- Analyze the American dream as it relates to immigrants and black Americans from 1865 to the present. What is the American dream for these groups, and to what extent were they able to achieve it?
To get you started, consider these two musings:
- The American dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. … It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” [James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931) p. 214-215.]
- The American dream is “…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him.” [Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940) p. 508.]
