AN AMERICAN TUNE: REFUGEE CHILDREN IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS By Daniel B. Weddle* Oh, we come on a ship they call the Mayflower We come on a ship that sailed the moon We come in the age's most uncertain hour And sing an American tune I. INTRODUCTION We are a nation of refugees. From the Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution to the Irish fleeing famine to the Syrians fleeing Assad, the history of America has been filled with waves of immigrants seeking sanctuary on our shores from persecution, famine, and sword. Generation after generation of Americans have absorbed refugees from all over the world into our national identity. The Pilgrims helped sow the seeds of the Great Migration of the 1630's in which thousands of Puritans and Separatists fled persecution inspired by King James I.2 Large migrations in the nineteenth century were often spawned by famine, most famously the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-nineteenth century, 3 but also crop failures in Germany and other parts of the world. The end of the Nineteenth Century and the first half of the Twentieth saw numerous refugee migrations. Between 1880 and 1924, nearly three million Jews arrived in the United States, fleeing European persecution. Sadly, *Daniel B. Weddle is a clinical professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where he teaches constitutional law, education law, and higher education law, and directs the school's academic support efforts through the Law School Strategies Program. Many thanks to the editors and staff of the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy for their insights and editorial assistance in the preparation of this Article. 1. PAUL SIMON, An American Tune, on THERE GOES RHYMIN' SIMON (Columbia Records 1973). 2. See FRANCIS J. BREMER, THE PURITAN EXPERIMENT : NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY FROM BRADFORD TO EDWARDS 60 (2013). 3. See generally MARY C. KELLY, IRELAND'S GREAT FAMINE IN IRISH-AMERICAN HISTORY ENSHRINING A FATEFUL MEMORY (2013) 4. ARISTDE R. ZOLDBERG, A NATION BY DESIGN : IMMIGRATION POLICY IN THE FASHIONING OF AMERICA 129 (2009). 5. HASIA R. DINER, A NEW PROMISED LAND: A HISTORY OF JEWS IN AMERICA 44 (2000) ("About a third of all eastern European Jews emigrated to the United States between 1880 and 434
AN AMERICAN TUNE: REFUGEE CHILDREN IN U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Jul 11, 2023
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