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Official Facing History Collection

California History Resources

Resources 36
Last Modified June 21, 2024
Description A collection of Facing History resources that explores the history of individuals, groups and movements in California.
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Unit

Teaching the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide: For California Educators

Designed for California 10th grade world history courses, this unit guides students through a study of the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide that focuses on choices and human behavior.

Teacher and Students
Insight

Latinx vs. Hispanic: A History of Terms

Learn about the history and debate surrounding how we describe Latinx and Hispanic peoples, and consider the relationship between language and identity.

A dictionary page open to the definition of "Latino".
Reading

Mendez v. Westminster

Learn about the Mendez family's experience as Mexican Americans fighting against school segregation in Southern California during the 1940s.

A close up of a student writing on a piece of paper.
Reading

Background on the Chicano Movement

Learn about the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s with this historical overview.

Members of MEChA protesting for free college tuition at the Colegio César Chávez in Mt. Angel, Oregon.
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Mini-Unit

Latinx Rights in 1960s California

Explore two pivotal moments in the Latinx rights movement in California: the East LA school walkouts and the first year of the Delano grape strike.

Dolores Huerta addresses the audience after the Delano grape march, State Capitol, Sacramento, California.
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Lesson

The 1968 East LA School Walkouts

Students learn about education, identity, and activism through an exploration of the East Los Angeles school walkouts, when thousands of students protested unequal educational opportunities for Mexican American students.

John Ortiz, Mexican-American student leader at James A. Garfield High School, addressing assembled students during a walkout.
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Lesson

California Grape Workers’ Strike: 1965–66

Students explore the first year of the Delano grape strike, when grape workers in California's San Joaquin Valley went on strike to demand higher wages and better work conditions.

Dolores Huerta and others hold up "Huelga" signs as part of the grape strike.
Insight

Dolores Huerta's Life of Indefatigable Resistance

Dolores Huerta helped advance civil rights and labor rights with her tireless advocacy, organizing a successful labor movement of US farm workers.

Photo of Dolores Huerta
External Resource

Becoming an Activist: A Conversation with Dolores Huerta

Notes
How can people work together to raise their voices and demand the rights they have been denied? How do social movements create lasting change? During this conversation with Dolores Huerta, a civil rights icon and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), we discuss her life's work, current activism, and our new lessons on the United Farm Workers.
Reading

A Strength of My Neighborhood

A high school student describes how his neighborhood in Los Angeles helps him feel connected to the traditions of his family’s “old world” heritage in Mexico.

Female student learning in a classroom.
Video

Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation

Watch the landmark PBS documentary series Latino Americans, featuring interviews and more than 500 years of history.

Female students work on a written assignment.
Video

Chicano! Episode 1: Quest for Homeland

This episode of Chicano! examines the beginnings of a national movement for social justice by profiling Reies Lopez Tijerina and the 1966–1967 land grant movement in New Mexico.

 

Video

Chicano! Episode 2: The Struggle in the Fields

This episode of Chicano! chronicles the efforts of farm workers to form a national labor union under the nonviolent leadership of César Chávez.

Video

Chicano! Episode 3: Taking Back the Schools

This episode of Chicano! paints a picture of the struggle to reform an education system that failed to properly education Mexican American students.

Video

Chicano! Episode 4: Fighting for Political Power

This episode of Chicano! focuses on the emergence of Mexican Americans political activism and the creation of a third political party, La Raza Unida.

Perspective

Complicating "Asian Americans"

Facing History explores the complex story surrounding this term to broaden educators' understanding of and ability to teach about AAPI and API histories and contemporary life.

Asian American graphic.
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Inquiry

Angel Island Immigration Station: Exploring Borders and Belonging in US History

This 5-7 day C3-aligned inquiry explores the compelling question “How does the history of the Angel Island Immigration Station help us understand how borders are erected, enforced, and challenged?”

Immigrants arriving at Angel Island.
Video

Asian Americans: Breaking Ground

In episode one, new immigrants arrive from China, India, Japan, the Philippines, and beyond. Eventually barred by anti-Asian laws, they become America’s first “undocumented immigrants.”

Video

Asian Americans: A Question of Loyalty

In episode two, an American-born generation straddles their birth country and their familial homelands in Asia. This episode also examines the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Video

Asian Americans: Good Americans

In episode three, Asian American and Pacific Islanders are simultaneously heralded as a "model minority" and suspected as the perpetual foreigner during the Cold War years. AAPI individuals also aspire for the first time to national political office.

Video

Asian Americans: Generation Rising

In episode four, a young generation fights for equality in the fields, on campuses, and in the culture, and claim a new identity: Asian Americans.

Video

Asian Americans: Breaking Through

In episode five, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have become the fastest growing population in the US at the turn of the millennium, and the country tackles urgent debates over immigration, race, and economic disparity.

Guide

Becoming American Study Guide

This guide to accompany the film Becoming American helps students investigate identity and belonging through the stories of generations of Chinese immigrants in the United States and their paths to "becoming American."

Cover of "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience."
Video

Becoming American: The Chinese Experience Part One - Gold Mountain Dreams

The first of a 3-part series explores the early years of Chinese immigration to the U.S.

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Becoming American: The Chinese Experience Part Two - Between Two Worlds

The second of a 3-part series explores the impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act

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Becoming American: The Chinese Experience Part Three - No Turning Back

The third of a 3-part series explores the immigration laws of 1965, and intimate portraits of the new Chinese Americans

Reading

Laundrymen and Movies

Learn about the prejudice, stereotypes, and victimization Chinese and Chinese Americans faced in the US in the 1920s.

This is a photograph of Wong Kim Ark from an federal immigration investigation case conducted under the Chinese Exclusion Acts (1882-1943).
Reading

Doors to Opportunity

Read about the experiences of two young immigrants to the United States in the late 1800s and how race shaped the kind of education to each of them.

Reading

Platform of the Workingmen’s Party of California

The political platform of the Workingmen's Party of California, a third party organized around eliminating competition for white laborers in the West and advocating for a ban on Chinese immigration.

Chinese workers building the Loma Prieta Lumber Company's railroad in California.
Reading

Chinese Immigrants Write to President Grant

Chinese leaders in California write to President Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 about the discrimination their communities face from a rising anti-Chinese movement.

President Ulysses S. Grant, half-length portrait, seated, facing right
Reading

Paper Sons and Daughters and the Complexity of Choices During the Exclusion Era

This reading details how and why some Chinese immigrants attempted to enter the country with fraudulent documents during the era of Chinese Exclusion.

A student writes on a piece of paper in a classroom.
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Mini-Lesson

The Legacies of Chinese Exclusion

Teach students about the Chinese Exclusions Act, an immigration law passed in 1882, and its lasting impact on attitudes toward citizenship and national identity in the United States today.

The Legacies of Chinese Exclusion
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Mini-Lesson

Bearing Witness to Japanese American Incarceration

Use these activities and resources on Japanese American incarceration during World War II to introduce students to this history while exploring questions about American identity, racism, and citizenship. 

 

 Families of Japanese ancestry awaiting the arrival of a train that will take them to Merced detention center, during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
Book

Teaching Farewell to Manzanar

Use this guide to Jeanne Wakatsuki's memoir about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II to develop students' literacy skills and increase understanding of this history.

Teaching Farewell To Manzanar graphic.
Video

And Then They Came for Us

This history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II is retold in this documentary from Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider. It also follows Japanese American activists today as they speak out against the Muslim registry and travel ban.

Reading

“Berkeley Renames Downtown Street ‘Kala Bagai Way’ After South Asian Immigrant Activist”

This article is about how the city of Berkeley renamed a street after a South Asian immigrant activist, Kala Bagai.

Kala Bagai Way Banner