Boston

Boston, city, capital of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and seat of Suffolk county, in the northeastern United States. It lies on Massachusetts Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean. The city proper has an unusually small area for a major city, and more than one-fourth of the total—including part of the Charles River, Boston Harbor, and a portion of the Atlantic—is water. Area city, 46 square miles (119 square km). Pop. (2000) 589,141; Boston-Quincy Metro Division, 1,812,937; Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metro Area, 4,391,344; (2010) 617,594; Boston-Quincy Metro Division, 1,887,792; Boston-Cambridge-Quincy Metro Area, 4,552,402.

Character of the city

The area, the people, and the institutions within its political boundaries can only begin to define the essence of Boston. Its nickname “Beantown” has its origin in colonial times, when Boston, as a stop on a major trade route with the West Indies, had a steady supply of molasses from the Caribbean, thus leading to the creation of a popular dish that became known as Boston baked beans (beans baked in molasses). As a city and as a name, Boston is a symbol of much that has gone into the development of the American consciousness, and its presence reaches far beyond its immediate environs. As the spiritual capital of the New England states, as the progenitor of the American Revolution and the nation, and as the earliest centre of American culture, Boston has influenced the country for some three centuries. Though Boston, like New England in general, has played a lessening role in national life since the early 20th century, it has remained the focal point of what may be the most diversified and dynamic combination of educational, cultural, and medical and scientific activities in the United States.

Area of the colonial town

The hilly Shawmut Peninsula, upon which Boston was settled, originally was almost completely surrounded by water. It was connected with mainland Roxbury to the south by a narrow neck of land along the line of present-day Washington Street. To the west of the neck were great reaches of mudflats and salt marshes that were covered by water at high tide and known collectively as the Back Bay. The Charles River flowed through the Back Bay to Boston Harbor and separated the peninsula from the mainland to the north and west. To the east, Town Cove indented Boston’s harbour front and divided the city into the North End and the South End. The centre of the colonial town was at the present Old State House (1711–47).




Although this original centre and the colonial South End have long been given over to offices and retail stores, a few 18th-century buildings remain: Faneuil Hall (1742–1805), the Old Corner Book Store (1711), the Old South Meeting House (1729), and King’s Chapel (1750). The North End is the only part of the early town that has remained residential since the 1630 settlement. Colonial survivals such as the Paul Revere House (c. 1680) and Christ Church (1723)—the Old North Church from which lanterns revealed the route of the British march to Lexington in 1775—coexist with the busy life of a traditionally Italian American community.


The long shoreline, only a few minutes’ walk from any part of the peninsula, provided ample space for wharves and shipyards. From the first years of settlement, the shoreline constantly encroached on the harbour as wharves were built and marshy coves were filled. West of the original settlement lay Boston Common, a tract that has remained public open space since its purchase by the town in 1634.

Atlantic City

Atlantic City, resort city, Atlantic county, southeastern New Jersey, U.S., on the Atlantic Ocean. It lies on low, narrow, sandy, 10-mile- (16-km-) long Absecon Island, which is separated from the mainland by a narrow strait and several miles of meadows partly covered with water at high tide. The area was inhabited by Delaware Indians before English settlers arrived in the late 1670s. Development of the island as a summer resort was first envisioned by physician Jonathan Pitney, who arrived about 1820 and wanted to establish a health resort. He later headed a group that persuaded the Camden and Atlantic Railroad to make the place its eastern terminus. Its success spurred construction of another line, the Narrow Gauge Railroad, in 1877.


Atlantic City’s mild winter climate, tempered by the Gulf Stream, made it a popular resort. Its famous Boardwalk, initially 8 feet (2 metres) wide and 1 mile (1.6 km) long, was built in 1870; it was later extended to a width of 60 feet (18 metres) and a length of 5 miles (8 km). Other innovations enhancing the resort’s reputation included the rolling chair (1884), in which guests were wheeled about, the introduction from Germany of the picture postcard (1895), and saltwater taffy. Amusement piers, jutting from the Boardwalk into the ocean, brought a carnival atmosphere with their vendors, shows, and exhibits. The largest, Steel Pier, is 2,300 feet (700 metres) long. The construction of Convention Hall (1929, new wing completed in 1972), with its 41,000-seat auditorium, made Atlantic City a popular convention site. The Miss America Pageant, held there annually in September, was established in 1921, discontinued in 1928, and revived in 1935.




Atlantic City’s resort trade declined in the decades following World War II. In hopes of reviving the city’s stagnating economy, a statewide referendum legalizing gambling in Atlantic City was passed in 1976. As a consequence, the first legal gambling casino in the United States located outside the state of Nevada opened on the Boardwalk in May 1978. The development of gambling resorts provided an influx of jobs and money, but much of Atlantic City beyond the Boardwalk remained blighted and impoverished.


Tourism remains the mainstay of the economy. The city also is a trade and shipping centre for agricultural products and seafood and has light manufacturing (textiles, candy, glassware, and china). Absecon Lighthouse State Historic Site is nearby; the 167-foot (51-metre) lighthouse was in service from 1857 to 1933. The Historic Towne of Smithville, 6 miles (10 km) north, has restored 18th- and 19th-century buildings including a general store, a gristmill, and an inn. Greater Atlantic City embraces the down-beach communities of Ventnor, Margate, and Longport and the mainland communities of Absecon, Pleasantville, Northfield, Linwood, and Somers Point. On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall at the New Jersey shore, causing extensive damage; in Atlantic City, it destroyed large portions of the Boardwalk, severely eroded the beach, and inundated some four-fifths of the city. Inc. 1854. Pop. (2000) 40,517; Atlantic City–Hammonton Metro Area, 252,552; (2010) 39,558; Atlantic City–Hammonton Metro Area, 274,549.

New Jersey

Although it has major social, economic, and political force in its own right, New Jersey is sometimes looked upon as a stepchild among the heavily industrialized and populated states along the Eastern Seaboard. New Jersey is one of the smallest states in area, but it is highly urbanized and has one of the country’s highest population densities. Hundreds of thousands of its citizens commute to New York and Pennsylvania. New Jersey’s transportation system is one of the busiest and most extensive in the world, and it weaves the state into the fabric of the region by funneling goods and people to New York City and other points north and to Philadelphia and points south. For hundreds of thousands of visitors it offers long stretches of fine beaches along the Atlantic Ocean, and the resort town of Atlantic City may be better known than the state itself.




Above all, New Jersey is rife with contradiction and anomaly. Its people fiercely fight off attempts of state government to end home rule by powerful municipal administrations. While the state has produced some of the most able and respected U.S. governors, corruption has often played a part in its local politics, and it has achieved notoriety as a major locus of organized crime.


New Jersey is called the Garden State because it became famous in the 18th century for the fertility of its land. It is now also among the most urbanized and crowded of states. The urban density of its northeast contrasts sharply, however, with the rugged hills of the northwest, the enormous stretches of pine forest in the southeast (the Pine Barrens), and the rolling and lush horse country in the south-central part of the state. New Jersey is an important industrial centre, but it has paid the price in environmental pollution, in dirt and noise, and in congested roads and slums. In sum, New Jersey is a curious amalgam of urban and rural, poor and wealthy, progressive and conservative, parochial and cosmopolitan. Indeed, it is one of the most diverse states in the union. Area 7,812 square miles (20,233 square km). Population (2010) 8,791,894; (2012 est.) 8,864,590.

People

Population composition

New Jersey’s population reflects the immigration patterns of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Germans and Slavs, Russian and European Jews, Irish, and Italians. Those categorized as white (i.e., generally of European origin) constitute more than two-thirds of the population. New Jersey was a prime destination for the waves of African Americans who left the South during and after World War II; more than one-tenth of the state’s total population is made up of African Americans. There is also a sizable Hispanic population, the largest subgroups of which are Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and Cubans. In the late 20th century, immigrant groups began to grow even more diverse and included South Asians, Portuguese, different Latin American groups, and others.

Italian Americans are the state’s largest ethnic group. They are the predominant white bloc in the cities, although the cities also contain sizable Polish, Hungarian, and other eastern European groups. Italian Americans and African Americans dominate the political and cultural life of the cities—a situation that at times has brought the two groups into competition and conflict.

Climate

The northwest experiences relatively cold winters, with average January temperatures below 28 °F (−2 °C). Relatively mild conditions prevail in the south, with average winter temperatures above freezing. Summers are relatively hot throughout the state, with averages for July ranging from about 70 °F (21 °C) in the northwest to above 76 °F (24 °C) in the southwest. Moist conditions prevail, with seasonally well-distributed precipitation averaging from 44 inches to more than 52 inches (1,120 to 1,320 mm).

Niagara Falls

Niagara Falls, cataract on the Niagara River in northeastern North America, one of the continent’s most famous spectacles. The falls lie on the border between Ontario, Canada, and New York state, U.S. For many decades the falls were an attraction for honeymooners and for such stunts as walking over the falls on a tightrope or going over them in a barrel. Increasingly, however, the appeal of the site has become its beauty and uniqueness as a physical phenomenon.

The falls are in two principal parts, separated by Goat Island. The larger division, adjoining the left, or Canadian, bank, is Horseshoe Falls; its height is 185 feet (56 metres), and the length of its curving crest line is about 2,200 feet (670 metres). The American Falls, adjoining the right bank, are 190 feet (58 metres) high and 1,060 feet (320 metres) across.

The formation of the Niagara gorge (downriver) and the maintenance of the falls as a cataract depend upon peculiar geologic conditions. The rock strata from the Silurian Period (about 445 to 415 million years ago) in the Niagara gorge are nearly horizontal, dipping southward only about 20 feet per mile (almost 4 metres per km). An upper layer of hard dolomite is underlain by softer layers of shale. Water exerts hydrostatic pressure and only slowly dissolves the dolomite after infiltrating its joints. Dolomite blocks fall away as water from above infiltrates and rapidly erodes the shale at the falls itself. The disposition of the rock strata provides the conditions for keeping the water constantly falling vertically from an overhanging ledge during a long period of recession (movement upstream) of the cataract. As blocks of dolomite are undercut they fall off and are rapidly destroyed by the falling water, further facilitating the retreat of the falls and the maintenance of a vertical cataract.


The water flowing over the falls is free of sediment, and its clearness contributes to the beauty of the cataract. In recognition of the importance of the waterfall as a great natural spectacle, the province of Ontario and the state of New York retained or acquired title to the adjacent lands and converted them into public parks.


In recent years the very large diversion of water above the falls for hydroelectric-power purposes has lessened the rate of erosion. Elaborate control works upstream from the falls have maintained an even distribution of flow across both the U.S. and Canadian cataracts, thereby preserving the curtains of the waterfalls. A large part of the great river above the falls is diverted and disappears into four great tunnels for use in the power plants downstream. Owing to concern over the possibility of major rockfalls, water was diverted from the American Falls in 1969, and some cementing of the bedrock was done; an extensive boring and sampling program was also carried out. River flow was returned to the American Falls in November of that year, and it was decided that safety measures for the viewing public should be implemented and that measures to stem natural processes were both too expensive and undesirable.


Excellent views of the falls are obtained from Queen Victoria Park on the Canadian side; from Prospect Point of the U.S. side at the edge of the American Falls; and from Rainbow Bridge, which spans the Niagara gorge about 1,000 feet (300 metres) downstream from Prospect Point. Visitors may cross from the U.S. shore to Goat Island by footbridge and may take an elevator to the foot of the falls and visit the Cave of the Winds behind the curtain of falling water. The Horseshoe Falls, which carry about 90 percent of the river’s discharge, receded upstream at an average rate of about 5.5 feet (1.7 metres) per year in 1842–1905. Thereafter, control works and the diversion of water decreased the erosion rate, which is presently so slow at the American Falls that large blocks of dolomite accumulate at the base of the falls, threatening to turn it into rapids.

 

The people: New York

The people

Ethnic and religious diversity

In a city that embraces change as its primary tradition, the shifting population base of New York remains its most dramatic story. At the end of the 20th century, representatives of some 200 national groups were counted among its people. While people of European ancestry still make up one-third of the population, Hispanics account for nearly one-third, and African Americans about one-fourth. The fastest-growing component of the population is Asian, soaring from a tiny proportion in 1970 to more than one-tenth in the late 1990s. Dominicans were the most numerous immigrants during the last decade of the 20th century, but they were closely followed by Russians and Chinese, people yearning to “make it.” The Statue of Liberty, more than a century after its dedication in the harbour (1886), continues to be the most powerful symbol of New York, as it welcomes newcomers into the city’s “golden door.”

People from each ethnic group have climbed the ladder of acculturation, achieved their goals to a greater or lesser extent, and then, in turn, found fault with the masses that followed them to the promised city. As early as 1643, Father (later Saint) Isaac Jogues catalogued 18 languages that were being used on the streets of New Amsterdam, and that cosmopolitan atmosphere was retained when Dutch control ended and Britain assumed power. Jews, Roman Catholics, and numerous ethnic groups lived in Manhattan before the end of the 17th century, but political control remained in the hands of the established merchant elite. When the American Revolution began, more prominent Dutch families—the Van Cortlandts, De Peysters, and Schuylers—supported the cause than did their English counterparts. One unanticipated result of the fighting was that many slaves, perhaps one-fifth of the city population in 1776, won freedom. One of the first “history” books of New York was a satiric look at the merchant elite and the city’s Dutch past written in 1809 by Diedrich Knickerbocker (Washington Irving). Spoken Dutch was heard on city streets until the late 19th century, when such families as the Roosevelts and the Vanderbilts were important members of Manhattan’s elite.

The dedication of the first St. Patrick’s Cathedral between Mott and Mulberry streets in 1815 signaled the rising prominence of the Irish. By 1844, 15 parishes served more than 80,000 Irish Roman Catholics, and it was clear even before the Great Famine immigration of 1845–49 that New York was becoming predominantly Irish. More than 24,000 Germans also lived in Manhattan, a number that vastly increased following the failed revolutions of the 1840s. Irish workers had to contend with signs warning “No Irish need apply,” and their poor circumstances soon created one of New York’s most notorious slums, the Five Points District. Germans, who were largely Protestant or Jewish, were more middle-class and perhaps had a slightly easier acclimation; they created the Kleindeutschland (“Little Germany”) neighbourhood east of the Bowery. So great was the pressure of immigration that Castle Garden, near the Battery, was converted into a reception centre, a role it fulfilled from 1855 to 1890. By the time of the American Civil War, Irish, Germans, and several other ethnic groups made the city’s population more than half foreign-born.


The arrival of “new” immigrants from eastern and southern Europe after 1880 again changed Manhattan. The Irish and Germans, who by then held a vast proportion of political and economic power, deeply resented the Italians, Greeks, Russians, Hungarians, and Poles crowding into their city. Ellis Island, a new immigrant reception station, was built in 1892 to deal with the unprecedented numbers of newcomers, and by 1900 the Lower East Side recorded one of the greatest population densities in world history. Ellis Island processed about 12,000 people per day, and in 1907 some 1.2 million entered the United States through the port. The austere New York Times wrote that “cleanliness is an unknown quality to these people. They cannot be lifted to a higher plane because they do not want to be.” Tuberculosis became the “Jewish” disease, and New York’s police commissioner played the demagogue in 1909 when he asserted that half of all city crime was committed by Russian Jews. Nevertheless, Jews were to transform labour and education in the city, while Italians would become the largest ethnic group. Yet so varied was the city that every large group remained only a minority, and toleration of “the other” became a New York virtue.

Character of the city :New York

 

New York is the most ethnically diverse, religiously varied, commercially driven, famously congested, and, in the eyes of many, the most attractive urban centre in the country. No other city has contributed more images to the collective consciousness of Americans: Wall Street means finance, Broadway is synonymous with theatre, Fifth Avenue is automatically paired with shopping, Madison Avenue means the advertising industry, Greenwich Village connotes bohemian lifestyles, Seventh Avenue signifies fashion, Tammany Hall defines machine politics, and Harlem evokes images of the Jazz Age, African American aspirations, and slums. The word tenement brings to mind both the miseries of urban life and the upward mobility of striving immigrant masses. New York has more Jews than Tel Aviv, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Naples, and more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Its symbol is the Statue of Liberty, but the metropolis is itself an icon, the arena in which Emma Lazarus’s “tempest-tost” people of every nation are transformed into Americans—and if they remain in the city, they become New Yorkers.


For the past two centuries, New York has been the largest and wealthiest American city. More than half the people and goods that ever entered the United States came through its port, and that stream of commerce has made change a constant presence in city life. New York always meant possibility, for it was an urban centre on its way to something better, a metropolis too busy to be solicitous of those who stood in the way of progress. New York—while the most American of all the country’s cities—thus also achieved a reputation as both foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil, arrogance, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it. The city was inhabited by strangers, but they were, as James Fenimore Cooper explained, “essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state but to the United States.” Once the capital of both its state and the country, New York surpassed such status to become a world city in both commerce and outlook, with the most famous skyline on earth. It also became a target for international terrorism—most notably the destruction in 2001 of the World Trade Center, which for three decades had been the most prominent symbol of the city’s global prowess. However, New York remains for its residents a conglomeration of local neighbourhoods that provide them with familiar cuisines, languages, and experiences. A city of stark contrasts and deep contradictions, New York is perhaps the most fitting representative of a diverse and powerful nation.

Hawaii

History

Early history

The first inhabitants of Hawaii may have reached the islands as early as 300 ce from the Marquesas Islands. Contact with and settlement by Tahitians began in the 9th century ce. Powerful classes of chiefs and priests arrived and established themselves but became embroiled in conflicts that were similar to the feudal struggles in Europe, with complicated land rights at the centre of the disputes. The early Hawaiians lacked a written language. Their culture was entirely oral and rich in myth, legend, and practical knowledge, especially of animals and plant life. The material life of the islands was hampered by the lack of metal, pottery, or beasts of burden, but there was great skill in the use of wood, shell, stone, and bone, and the huge double and outrigger canoes were technical marvels. Navigational methods were well developed, and there was an elaborate calendar. Athletic contests encouraged warrior skills.

 

 

The arrival of Europeans

Capt. James Cook, the British explorer and navigator, is generally credited with having made the first European discovery of Hawaii; he landed at Waimea, Kauai Island, on Jan. 20, 1778. Upon his return the following year, he was killed during an affray with a number of Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay.

The initial appearance of Cook was followed by a period of intermittent contact with the West. During this period King Kamehameha I used European military technology and weapons to emerge as an outstanding Hawaiian leader, seizing and consolidating control over most of the island group. For 85 years thereafter monarchs ruled over the Hawaiian kingdom. In the early 19th century the American whaling fleet began wintering in Hawaii, and the islands were visited with mounting frequency by explorers, traders, and adventurers. Capt. George Vancouver introduced livestock to the islands in 1792. In 1820 the first of 15 companies of New England missionaries arrived. By the middle of the century there were frame houses, horse-drawn vehicles, schools, churches, taverns, and mercantile establishments. A written language had been introduced, and European and American skills and religious beliefs—Protestant and Roman Catholic—had been imported. Hawaiian culture was irrevocably changed.

Establishment of U.S. dominance

After the arrival of missionaries, a small but powerful “white” minority began to exert greater and greater power over the Hawaiian monarchy. This minority urged upon King Kamehameha III a written constitution in 1840 and, more importantly, the Great Mahele, or division of lands, in 1848, which guaranteed private ownership of property. Kamehameha III sustained insults to his sovereignty from both the French and the British. U.S. interests grew paramount, however, in the succeeding years, culminating in the signing of the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, essentially a free-trade agreement between the United States and Hawaii in which the former guaranteed a duty-free market for Hawaiian sugar and the latter gave the United States special economic privileges that were denied to other countries. (When the treaty was renewed in 1887, the United States received exclusive rights to enter and establish a naval base at Pearl Harbor.)

King Kalakaua, who would be the last king of Hawaii, had lobbied for the Reciprocity Treaty. He lost the support of the planter class because of his attempts to revive Hawaiian culture and because of his profligate spending. In 1887 a company of “white” troops, the Honolulu Rifles, helped force upon him the Bayonet Constitution, which severely limited his powers and which allowed suffrage for the wealthy residents (who were generally American or European). When his successor, Queen Liliuokalani, seemed as if she would abrogate that constitution, the Committee of Safety, a group of American and European businessmen, some of whom were citizens of the kingdom, seized power in 1893, with the help of a company of U.S. Marines from the U.S.S. Boston, at anchor in the harbour. The U.S. government, under Pres. Grover Cleveland, refused to annex the territory, however, noting that the overthrow of the monarchy was an “act of war” accomplished against popular will using U.S. armed force (see primary source document: Controversy over Hawaii). A short-lived republic (an oligarchy of American and European businessmen) ensued, until the administration of Pres. William McKinley annexed the islands as U.S. territory in 1900.

As a U.S. territory, Hawaii until 1940 was distinguished by a rapid growth in population, the development of a plantation economy based on the production of sugar and pineapples for consumption on the U.S. mainland, and the growth of transport and military links. Movements for statehood, based in part on Hawaii’s obligation to pay U.S. taxes without having corresponding legislative representation, began to emerge. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, brought not only Hawaii but the United States as a whole into World War II, and the islands were beset by an upsurge of military activity and a sometimes controversial curtailment of civil liberties. The post-1945 period was marked by further economic consolidation and a long constitutional path to statehood, a status finally achieved in 1959.

Hawaii after statehood

Since statehood both the population and the economy boomed in Hawaii, with ever-increasing numbers of visitors. Outside investment, notably from the U.S. mainland and Japan, along with rising real estate values, made the islands seem especially bountiful. However, wages have not kept up with the cost of living, and many Hawaiians work multiple jobs to survive. Also, much of the land that had been occupied by Native Hawaiians was cleared for new developments and state parks. Beginning in the 1980s, a sovereignty movement emerged on the islands in which Native Hawaiians demanded legal restoration of sovereignty or reparations for the U.S. takeover of their kingdom. Some groups have pressed for Hawaii to become its own nation, while others have advocated for federal recognition of Native Hawaiians equivalent to that of Native Americans. In 1993 U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton apologized for America’s role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.
 

The people in the US.

The people

A nation for little more than 225 years, the United States is a relatively new member of the global community, but its rapid growth since the 18th century is unparalleled. The early promise of the New World as a refuge and land of opportunity was realized dramatically in the 20th century with the emergence of the United States as a world power. With a total population exceeded only by those of China and India, the United States is also characterized by an extraordinary diversity in ethnic and racial ancestry. A steady stream of immigration, notably from the 1830s onward, formed a pool of foreign-born persons unmatched by any other nation; 60 million people immigrated to U.S. shores in the 18th and 19th centuries. Many were driven, seeking escape from political or economic hardship, while others were drawn, by a demand for workers, abundant natural resources, and expansive cheap land. Most arrived hoping to remake themselves in the New World.

Americans also have migrated internally with great vigour, exhibiting a restlessness that thrived in the open lands and on the frontier. Initially, migratory patterns ran east to west and from rural areas to cities, then, in the 20th century, from the South to the Northeast and Midwest. Since the 1950s, though, movement has been primarily from the cities to outlying suburbs, and from aging northern metropolises to the growing urban agglomerations of the South, Southwest, and West.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the majority of the U.S. population had achieved a high level of material comfort, prosperity, and security. Nonetheless, Americans struggled with the unexpected problems of relative affluence, as well as the persistence of residual poverty. Crime, drug abuse, affordable energy sources, urban sprawl, voter apathy, pollution, high divorce rates, AIDS, and excessive litigation remained continuing subjects of concern, as were inequities and inadequacies in education and managed health care. Among the public policies widely debated were abortion, gun ownership, welfare reforms, and the death penalty.

Many Americans perceive social tension as the product of their society’s failure to extend the traditional dream of equality of opportunity to all people. Ideally, social, political, economic, and religious freedom would assure the like treatment of everyone, so that all could achieve goals in accord with their individual talents, if only they worked hard enough. This strongly held belief has united Americans throughout the centuries. The fact that some groups have not achieved full equality troubles citizens and policy-makers alike.

Ethnic distribution

After decades of immigration and acculturation, many U.S. citizens can trace no discernible ethnic identity, describing themselves generically only as "American," while others claim mixed identities. The 2000 U.S. census introduced a new category for those who identified themselves as a member of more than one race; of 281.4 million counted, 2.4 percent chose this multiracial classification.

Ethnic European-Americans

Although the term "ethnic" is frequently confined to the descendants of the newest immigrants, its broader meaning applies to all groups unified by their cultural heritage and experience in the New World. In the 19th century, Yankees formed one such group, marked by common religion and by habits shaped by the original Puritan settlers. From New England, the Yankees spread westward through New York, northern Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas. Tightly knit communities, firm religious values, and a belief in the value of education resulted in prominent positions for Yankees in business, in literature and law, and in cultural and philanthropic institutions. They long identified with the Republican Party. Southern whites and their descendants, by contrast, remained preponderantly rural as migration took them westward across Tennessee and Kentucky to Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. These people inhabited small towns until the industrialization of the South in the 20th century, and they preserved affiliations with the Democratic Party until the 1960s.

The colonial population also contained other elements that long sustained their group identities. The Pennsylvania Germans, held together by religion and language, still pursue their own way of life after three centuries, as exemplified by the Amish. The great 19th-century German migrations, however, were made up of families who dispersed in the cities as well as in the agricultural areas to the West; to the extent that ethnic ties have survived they are largely sentimental. That is also true of the Scots, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Dutch, whose colonial nuclei received some reinforcement after 1800 but who gradually adapted to the ways of the larger surrounding groups.

Distinctive language and religion preserved some coherence among the descendants of the Scandinavian newcomers of the 19th century. Where these people clustered in sizeable settlements, as in Minnesota, they transmitted a sense of identity beyond the second generation; and emotional attachments to the lands of origin lingered.
Religion was a powerful force for cohesion among the Roman Catholic Irish and the Jews, both tiny groups before 1840, both reinforced by mass migration thereafter. Both have now become strikingly heterogeneous, displaying a wide variety of economic and social conditions, as well as a degree of conformity to the styles of life of other Americans. But the pull of external concerns—in the one case, unification of Ireland; in the other, Israel’s security—have helped to preserve group loyalty.

Indeed, by the 1970s "ethnic" (in its narrow connotation) had come to be used to describe the Americans of Polish, Italian, Lithuanian, Czech, and Ukrainian extraction, along with those of other eastern and southern European ancestry. Tending to be Roman Catholic and middle-class, most settled in the North and Midwest. The city neighbourhoods in which many of them lived initially had their roots in the "Little Italys" and "Polish Hills" established by the immigrants. By the 1980s and ’90s a significant number had left these enclaves for nearby suburbs. The only European ethnic group to arrive in large numbers at the end of the 20th century were Russians, especially Russian Jews, benefiting from perestroika.

In general, a pattern of immigration, self-support, and then assimilation was typical. Recently established ethnic groups often preserve greater visibility and greater cohesion. Their group identity is based not only upon a common cultural heritage but also on the common interests, needs, and problems they face in the present-day United States. As the immigrants and their descendants, most have been taught to believe that the road to success in the United States is achieved through individual effort. They tend to believe in equality of opportunity and self-improvement and attribute poverty to the failing of the individual and not to inequities in society. As the composition of the U.S. population changed, it was projected that sometime in the 21st century, Americans of European descent would be outnumbered by those from non-European ethnic groups.

African-Americans

From colonial times, African-Americans arrived in large numbers as slaves and lived primarily on plantations in the South. In 1790 slave and free blacks together comprised about one-fifth of the U.S. population. As the nation split between southern slave and northern free states prior to the American Civil War, the Underground Railroad spirited thousands of escaped slaves from South to North. In the century following abolition, this migration pattern became more pronounced as 6.5 million blacks moved from rural areas of the South to northern cities between 1910 and 1970. On the heels of this massive internal shift came new immigrants from West Africa and the black Caribbean, principally Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.

The Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s awakened the nation’s conscience to the plight of African-Americans, who had long been denied first-class citizenship. The movement used nonviolence and passive resistance to change discriminatory laws and practices, primarily in the South. As a result, increases in median income and college enrollment among the black population were dramatic in the late 20th century. Widening access to professional and business opportunities included noteworthy political victories. By the early 1980s black mayors in Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., had gained election with white support. In 1984 and 1988 Jesse Jackson ran for U.S. president; he was the first African-American to contend seriously for a major party nomination. However, despite an expanding black middle-class and equal-opportunity laws in education, housing, and employment, African-Americans continue to face staunch social and political challenges, especially those living in the inner cities, where some of American society’s most difficult problems (such as crime and drug trafficking) are acute.

The Hispanics

Like African-Americans, Hispanics (Latinos) make up about one-eighth of the U.S. population. Although they generally share Spanish as a second (and sometimes first) language, Hispanics are hardly a monolithic group. The majority, nearly three-fifths, are of Mexican origin—some descended from settlers in portions of the United States that were once part of Mexico (Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California), others legal and illegal migrants from across the loosely guarded Mexico–U.S. border. The greater opportunities and higher living standards in the United States have long attracted immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

The Puerto Rican experience in the United States is markedly different from that of Mexican Americans. Most importantly, Puerto Ricans are American citizens by virtue of the island commonwealth’s association with the United States. As a result, migration between Puerto Rico and the United States has been fairly fluid, mirroring the continuous process by which Americans have always moved to where chances seem best. While most of that migration traditionally has been toward the mainland, by the end of the 20th century in- and out-migration between the island and the United States equalized. Puerto Ricans now make up about one-tenth of the U.S. Latino population.

Quite different, though also Spanish-speaking, are the Cubans who fled Fidel Castro’s communist revolution of 1959 and their descendants. While representatives of every social group are among them, the initial wave of Cubans was distinctive because of the large number of professional and middle-class people who migrated. Their social and political attitudes differ significantly from those of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, though this distinction was lessened by an influx of 120,000 Cuban refugees in the 1980s, known as the Mariel immigrants.

After 1960 easy air travel and political and economic instability stimulated a significant migration from the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. The arrivals from Latin America in earlier years were often political refugees, more recently they usually have been economic refugees. Constituting about one-fourth of the Hispanic diaspora, this group comprises largely Central Americans, Colombians, and Dominicans, the last of whom have acted as a bridge between the black and Latino communities. Latinos have come together for better health, housing, and municipal services, for bilingual school programs, and for improved educational and economic opportunities.

Asian-Americans

Asian-Americans as a group have confounded earlier expectations that they would form an indigestible mass in American society. The Chinese, earliest to arrive (in large numbers from the mid-19th century, principally as labourers, notably on the transcontinental railroad), and the Japanese were long victims of racial discrimination. In 1924 the law barred further entries; those already in the United States had been ineligible for citizenship since the previous year. In 1942 thousands of Japanese, many born in the United States and therefore American citizens, were interned in relocation camps because their loyalty was suspect after the United States engaged Japan in World War II. Subsequently, anti-Asian prejudice largely dissolved, and Chinese and Japanese, along with others such as the Vietnamese and Taiwanese, have adjusted and advanced. Among generally more recent arrivals, many Koreans, Filipinos, and Asian Indians have quickly enjoyed economic success. Though enumerated separately by the U.S. census, Pacific Islanders, such as native Hawaiians, constitute a small minority but contribute to making Hawaii and California the states with the largest percentages of Asian-Americans.

Middle Easterners

Among the trends of Arab immigration in the 20th century were the arrival of Lebanese Christians in the first half of the century and Palestinian Muslims in the second half. Initially Arabs inhabited the East Coast, but by the end of the century there was a large settlement of Arabs in the greater Detroit area. Armenians, also from southwest Asia, arrived in large numbers in the early 20th century, eventually congregating largely in California, where, later in the century, Iranians were also concentrated. Some recent arrivals from the Middle East maintain national customs such as traditional dress.

Native Americans

Native Americans form an ethnic group only in a very general sense. In the East, centuries of coexistence with whites has led to some degree of intermarriage and assimilation and to various patterns of stable adjustment. In the West the hasty expansion of agricultural settlement crowded the Native Americans into reservations, where federal policy has vacillated between efforts at assimilation and the desire to preserve tribal cultural identity, with unhappy consequences. The Native American population has risen from its low point of 235,000 in 1900 to 2.5 million at the turn of the 21st century.

The reservations are often enclaves of deep poverty and social distress, although the many casinos operated on their land have created great wealth in some instances. The physical and social isolation of the reservation prompted many Native Americans to migrate to large cities, but, by the end of the 20th century, a modest repopulation occurred in rural counties of the Great Plains. In census numerations Native Americans are categorized with Alaskan natives, notably Aleuts and Eskimos. In the latter half of the 20th century, intertribal organizations were founded to give Native Americans a unified, national presence.

Religious groups

The U.S. government has never supported an established church, and the diversity of the population has discouraged any tendency toward uniformity in worship. As a result of this individualism, thousands of religious denominations thrive within the country. Only about one-sixth of religious adherents are not Christian, and although Roman Catholicism is the largest single denomination (about one-fifth of the U.S. population), the many churches of Protestantism constitute the majority. Some are the products of native development—among them the Disciples of Christ (founded in the early 19th century), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons; 1830), Seventh-day Adventists (officially established 1863), Jehovah’s Witnesses (1872), Christian Scientists (1879), and the various Pentecostal churches (late 19th century).

Other denominations had their origins in the Old World, but even these have taken distinctive American forms. Affiliated Roman Catholics look to Rome for guidance, although there are variations in practice from diocese to diocese. More than 5.5 million Jews are affiliated with three national organizations (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform), as well as with many smaller sects. Most Protestant denominations also have European roots, the largest being the Baptists, Pentecostals, and Methodists. Among other groups are Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, various Eastern churches (including Orthodox), Congregationalists, Reformed, Mennonites and Amish, various Brethren, Unitarians, and the Friends (Quakers). By 2000 substantial numbers of recent immigrants had increased the Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu presence to about 4 million, 2.5 million, and 1 million believers, respectively.

Immigration

Immigration legislation began in earnest in the late 19th century, but it was not until after World War I that the era of mass immigration came to an abrupt end. The Immigration Act of 1924 established an annual quota (fixed in 1929 at 150,000) and established the national-origins system, which was to characterize immigration policy for the next 40 years. Under it, quotas were established for each country based on the number of persons of that national origin who were living in the United States in 1920. The quotas reduced drastically the flow of immigrants from southeastern Europe in favour of the countries of northwestern Europe. The quota system was abolished in 1965 in favour of a predominantly first-come, first-served policy. An annual ceiling of immigrant visas was established for nations outside the Western Hemisphere (170,000, with 20,000 allowed to any one nation) and for all persons from the Western Hemisphere (120,000).

The new policy radically changed the pattern of immigration. For the first time, non-Europeans formed the dominant immigrant group, with new arrivals from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. In the 1980s and ’90s immigration was further liberalized by granting amnesty to illegal aliens, raising admission limits, and creating a system for validating refugees. The plurality of immigrants, both legal and illegal, recently hail from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, though Asians form a significant percentage.

 

Harvard University

Harvard University, oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (founded 1636) and one of the nation’s most prestigious. It is one of the Ivy League schools. The main university campus lies along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few miles west of downtown Boston. Harvard’s total enrollment is about 20,000.
Harvard’s history began when a college was established at New Towne, which was later renamed Cambridge for the English alma mater of some of the leading colonists. Classes began in the summer of 1638 with one master in a single frame house and a “college yard.” Harvard was named for a Puritan minister, John Harvard, who left the college his books and half of his estate.

At its inception Harvard was under church sponsorship, although it was not formally affiliated with any religious body. During its first two centuries the college was gradually liberated, first from clerical and later from political control, until in 1865 the university alumni began electing members of the governing board. During his long tenure as Harvard’s president (1869–1909), Charles W. Eliot made Harvard into an institution with national influence.

The alumni and faculty of Harvard have been closely associated with many areas of American intellectual and political development. By the end of the 20th century, Harvard had educated six U.S. presidents—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy—and a number of justices, cabinet officers, and congressional leaders. Literary figures among Harvard graduates include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Henry James, Henry Adams, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, Walter Lippmann, and Norman Mailer. Other notable intellectual figures who graduated from or taught at Harvard include the historians Francis Parkman, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Samuel Eliot Morison; the astronomer Benjamin Peirce; the chemist Wolcott Gibbs; and the naturalist Louis Agassiz. William James introduced the experimental study of psychology into the United States at Harvard in the 1870s.

Harvard’s undergraduate school, Harvard College, contains about one-third of the total student body. The core of the university’s teaching staff consists of the faculty of arts and sciences, which includes the graduate faculty of arts and sciences. The university has graduate or professional schools of medicine, law, business, divinity, education, government, dental medicine, design, and public health. The schools of law, medicine, and business are particularly prestigious. Among the advanced research institutions affiliated with Harvard are the Museum of Comparative Zoology (founded in 1859 by Agassiz), the Gray Herbarium, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Arnold Arboretum, and the Fogg Art Museum. Also associated with the university are an astronomical observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts; the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C., a centre for Byzantine and pre-Columbian studies; and the Harvard-Yenching Institute in Cambridge for research on East and Southeast Asia. The Harvard University Library is one of the largest and most important university libraries in the world.

Radcliffe College, one of the Seven Sisters schools, evolved from informal instruction offered to individual women or small groups of women by Harvard University faculty in the 1870s. In 1879 a faculty group called the Harvard Annex made a full course of study available to women, despite resistance to coeducation from the university’s administration. Following unsuccessful efforts to have women admitted directly to degree programs at Harvard, the Annex, which had incorporated as the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, chartered Radcliffe College in 1894. The college was named for the colonial philanthropist Ann Radcliffe, who established the first scholarship fund at Harvard in 1643.

Until the 1960s Radcliffe operated as a coordinate college, drawing most of its instructors and other resources from Harvard. Radcliffe graduates, however, were not granted Harvard degrees until 1963. Diplomas from that time on were signed by the presidents of both Harvard and Radcliffe. Women undergraduates enrolled at Radcliffe were technically also enrolled at Harvard College, and instruction was coeducational.


Although its 1977 agreement with Harvard University called for the integration of select functions, Radcliffe College maintained a separate corporate identity for its property and endowments and continued to offer complementary educational and extracurricular programs for both undergraduate and graduate students, including career programs, a publishing course, and graduate-level workshops and seminars in women’s studies.
In 1999 Radcliffe and Harvard formally merged, and a new school, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, was established. The institute focuses on Radcliffe’s former fields of study and programs and also offers such new ones as nondegree educational programs and the study of women, gender, and society.

Ivy League

Ivy League, a group of colleges and universities in the northeastern United States that are widely regarded as high in academic and social prestige: Harvard (established 1636), Yale (1701), Pennsylvania (1740), Princeton (1746), Columbia (1754), Brown (1764), Dartmouth (1769), and Cornell (1865). They are members of an athletic conference for intercollegiate American football and other sports known as the Ivy League. Though formally organized only in 1956, competition between the colleges dates back to football meetings in the 1870s. The Ivy League was dominant in the early years of football in the United States until 1913, as attested by the All-America teams, but it faded in the 1920s.