Sources for America’s History: Printed Page 607
Compare Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech with Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (Document 21-6) to understand how the definition of America’s values changed and remained consistent over time. What similarities do you see in the way they spoke about war’s potential to change the world?
Did the experience of World War II change the way people of different races and ethnicities were treated in the United States? Consider the United States’s treatment of immigrants (see Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s last statement [Document 22-1] and the Chinese Exclusion Act [Document 17-4]) and African Americans (see “New York Negroes Stage Silent Parade of Protest” [Document 19-4]) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and compare that to the evidence in Hirabayashi’s statement and the LULAC editorial. What can you conclude about America’s history of race and ethnic relations through the mid-twentieth century?
What editorial reaction can you imagine LULAC News having in response to Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech? How might its readers have reacted to his description of American ideals?
How would you assess the cost of war on American society? To what extent do you see evidence of war helping or hindering the resolution of persistent social, political, and economic problems?