Timelines

Migration is a natural part of living systems, and human history is no exception. Yet it remains one of the most debated public issues of our time.

Both people and borders move. Who is allowed to move, and who is granted rights, lies at the heart of how nations define belonging. In Germany and the United States alike, these debates have been deeply intertwined with evolving ideas of race and ethnicity.

These timelines trace how citizenship and belonging have been constructed, challenged, and redefined through laws, social movements, global events, and cultural works — and how those histories continue to shape the present.

1890

Jacob Riis Documents Tenement Life

At the height of the Gilded Age, a period marked by extreme economic inequality, Danish immigrant and photojournalist Jacob Riis published ,[object Object],, an account of immigrant tenement life in the densely populated Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan.

The book provided a detailed tour of poor immigrants’ living conditions for its middle and upper class readership. Riis’ book was monumental in crediting the plight of poverty to environmental conditions. Critics have noted, however, that his writing tended to divide the poor into “deserving” and “undeserving” camps and reproduced several popular racial/ethnic stereotypes of Jews, Irish, and Italians. Despite these limitations, Riis’ work is believed to have conveyed genuine sympathy for the poor he photographed. He became known as a social reformer and an advocate against slum housing.

Library of Congress

The original cover of the 1890 edition of How the Other Half Lives.

United States

Sources

Robert Siegel. Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC’s ‘Other Half’. NPR. June 30, 2008. Date accessed: August 31, 2015.
Jacob A. Riis. The New York Times. Date accessed: August 31, 2015.

Additional Resources

Books by Riis, Jacob A. (Jacob August). Project Gutenberg. Date accessed: March 17, 2015.
Jacob Riis. Museum of the City of New York. Date accessed: March 17, 2015.
Tom Buk-Swienty. The other half: the life of Jacob Riis and the world of immigrant America. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008.
Bonnie Yochelson, Daniel Czitrom. Rediscovering Jacob Riis: exposure journalism and photography in turn-of-the-century. New York: New Press, 2007.
Jacob A. Riis’ New York [slideshow]. The New York Times. Date accessed: September 14, 2015.

Related Events

1621

Dutch Colonize Modern-Day New York City

1898

New Colonies & Territories Shape Migration

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