Category Archives: Immigration: our Stories

By Kate Betz, Head of Education, Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”  Since 2009, the Bullock Texas State History Museum has been privileged to partner with the Austin Refugee Roundtable to sponsor Austin’s annual commemoration of the United Nations World Refugee Day (June 20th each year). As these pictures can attest, it is a truly fantastic …
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By Linda S. Blanshay Director, Program Development, Museum of Tolerance This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”  I’m an immigrant—a white one from Canada. When I tell this to people in California they find it interesting or quaint. With that kind of reaction it’s easy for me to discuss my native land: the cold, the healthcare system, or a favorite singer that …
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By Barbara Lau, Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center/Franklin Humanities Institute This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”  “The costly lesson of American history,” Pauli Murray wrote, “is that human rights are indivisible. They cannot be affirmed for one social group and ignored in the case of another without tragic consequences.” Fifty years ago Murray was arguing for the inclusion …
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By Lisa Falk, Director of Community Engagement and Partnerships, Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”  Living in the Southwest, immigration is a constant presence in our lives. La frontera, meaning “the border” in Spanish, is a mere 70 miles from the University of Arizona campus where the Arizona State Museum is located. The museum focuses on the anthropology of …
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By Erica Garcia, Curriculum and Community Coordinator, National Hispanic Cultural Center This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.”  As a young girl, I was aware that generations of my family were from New Mexico dating back hundreds of years. Our family takes great pride in being Nuevo Mexicanos. By middle school, I started questioning that strong sense of identity when I noticed my Grandmother …
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This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.” This post comes from Levine Museum of the New South. A few Charlotteans were asked: What is your definition of “immigrant”? “Someone who has moved to a different place in hopes of a better future & life.” “Someone who doesn’t have papers. They’re illegal.” “Someone who takes our jobs.” Immigrant. When people hear or see …
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by Peter Wong, Park Ranger, Ellis Island Immigration Museum Mainstream American society considers me affectionately as an “ABC,” or “American-born Chinese.” Native-born Chinese, meanwhile, refer to me as a “juk sing,” or “hollowed bamboo” — a derisive term indicating that while I may look outwardly Chinese, I lack the language or cultural insights to be accepted into Chinese society. To be fair, I cannot read or write Chinese, and I speak the Chinese dialect of Cantonese like a precocious nine-year-old. …
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This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.” This post comes from Irina Zadov of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting. -Milan Kundera For the last three years, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum has been facilitating dialogues which connect histories of migrant and immigrant experience at the turn of the twentieth century to contemporary …
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Family stories are important in immigration debates and in the National Dialogue on Immigration
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This 2014, each of the participating sites in the National Dialogues on Immigration project will be contributing to our blog post series, “Immigration: Our Stories.” The first post comes from Dr. Yolanda Chávez Leyva of Museo Urbano.
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