Minidoka Internment National Monument [ID]

Description

The Minidoka Internment National Monument presents the story of the forced relocation of people of Japanese descent within the U.S. following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. With President Franklin Roosevelt's (in office 1933-1945) signing of Executive Order 9066, over 120,000 men, women, and children were required to move to one of 10 Relocation Centers. Minidoka was one such center, built to contain the Japanese in the U.S. and prevent potential spy communications. Today the site includes the guard house and waiting room.

The site offers interpretive signage. The Jerome County Museum offers a display on the Minidoka Relocation Center, and the Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum offers a restored barracks building.

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center

Description

The Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center presents Japanese American history and culture. Exhibit topics include historic life in Oregon and in Portland's Nihonmachi or "Japantown," the results of Executive Order 9066, Issei immigration, and modern life. The 1942 Executive Order 9066 legalized the internment of thousands of individuals of Japanese descent, also known as Nikkei. Many of those affected were second or third generation Japanese Americans. The term Issei refers to the first generation of Japanese in the U.S. The center's research library includes a collection of oral histories.

The center offers exhibits, outreach speakers, outreach presentations for schools, research library access, and research assistance. School outreach topics include Japanese internment, life in Nihonmachi and ethnic intolerance, and Japanese immigration to Oregon. The website offers virtual exhibits.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center [WY]

Description

The Buffalo Bill Historical Center contains several museums devoted to Buffalo Bill, Western art, the Plains peoples, and Greater Yellowstone. The Buffalo Bill Museum presents the life of W.F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, and his historical context in the American West. Cody (1846-1917) operated a Wild West show between 1883 and 1913, which helped to shape popular understandings of the Western frontier. The Whitney Gallery of Western Art displays major works of Western art. Artists represented in the collection include William Ranney, T.D. Kelsey (born 1946), Edgar S. Paxson (1852-1919), and Fritz Scholder (1937-2005). The Plains Indian Museum presents the history and culture of the people of the Plains. Collection strengths include the early reservation period (circa 1880-1930), the Lakota, Crow, Arapaho, Shoshone, and Cheyenne. The Cody Firearms Museum presents the world's most comprehensive collection of U.S. firearms. The Draper Museum of Natural History presents the natural history of the Greater Yellowstone area.

All sites offer exhibits. The Draper Museum of Natural History offers interactive exhibits, audio-visual elements, monthly lectures, and an interactive elementary school educational program. The center also offers research library access and research assistance. Center educational opportunities include themed guided tours for students, traveling trunks, resource kits, videos, and teacher workshops. The website offers a Plains Indian Museum virtual exhibit and Cody Firearms Museum firearms glossary and idiom listing.

The Whitney Gallery of Western Art is closed, as the site adds interpretation, situating artworks in context.

Hood River County Historical Museum [OR]

Description

Hood River County Historical Museum presents the socio-cultural history of Hood River County, Oregon. Topics addressed within permanent exhibits include the daily lives of pioneer, Native American, and area ethnic groups, as well as Japanese Internment after Pearl Harbor.

The museum offers exhibits, guided tours, self-guided tours, activity tours, research assistance, a traveling trunk on the local fruit industry, and several school tour options. All guided tours are customized to group needs. Payment is required for research assistance.

Land of (Unequal) Opportunity

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Annotation

While many are familiar with the 1957 Little Rock High School integration crisis, far fewer students of U.S. civil rights history may be aware of the longer history of that struggle in Arkansas. This website includes more than 460 documents and images, including cartoons, court decisions, photographs, newspaper articles, letters, and essays related to that history. For example, an essay on the meaning of relocation written by a high school student at Arkansas's Jerome Relocation Center in 1943 brings a more personal perspective to the story of internment, as the student describes the ways in which members of her community have struggled between the "fighting spirit" and the "giving up spirit." Users new to civil rights history in Arkansas may want to begin with the extensive timeline that describes events from the arrival of slaves in Arkansas in the 1720s to a 2006 State Supreme Court ruling that struck down a ban on gays serving as foster parents. The website also includes 10 lesson plans geared for middle school students that make use of the website's resources—such as a speech given by Governor Oral Fabus in 1958. An extensive bibliography of secondary sources related to many aspects of civil rights, including African American, gay and lesbian, and women's issues, Japanese relocation, religious intolerance, political rights, and anti-civil liberties groups and issues, is also available.