colonial class and labor
To solve labor shortages, Chesapeake colonies used this system which granted 50 acres of land to anyone who paid for the passage of a laborer to the New World.
What is the Headright System?
This term describes the 19th-century anti-immigrant movement that sought to restrict the political power of Irish and German Catholics.
What is Nativism?
These crowded, poorly ventilated apartment buildings became the primary social environment for the urban poor and new immigrants in the late 1800s.
What are Tenements?
This post-WWII phenomenon saw a massive migration of the white middle class from racially mixed cities to homogeneous residential areas.
What is "White Flight" (or Suburbanization)?
This 1676 uprising of landless former indentured servants led Virginia elite to transition toward a more "permanent" and racially defined labor force.
What is Bacon’s Rebellion?
This middle-class social ideal suggested that men belonged in the competitive public world, while women were the moral guardians of the domestic "sphere."
What is the Cult of Domesticity?
This "scientific" theory argued that wealth was a sign of natural superiority and that the poor were simply "unfit" for success.
What is Social Darwinism?
This 1963 book by Betty Friedan helped launch the modern feminist movement by criticizing the "comfortable concentration camp" of suburban housewifery.
What is The Feminine Mystique?
This strict social hierarchy in the Spanish colonies was based on racial ancestry and determined one's legal rights and social prestige.
What is the Casta System?
This 1848 document, modeled after the Declaration of Independence, argued that "all men and women are created equal."
What is the Declaration of Sentiments?
Founded by Jane Addams, these centers provided social services and "Americanization" programs for immigrants in poor urban neighborhoods.
What are Settlement Houses?
This massive internal migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North peaked during and after the World Wars, transforming city demographics.
What is the Great Migration?
This ideology emerged after the Revolution, suggesting women’s social value lay in raising virtuous, politically active sons for the new nation.
What is Republican Motherhood?
This term refers to the hierarchy in the South where a small percentage of "Cotton Kings" or wealthy planters dominated political and social life.
What is the Planter Aristocracy?
This 1896 Supreme Court ruling provided the legal foundation for a racially segregated social structure in the South for over half a century.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This 1965 law abolished the "national origins" quota system, leading to a major shift in the social and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population.
What is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965?
Established in 1649, this Maryland law was a landmark for social structure by offering religious limited toleration to all Christians, primarily to protect the Catholic minority.
What is the Maryland Toleration Act?
Members of this 1840s-50s political party were nicknamed for their secrecy and their platform of stopping the "alien menace" of immigration.
What is the Know-Nothing Party? (or American Party)
This 1882 act was the first major law to restrict immigration based on a specific nationality or ethnic group.
What is the Chinese Exclusion Act?
This 1973 Supreme Court case regarding reproductive rights became a central flashpoint in the "Culture Wars" between social liberals and conservatives.
What is Roe v. Wade?