Like Civil Rights Movement in Context, this assessment gauges students’ ability to contextualize two historical documents and place them in the correct chronological order. Document A is part of an editorial from a San Francisco newspaper published in 1916. Document B is part of a book titled A Tour in the United States by Archibald Prentice published in 1848. The assessment draws on students' knowledge about American immigration but in a way that goes beyond the simple recall of facts and dates. Students must show that they have a broad understanding of how American immigration changed over time and demonstrate the ability to use that knowledge to place the two documents in context.
In this assessment, students who correctly contextualize the documents will see that Letter B, which describes an easy immigration process for large numbers of German immigrants, was likely written before Letter A, which calls for legislation similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act to exclude Japanese immigrants.
