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Social Protest in Context
Welcome to your new issue of History Happenings, a ProQuest publication that puts current events into historical context.
Each issue contains classroom-ready lesson plans that employ ProQuest Historical Newspapers,
History Study Center,
SIRS Decades, and SIRS Issues Researcher (free trials) to power learning for students in middle through high school and beyond.
Back issues of History Happenings contain free lessons and thought-provoking student research activities centered on
Social Status,
Family Life,
Our Kids, The Military, Women in History, Olympics in History, Nobel Prizes, Health Care, President Obama, Elections, Summer Olympics, Immigration, Freedom, Color of History, and Famous People.
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Theme Overview
International headlines have been dominated in recent months by reports of social unrest and anti-government protests, particularly in the Middle East. In Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere, people have revolted against governments they consider oppressive.
But such social unrest has not been limited to faraway places. Domestic news has also focused on protests—against big government, spending cuts, high taxes, and government-run health care. Some Americans think the government is spending too much; others argue that it is spending too little.
© Getty Images
In this issue of History Happenings, we examine social protest in a historical context. These learning activities focus on 19th-century reaction to immigration, suffrage movements in Britain and the United States, and the U.S. labor movement.
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Progressivism and the Treatment of Immigrants
ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Graphical Edition)
Video Overview
The influx of immigrants into the United States was greater in the decades after the Civil War than it had been at any previous time.
The majority of immigrants arriving to the industrial cities of the East in the 1870s and 1880s came from England, Ireland, and northern Europe.
© Getty Images
At the end of the century, new waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe came to escape the poverty and oppressive conditions of their homelands.
In this new discussion activity from ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Graphical Edition), learn about attitudes toward immigrants in the United States in the 19th century and why many people felt threatened by these new arrivals.
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Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain
History Study Center
Video Overview
In the early part of the 20th century, "suffragette" was used to refer to members of a militant, feminist movement in the United Kingdom that sought to give women the right to vote.
The label was used to distinguish the followers of Emmeline Pankhurst from less militant suffragists.
Two suffragettes help the cause © Getty Images
In this new writing activity from History Study Center, find out more about the suffragettes and evaluate the effectiveness of the protest strategies they used.
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Women's Suffrage in the United States
SIRS Decades
Video Overview
While women lacked the vote for most of the nation's history, they participated in government as workers as far back as the colonial period.
Job opportunities for women in the federal government increased in 1883 when Congress passed the Civil Service Act, making some positions in Washington open to competitive exams.
Circa 1918
Using SIRS Decades, summarize arguments for and against granting women the right to vote during the 1910s and identify tactics used by suffragists that led to successful passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
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Labor Unions and the Middle Class
SIRS Knowledge Source
Video Overview
The ongoing protests and strikes by public employees and Democratic state senators in Wisconsin are the latest chapter in the history of labor unions and the right to collective bargaining. Much of the growth in salaries, benefits, and improvement in working conditions of American workers is the result of the passage of labor laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Each of these labor laws resulted from protests and strikes by workers that brought attention to the need for fairness in employment to Congress and state legislatures. That power of unions and collective bargaining helped make the American economic middle class the largest in the world.
Now, the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has proposed a new budget to cover the shortfall of more than $3 billion by targeting the public employees of Wisconsin to bear the brunt of the budget cuts. This has sparked the protests by teachers and other public employees who oppose the cuts to their salaries, benefits, and pensions while state provides a tax cut for businesses and the rich.
The most onerous provision of the proposed budget, however, is the rescinding of collective bargaining rights for public employee unions.
© Getty Images
These protests are also significant in the fight for worker rights because the Midwest is the birthplace of the modern industrial union. United Auto Workers formed in Detroit. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the union representing many government workers, got its start in Madison, Wisconsin.
In Wisconsin and Ohio, Republican-led legislatures are pushing bills that would strip unions of much of their negotiating power. Republican governor Scott Walker's plan would strip most public employees of collective bargaining on everything but pay. That means when it comes to health benefits or work conditions or anything else up for discussion, power would shift from unions to management.
A majority of workers would also have to re-authorize the union every year, and it would be harder for unions to collect dues. That's what the protesters consider union-busting.
SIRS Learning Activity
Students need to understand more about the history of the modern labor-movement protests and work stoppages that provided the impetus for government to create labor laws.
Each of these separate laws was targeted to help workers to collectively bargain for better salaries, benefits, working conditions, and pensions.
Access our full SIRS activity here.
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