AP United States History

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain why **ethnic urban neighborhoods** formed in American cities during the Gilded Age
- Identify the difference between **old immigrants** and **new immigrants**
- Understand how **industrialization**, **urbanization**, and **chain migration** shaped immigrant settlement patterns
- Analyse the benefits and limits of **ethnic enclaves** for immigrant communities
- Connect immigrant neighborhoods to **tenements**, **political machines**, **nativism**, and **reform**
- Use specific city examples such as the **Lower East Side**, **Little Italy**, and **Chinatown** in exam answers

## AP United States History Syllabus

For the AP United States History, you are expected to understand how ethnic urban neighborhoods formed during the Gilded Age, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that rapid industrialization after **1865** drew immigrants and migrants into cities, increasing urbanization
- Identify **ethnic urban neighborhoods** or **ethnic enclaves** as districts where immigrants of similar nationality, language, or religion clustered together
- Explain why enclaves formed, including **cheap housing**, **factory jobs**, **chain migration**, and protection from discrimination
- Understand the difference between **old immigrants** from Northern and Western Europe and **new immigrants** from Southern and Eastern Europe after about **1880**
- Recognise the role of **tenements** in immigrant city life and why they became linked to overcrowding and poverty
- Explain how **political machines** such as **Tammany Hall** gained support in immigrant neighborhoods
- Identify responses to urban immigrant poverty, including **Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)** and **Hull House (1889)**
- Understand why immigrant enclaves also sparked **nativist** backlash and immigration restriction, including the **Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)**

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did immigrants in the Gilded Age often settle in ethnic neighborhoods rather than spread evenly across cities?
2. What is the difference between **old immigrants** and **new immigrants**?
3. How did **political machines** benefit from immigrant neighborhoods?
4. Why were **Chinatowns** similar to, but also different from, other ethnic enclaves?
5. How could ethnic neighborhoods be both helpful and harmful for immigrants?

## Introduction

During **Period 6 (1865–1898)**, American cities changed fast. Industrial growth created jobs, railroads connected regions, and millions of immigrants arrived looking for work and security. Many of these newcomers did not settle randomly. Instead, they gathered in city districts with people who shared their language, religion, customs, and place of origin.

For APUSH, this matters because ethnic urban neighborhoods show two sides of the Gilded Age at once. They reveal opportunity: jobs, support networks, churches, shops, and political influence. But they also reveal hardship: overcrowding, low wages, discrimination, and poor housing. Strong answers do not describe enclaves as simply “good” or “bad.” They explain why they formed and what effects they had.

> **Key Term: ethnic enclave**
> A city neighborhood where immigrants of similar national, linguistic, or religious backgrounds clustered together.

### Why ethnic urban neighborhoods formed

The first cause was **industrialization**. After the Civil War, factories multiplied in cities, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. Employers needed large numbers of workers for low-paid industrial jobs. Immigrants arrived because city labor, even if poorly paid, could still look better than rural poverty or political trouble in Europe.

The second cause was location. New arrivals usually settled near work. Walking distance mattered because transportation cost money and time. If a dock, factory, sweatshop, or rail yard was nearby, immigrants wanted housing close to it. This pushed many into crowded working-class districts.

The third cause was social support. Arriving in a new country was risky. Many immigrants spoke little English, had little money, and knew few American customs. Settling among people from the same region made adjustment easier. A newcomer could find a landlord, a church, a synagogue, a grocer, a boardinghouse, or a job contact through people who already understood the same language and habits.

> **Key Term: chain migration**
> A pattern in which immigrants follow relatives, friends, or people from the same home community to the same destination.

Chain migration is one of the most important ideas here. Ethnic neighborhoods did not form by accident. They grew because one arrival led to another. If an Italian laborer found work and a room in New York, he might send for family or neighbors. If a Jewish family from Eastern Europe found safety in the Lower East Side, later arrivals from similar backgrounds often headed to the same streets. This produced concentration over time.

The fourth cause was discrimination. Many immigrants clustered together because they faced hostility from native-born Americans. Shared neighborhoods offered a degree of security. In practical terms, this meant protection from prejudice, help in dealing with employers, and a community where one was not isolated.

This is why students should avoid saying enclaves were purely voluntary. Some immigrants wanted to preserve language and custom, yes. But many also had limited choices because of low wages, prejudice, and housing access.

> **Key Term: urbanization**
> The growth of cities as more people move from rural areas and from abroad into urban centers.

A strong cause-and-effect chain for APUSH is:

industrialization -> immigration and migration -> urban growth -> ethnic enclaves -> political machines, nativism, and reform

> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, do not stop at “immigrants moved to cities.” Push the explanation one step further: they clustered near jobs and earlier migrants, which created ethnic neighborhoods.

### What life in ethnic neighborhoods was like

Ethnic neighborhoods helped immigrants survive. They often contained institutions that reduced the shock of migration: churches, synagogues, mutual-aid societies, newspapers, food shops, schools, and small businesses. These made daily life more manageable and helped first-generation immigrants maintain cultural identity.

For example, New York’s **Lower East Side** became strongly associated with Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. **Little Italy** became linked with Italian immigrants. **Chinatowns** developed in cities such as **San Francisco** and New York. Chicago developed immigrant districts that included Polish and other European communities. These examples matter because AP readers reward specific evidence.

But the same neighborhoods were also linked to severe poverty. Most immigrant families could not afford spacious housing. They often lived in packed apartment blocks with poor ventilation, bad sanitation, and fire risk.

> **Key Term: tenement**
> A crowded, low-cost urban apartment building, often associated with poor sanitation and unsafe living conditions.

Tenements became a symbol of Gilded Age urban inequality. One reason students sometimes miss this topic is that they remember “immigrant neighborhood” as mainly cultural. On the exam, you should connect culture to material conditions. Enclaves preserved identity, but they also reflected low wages and weak city services.

This duality is central. Ethnic neighborhoods were not just slums. They were also communities with structure and resilience. A neighborhood bakery, parish, or benevolent society could matter as much as a factory paycheck. That is why describing them only as places of misery is incomplete.

A distinct example is **Chinatown**. Chinese communities fit the enclave pattern because they provided language, businesses, and mutual support. But the Chinese American experience also had a special western context. Anti-Chinese violence and exclusion were especially sharp, and federal policy targeted Chinese laborers directly.

> **Key Term: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)**
> The first major federal law restricting immigration by nationality or ethnicity; it barred Chinese laborers from immigrating.

That law matters because it shows that immigrant neighborhoods were shaped not only by economics but also by national policy and racial hostility. Chinatowns formed partly from community ties, but also because exclusion and prejudice narrowed opportunities elsewhere.

> **Test Tip:** If you use Chinatown as an example, add one sentence explaining its distinct context: western anti-Chinese hostility and the Chinese Exclusion Act. That extra precision raises the quality of your analysis.

### Political machines, nativism, and the politics of the enclave

Ethnic neighborhoods became politically important. Many city governments were weak, and poor families often got more direct help from local party organizations than from formal public services. Political machines stepped into this gap.

> **Key Term: political machine**
> An urban political organization that exchanged jobs, services, or aid for votes and loyalty.

The best-known example is **Tammany Hall** in New York City. Machine politicians helped immigrants find work, housing, and sometimes help with citizenship and voting. In return, immigrants were expected to support the machine at the polls. This system was corrupt, but it also met real needs in neighborhoods where government services were limited.

This is a point students often miss: political machines were not successful just because immigrants were naïve. They were successful because they offered practical help in harsh city conditions. The exchange was unequal and often dishonest, but it worked because it solved immediate problems.

At the same time, the visibility of immigrant neighborhoods fed **nativism**.

> **Key Term: nativism**
> Hostility toward immigrants and preference for the interests of native-born Americans.

Native-born critics often blamed immigrants for overcrowding, crime, political corruption, and labor competition. This ignored deeper causes such as exploitative employers, unregulated housing, and rapid industrial expansion. Still, nativism became more intense as more immigrants arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe after **1880**.

This is where the distinction between **old immigrants** and **new immigrants** matters. Earlier immigrants had come mainly from Northern and Western Europe. Later arrivals increasingly came from places such as Italy, Poland, Russia, and other parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. Many spoke different languages and followed different religious traditions from the Protestant majority. Because of that, they were often judged as harder to assimilate.

Do not overstate this difference. APUSH expects the distinction, but not crude stereotypes. The key point is that many native-born Americans _perceived_ the new immigrants as culturally different, and that perception increased hostility.

### Reformers, settlement houses, and the meaning of ethnic neighborhoods

The poverty of immigrant districts drew reformers. Some attacked conditions through journalism, while others created local institutions to help the urban poor.

One major figure was **Jacob Riis**, whose **How the Other Half Lives (1890)** exposed tenement conditions in New York. Riis is useful evidence because he linked immigrant urban life to overcrowding, disease, and poverty in a vivid way. His work helped persuade middle-class Americans that city housing conditions were a public problem, not just a private failure.

Another key response was the settlement house movement.

> **Key Term: settlement house**
> A community center in a poor neighborhood offering education, childcare, and social services to immigrants and the urban poor.

The best-known example was **Hull House**, founded in **Chicago in 1889** by **Jane Addams** and Ellen Gates Starr. Hull House offered English lessons, childcare, and community support. Settlement houses tried to help immigrants adapt to American life while easing the worst effects of urban poverty.

Here is the analytical link that matters: ethnic neighborhoods produced both **machine politics** and **reform activism**, but these were not the same thing. Machines exchanged help for votes. Settlement reformers aimed to improve conditions and opportunity more systematically. On an exam, confusing the two weakens your answer.

The subtopic also works well in continuity and change analysis. There was continuity because immigrants kept clustering in certain urban regions rather than dispersing evenly. There was change because the origins of immigrants shifted, city populations grew much faster, and reform efforts became more organised by the late nineteenth century.

If you get an LEQ or DBQ angle on this topic, one strong argument is that ethnic neighborhoods were **adaptive responses** to industrial capitalism. They helped people survive and build community, but they also exposed the unequal structure of Gilded Age cities.

### How to use this topic in APUSH essays

In an essay, do more than define an enclave. Build an argument. For example:

- If the prompt is about **migration and settlement**, explain why immigrants clustered and how neighborhoods eased adjustment.
- If the prompt is about **urbanization**, connect enclaves to tenements, transport, and factory labor.
- If the prompt is about **politics and power**, connect immigrant neighborhoods to Tammany Hall and machine voting blocs.
- If the prompt is about **social reform**, use Riis and Hull House as responses to visible urban poverty.
- If the prompt is about **continuity and change**, argue that enclaves preserved ethnic identity while also becoming routes toward adaptation and later assimilation.

A high-level claim might say: ethnic urban neighborhoods were both a product of opportunity and a sign of inequality. That gives you room to discuss support networks on one side and overcrowding, nativism, and exclusion on the other.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- Ethnic urban neighborhoods formed as immigrants clustered in cities with people of similar language, religion, and origin
- Industrialization after **1865** drew immigrants and internal migrants into urban areas
- **Chain migration** helped concentrate newcomers in the same districts over time
- Common examples include the **Lower East Side**, **Little Italy**, and **Chinatowns**
- Ethnic enclaves offered support through churches, synagogues, businesses, newspapers, and mutual-aid societies
- Many immigrant families lived in **tenements** marked by overcrowding, poor sanitation, and fire risk
- Enclaves were both helpful and limiting: they preserved culture but also reflected poverty and restricted housing options
- **Political machines** such as **Tammany Hall** used immigrant neighborhoods as bases of support
- **Nativism** intensified as immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe increased after about **1880**
- The **Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)** shows how immigration restriction could target a specific ethnic group
- Reformers responded to immigrant poverty through **Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives (1890)** and **Hull House (1889)**
- On APUSH exams, this topic is best analysed through cause and effect, continuity and change, and the dual themes of opportunity and inequality

## Key Terms and Concepts

- ethnic enclave
- chain migration
- urbanization
- tenement
- Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
- political machine
- nativism
- settlement house


Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age - Ethnic urban neighborhoods form