He works at the six oldest reform congregation in the United States and has a illustrious history. Ings a rabbi was the lead jewish abolitionist in the United States during the civil war and was known as the abolitionist temple and since then it has a long history of social activism, but in addition to that, he has a phd in history from the university of cincinnati and has written a number of books on americanjewish history and is within a number of scholarly articles as well as articles in the more popular press and i have the honor of coauthoring an article with lance on the Huffington Post this year on the brandeis confirmation which we are also celebrating this year. Lance, thisducing is one of the great virtues of being the conference coordinator. I can add to the program whatever i want and i just wanted to add one footnote to andrews paper because i think it is relevant to what we will be talking about today. That is that in 1866 when , 150 years ago, in 1866 in congress is deba
One would influence the other. Thats an extremely complicated question. What happens is many chinese are come to america and white workers accuse them of working for lower wages and of being imported here, meaning being carried in on contracts. And some go out of their way and say were not against chinese immigration, were just opposed to them being brought here on contracts. Politicians in this period, the 1870s and the 1880s is an era in that the two parties are virtually equal in numbers. For the last 20 years or so there have been been dimensions but weve had some of the closest elections in history. Now, as well see this year, there are a half dozen Battle Ground states. Whoever wednesday ohio and florida will likely twin election. Democrats and republicans were evenly divided. Anything that could gain a few votes would switch the election. They claim they kind of fudge over the argument about importation and say if we keep the chinese outs, this will be good for the american econ
But politicians see immigration as a way to demagogue votes. There is no more visceral issue in American History than race. And immigration. You combine the two, and this is the first time it is really done it is against the irish in the 1850s, but this is the time it really takes gains weight. And it works. The mark of a great talk is when we have to interrupt the questioning for the next speaker. Thank you, andrew. My pleasure. We have more road to the white house Coverage Today with hillary clinton. Shell be campaigning at the Florida State fair grounds in tampa. Cspan will have live coverage of that starting at 4 30 eastern this afternoon. Hillary clinton won the states march primary with more than 64 of the vote. And she takes 141 of floridas democratic delegates to mondays convention. Live coverage from florida begins at 4 30 eastern. Next, on American History tv, history professor rabbi Lance Sussman discusses representative Emanuel Celler a new york democrat who served in the u
Holocaust as a cultural category, nevertheless was a soldier on behalf of the distressed. Were bringing mikes, so, and if youll let me know what my time frame is. This may be too narrow a question, but ill ask it anyway. So, i saw on cspan a while back interviews with bernard ferrenz, who was with the army and worked with Holocaust Survivors getting restitution. I wondered if you were familiar with his work and if that was connected at all with the congressman . No, i didnt see that. Its fascinating. Fascinating. I know the harrison report alone. Okay. Maybe you could tell me what fascinating. He has his own story, jewish background, and very unhappy being a private in the army when he was an attorney and all those and really singlehandedly, there was one other individual in the army who when they went into the camps tried to maintain all of the documentation so that they could pursue. And he followed up at nuremberg. Very, very interesting interviews. Documentation was key. I should h
Congress, 150 years ago in 1866, when congress is debating what becomes the 14th amendment, the 14th amendment begins by saying all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to their jurisdiction, ie, not the children of diplomats, are citizens of the United States. And there was a strong attempt by the delegation from california and oregon to amend that to say all persons except chinese would be citizens of the United States. And to the great credit of the United States congress, then in the hands of the antislavery Republican Party that had just led the nation to both saving the nation and ending slavery, the majority of congress simply said, no, all persons means all persons, were not going to get into the business of excluding particular groups of people. And so that in part explains the subsequent conflict over chinese immigration and chinese rights, because the 14th amendment meant their children would be citizens of the United States, even when the naturalizat