Focus Question: What are times when American realities conflicted with American ideals?

Workers at the Brookside Cotton Mill in Knoxville, Tennessee

photographed by Lewis Hine, December 1910

Topics on the Page

 
The Constitution and Its Contested Clauses

• Link to Amendments to the Constitution

The Supreme Court and the Court System

Civil Rights for African Americans

Women's Rights Movement

Suppression of Native Americans

LGBTQ Civil Rights Movement

The Labor Movement and Labor Strikes

• Lowell Mill Girls Strikes, 1834 & 1836

• The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• Atlanta Washerwomen Strike, 1881

• The Pullman Strike, 1894

• Shirtwaist Makers Strike of 1909 and Bread and Roses Strike of 1912

• Delano Grape Strike and Boycott, 1965-1970 

American Foreign Policy

• The Barbary Pirates

• Annexation of Hawaii

• Building the Panama Canal

• The Great White Fleet

• The Manhattan Project

• A Vietnam War WikiQuest

The Constitution and Its Contested Clauses

Reading Between the Lines of the Constitution: An Annotated Guide from The New York Times in 2011 offers a guide to some of the most contested clauses in the Constitution by groups from all sides of the political spectrum.
 

A blog post from the Progressive Cynic on American Reality vs. American Ideals.

Majority Rule and Minority Rights, Annenberg Classroom, Annenberg Public Policy Center

The Supreme Court & Court Systems

 
The Supreme Court is the final interpreter of federal constitutional law in the U.S. legal system.

When a person feels their constitutional rights have been violated, they can file litigation and go to court. If their case gets appealed up to the Supreme Court, it is there that the case is decided to be constitutional or not.
Many issues of conflicted ideals have been resolved or further complicated by the court system.

• Crash Course video on the Supreme Court

• List of Landmark Supreme Court cases

Timeline of Supreme Court cases

Some examples of when our nation's ideals conflicted with its reality can be seen with the following examples:
 

Civil Rights for African Americans 

• Click here to read Frederick Douglass' speech "The Hypocrisy of American Slavery."

Link to Accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement

The Women's Rights Movement

• Before the Women's Rights Movement of the 1960's came the Women's Suffrage Movement in the previous century. It culminated in 1920 with the passage of the 19th amendment, which prohibited denying people the right to vote because of their sex. 
• For a timeline of the whole movement, photos, and cartoons, click here. 

For a lesson plan from the Library of Congress on women's suffrage, click here.

The Suppression of Native Americans

• Documentary on the horrific treatment of Indigenous People by the US government, including Standing Rock.

Image result for Suppression of Native Americans

Trail of Tears Documentary

The Labor Movement

• Plutocracy, a full-length documentary on the suppression of the Labor movement

Cross Link to pages for

• Lowell Mill Girls Strikes, 1834 & 1836

• The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

• Atlanta Washerwomen Strike, 1881

• The Pullman Strike, 1894

• Shirtwaist Makers Strike of 1909 and Bread and Roses Strike of 1912

• Delano Grape Strike and Boycott, 1965-1970

LGBT Rights Movement

Timeline of LGBT Rights

LGBT Rights Milestones Fast Facts

Video on Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage

See also LGBTQ Histories and Change Makers

• The Lavender Scare

• The Stonewall Uprising

• Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights and Gay Rights Activist

• LGBTQ Rights Supreme Court Cases

• The HIV/AIDS Epidemic in the US and the World

Like Walking Through a Hailstorm: Discrimination Against LGBT Youth in US Schools, Human Rights Watch (December 2017)

• 8 states have laws restricting teachers from talking about LGBTQ issues in schools

• 20 states have laws prohibiting the bullying of students based on sexual orientation and gender identity

• 23 states have laws prohibiting workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity

American Foreign Policy

Throughout the twentieth century, and especially during the Cold War, the United States intervened in the politics of many countries. 

• The reasons for these interventions are complex, but often it had to do with business interests and preventing the spread of Communism. Oftentimes, these interventions involved behavior that was contradictory to classic American ideals.

• A good example of this occurred in Chile with the overthrow of democratically elected leader Salvador Allende in 1973. 
• To learn about the overthrow and the involvement of the US, click here.

Monroe Doctrine:
President James Monroe first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress.

 
The Monroe Doctrine was a United States policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas beginning in 1823. European countries were to stay out of the Western Hemisphere, which meant that they were not allowed to intervene in the affairs of territories in the western hemisphere. 

American Foreign Wars
US Mexico War 1846
US Spanish War (1898-1901), Cuba, Hawaii, Philippines, Guatemala, Panama
Vietnam War (1958-60)
Korean War (1950)

Image result for American expansion in the Caribbean

To learn about a similar event that occurred in Guatemala in 1954, watch this short video.

Check out this lesson plan on Thinkfinity that aims to show students the different social injustices forced upon peoples abroad and at home on American soil, including Native Americans and Japanese Americans.