Mothers and the Movement 11.14.23

• HIS 379 The Family in America
• Year 4

Mothers and the Movement

The History of Family in America (HIST 379)
Dr. Caitlin Wiesner
Main Hall Room 213
November 14, 2023 (Week 10)

drive.google.com

Extra Steps to Remember...

• Rename your Timeline on Google Sheets with your name and move it to “Family Oral History Project HIST 379 Fall 2023”
• Be sure to click “Share” and “Publish to the Web” to make your Timeline visible to others.

 Every Timeline must include:

• A title slide that features an original title and all of the basic information you would typically include on the title page of a course paper (your name, the course number, instructor, semester)
• Five (5) separate entry slides that feature a date, a relevant image, a 200–300-word explanation of an episode of your family’s history that you obtained through your oral history interviews, and a quote drawn from your interviews that illustrate the episode you are discussing.

 You will submit your completed Timeline by copying and pasting the link into your Written Reflection (750-words) and uploading the Word Document to Blackboard.

If you are using images of your family...

I have created a Flickr account for everyone in this course to use.

• Username: [e-mail] 
• Password: TheFamilyInAmerica

Upload a scan of the image that you would like to use to the Photostream, then right-click on the image and select “Copy Image Address.”

Then, paste the image address into the relevant cell in your Timeline spreadsheet.

Confirm with your family members that they are comfortable with their photos being publicly viewable!

“I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 or 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community.” 

– William Levitt

Norman Rockwell, Moving Day (1967)

Restrictive Covenant for Innis Arden, Seattle (1947)

Discuss: "Race Trouble in the North" Newsweek 

(August 30, 1957)

On what grounds did the white residents of Levittown, Pennsylvania oppose the Myers family living among them?

What does the reaction to the Myers family suggest about the place of the family in suburbanization? In the struggle for civil rights?

Crowd protests the Myers family moving into Levittown, PA (August 17, 1957)

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin Photograph Collection

Emmett Louis Till 

(July 25, 1941- August 28, 1955)

Discuss: Chief Justice Earl Warren, Decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967)

According to Chief Justice Earl Warren, why were state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional?

How did the Loving decision reflect the influence of the Civil Rights Movement on American understandings of the family?

The Road to Loving v. Virginia

1948: Sylvester Davis and Andrea Perez of Los Angeles were denied a marriage license based on the California Civil Code declaring “All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void.” 

• California Supreme Court ruled in Perez v. Sharp that the state's ban on interracial marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1964: In McLaughlin v. Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that laws banning interracial sexual relationships violated the equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

• "Any negro man and White woman, or any White man and negro woman, who are not married to each other, who shall habitually live in and occupy in the nighttime the same room shall each be punished by imprisonment not exceeding twelve months, or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars." 

In 1967, only 3 percent of marriages in the U.S. were interracial, according to the Pew Research Center. 

By 2015, that number had risen to 17 percent.

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

We will begin discussion of readings each class with an FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise. All students will free write the following:

     A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
    An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
    A question that the reading raised for you

A fact is an objective and incontrovertible piece of information.
Evidence is the application of one or more facts to support an argument.
An argument is a subjective claim made to expand an area of knowledge.

FAQ (Fact, Argument, Question) Exercise

All students will free write the following:

1.  A fact that stood out to you in the reading (please include page number)
2. An explanation of how that fact works as evidence for the historian’s argument
3. A question that the reading raised for you

Discussion: Robert O. Self, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s (2012)

Part I: This Is a Man's World

1. What is "breadwinner liberalism," and how did it differ from "breadwinner conservatism"? How do these concepts relate to positive and negative rights? 
2. How did the Great Society shore up "breadwinner liberalism," and did this collide with the patriarchal expectation of American men?
3. What impact did the Vietnam War have on masculinity and family relations?
4. How did the homophile and gay liberation movements pose different challenges to family politics of 1960s America?