment. Pogroms, or
massacres, by the Slavs against the Jews had occurred since the mid-seventeenth century, but the
pogroms of 1881 and 1882 were particularly numerous and intense, wiping out entire villages
and killing hundreds of Jews. Also, industrialization made it difficult for Jewish peddlers,
merchants, and artisans to sustain themselves economically. As a result, a mass exodus of Jews
from eastern Europe occurred, with approximately 90 percent bound for America
(everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/Jewish-Americans).
Catholic was another big religion that was discriminated against. When the Irish started to
immigrate they occupied a rung on the social ladder not far above slaves and free blacks because
of their poverty and Roman Catholicism (Olson & Beal pg.41). Public schools discriminated
against them by teaching how bad Catholicism was and how dumb Irish people were.
There are many different examples of how all people were discriminated against and the
hardships they faced caused by other races and nationalities. Some people even discriminated
against people form the same country.