New York City
For books, articles, and websites (other than the ones listed below) dealing with the general question of immigration to the United States, go to my "Archivist" column for the March 2005 issue on immigration and click on the "Immigration Resources" section:
/historynow/
03_2005/ask2b.php
Books:
The impact of "new immigrants" on New York City in the late
twentieth century has already sparked several able books, including one
by the author of the essay you've just read here:
Cannato, Vincent. The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. New York: Basic Books, c2001.
Foner, Nancy, ed. New Immigrants in New York. New York: Columbia University Press, c2001.
Reimers, David M. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America: Columbia University Press, c1992.
Waters, Mary C., and Reed Ueda. The New Americans: A Guide To Immigration Since 1965. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007 (An encyclopedic study, with twenty thematic essays on such topics as immigration law and policy, refugees, unauthorized migrants, racial and ethnic identity, assimilation, followed by articles on immigration from the thirty most significant nations or regions of origin).
Some of the most recent and useful surveys of New York City history are:
Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jackson, Kenneth T., and David S. Dunbar. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.
Lankevich, George J. American Metropolis: A History of New York City. New York: New York University Press, c1998.
These books provide useful background on Ellis Island's career as a processing point for immigrants:
Moreno, Barry. Encyclopedia of Ellis Island. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Novotny, Ann. Strangers at the Door; Ellis Island, Castle Garden, and the Great Immigration to America. Riverside, CT: Chatham Press, 1971.
Pitkin, Thomas M. Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island. New York: New York University Press, 1975.
The life of immigrants in Manhattan is discussed in this book:
Maffi, Mario. Gateway to the Promised Land: Ethnic Cultures on New York's Lower East Side. New York: New York University Press, c1995.
Anti-immigrant feeling and immigration restriction through government policy are discussed here:
Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants Since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.
Hing, Bill Ong. Defining America Through Immigration Policy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.
LeMay, Michael C., From Open Door to Dutch Door: An Analysis of U.S. Immigration Policy Since 1820. New York: Praeger, 1987.
Tichenor, Daniel J. Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Websites:
The best general website for New York City is the GothamEd site of the City University. This is continually evolving, so keep your eye on "Teaching NYC and the Nation":
http://www.gothamed.org/nycnation/
The same site's "Research NYC History" page provides a good basic bibliography and Web links:
http://www.gothamed.org/researching/
PBS "Big Apple History" website is interactive as the dickens. Your students may have fun with it, but be warned there isn't too much meat there. Still, you'll want to look at the Ellis Island segment:
http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/immigration/topic7.html
You'll also want to visit the website mounted by the foundation responsible for much of Ellis Island's restoration. It has the best online timeline and graph I've seen tracing immigration from all parts of the world in its "Peopling of America" site:
http://www.ellisisland.org/immexp/wseix_4_3.asp?
The same site has historical text and images in its "Immigrant Experience" section:
http://www.ellisisland.org/Immexp/index.asp
For teaching purposes, I think you'll find far far more at the National Park Service site for Ellis Island. I very much like this site's brief history of Ellis Island:
http://www.nps.gov/elis/historyculture/index.htm
On a more practical level, the Park Service offers traveling trunk packages for classroom use:
http://www.nps.gov/elis/forteachers/travellingtrunks.htm
And they recently inaugurated a brand new feature: a distance learning opportunity called "A Distant Shore." If your school has teleconferencing equipment, you can make an appointment for a virtual tour of Ellis Island, conducted by a Park ranger who can answer questions from you and your students:
http://www.nps.gov/elis/forteachers/distancelearningopportunities.htm
Turning to television-related websites, I'll start with the History Channel's 3-part series, Ellis Island. Teacher's guides are geared for use with the video:
http://www.history.com/classroom/guides/#e
Public television – national and local – provides more generally applicable materials.
New York 's Channel Thirteen Online has a terrific virtual tour of the Tenement Museum. You can't beat it for an online introduction to immigrant life in Manhattan in the early twentieth century:
http://www.thirteen.org/tenement/
The lesson plans for PBS's "New Americans" documentaries (Independent Lens series) are extraordinarily good and generally function independently of viewing the series:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/newamericans/
foreducators_index.php
"The American Mosaic" study plan at this site is among the best you'll find for helping students reflect on the immigrant experience in general:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/newamericans/
foreducators_lesson_plan_08.html
Another of Ric Burns's PBS American Experience series, New York: A
Documentary Film, provides good materials in its Teachers Guide:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyor k/tguide/index.php#hist
I'll confess a weakness for their "Layers of Lower Manhattan" map:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/maps/maps_pop.html
But the section on New York City and immigration is more to the point for this issue of History Now:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/newyork/peopleevents/e_global.html
I'll close with the riches available at my old home, the Library of Congress's American Memory service. For a start, the section called "The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906" boasts nearly four dozen early films of NYC, 1898-1906:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/nychome.html
American Memory's "Learning Pages" are exceptionally good for the topic of this essay. Try the "Port of Entry" page for recapturing experience of an immigrant at Ellis Island:
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/port/teacher.php
Similarly, the "Learning Page" for the New York City films is a winner:
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/collections/nyfilm/history.html
As is the one on "Immigration":
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/featur
es/timeline/riseind/immgnts/
land.html
What the heck, just use the "Search" box on this page and follow your eyes and your brain to see what else they have:
