🇺🇸AP US History
1. Evaluate the extent to which constitutional interpretations and legal decisions shaped American conceptions of citizenship and civil liberties from 1896 to 1925.
Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
Support an argument using at least four of the provided documents.
Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence beyond the documents.
For at least two documents, explain how or why the document's point of view, purpose, historical situation, or audience is relevant.
Demonstrate a complex understanding through sophisticated argumentation and/or effective use of evidence.
Document 1
Source: United States Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898
The fact, therefore, that acts of Congress or treaties have not permitted Chinese persons born out of this country to become citizens by naturalization, cannot exclude Chinese persons born in this country from the operation of the broad and clear words of the Constitution: "All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." . . . The evident intention . . . of the submission of this case to the decision of the court upon the facts agreed by the parties were to present for determination the single question . . . , namely, whether a child born in the United States, of parent of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, . . . becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States. For the reasons above stated, this court is of opinion that the question must be answered in the affirmative.
Document 2
Source: Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling, 1896
Document 3
Source: Frank Beard, The Stranger At Our Gate, Judge Magazine, 1896.
Document 4
Source: Excerpt from "The New Negro: An Interpretation" by Alain Locke, 1925
In the last decade something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro and the three norns who have traditionally presided over the Negro problem have a changeling in their laps. The sociologist, the philanthropist, the race-leader are not unaware of the New Negro, but they are at a loss to account for him. He simply cannot be swathed in their formulae. For the younger generation is vibrant with a new psychology; the new spirit is awake in the masses, and under the very eyes of the professional observers is transforming what has been a perennial problem into the progressive phases of contemporary Negro life.
The Old Negro, we must remember, was a creature of moral debate and historical controversy. His has been a stock figure perpetuated as an historical fiction partly in innocent sentimentalism, partly in deliberate reactionism. The Negro himself has contributed his share to this through a sort of protective social mimicry forced upon him by the adverse circumstances of dependence. So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being—a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be 'kept down,' or 'in his place,' or 'helped up,' to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.
Document 5
Source: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Schenck v. United States, Majority Opinion, 1919.
We admit that, in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done...
When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.
Document 6
Source: Clarence Darrow, The Trial of John Scopes (The Monkey Trial), 1925.
And so it is, unless there is left enough of the spirit and freedom in the state of Tennessee, and in the United States, there is not a single line of any constitution that can withstand bigotry and ignorance when it seeks to destroy the rights of the individual...
Here we find today as brazen and as bold an attempt to destroy learning as we ever made in the middle ages, and the only difference is we have not provided that they shall be burned at the stake, but there is time for that, Your Honor, we have to approach these things gradually.
Document 7
Source: Ellison DuRant Smith, Speech by Senator Ellison DuRant Smith, April 9, 1924, April 9, 1924.
It seems to me the point as to this measure...is that the time has arrived when we should shut the door. We have been called the melting pot of the world. We had an experience just a few years ago, during the great World War, when it looked as though we had allowed influences to enter our borders that were about to melt the pot in place of us being the melting pot. ...Without offense, but with regard to the salvation of our own, let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure American citizens and develop our own American resources. I am more in favor of that than I am of our quota proposition. Of course, it may not meet the approbation of the Senate that we shall shut the door—which I unqualifiedly and unreservedly believe to be our duty—and develop what we have, assimilate and digest what we have into pure Americans, with American aspirations, and thoroughly familiar with the love of American institutions, rather than the importation of any number of men from other countries. If we may not have that, then I am in favor of putting the quota down to the lowest possible point, with every selective element in it that may be.
