1. Taking into account Jim Gregory's article how would you interpret the performances of of Bob Wills and Merle Haggard as evidence of the evolution of Okie social status in California? How would you relate these songs to the stories told by John Ford in Grapes of Wrath or the songs of Woody Guthrie in the film Columbia?
2. According to Gregory what was the cultural and political impact of Okie migration in California? What are the ideological dimensions of Okie cultural production? (use the performances by Wills and Haggard and or search other artist perfomances cited by the Gregory article)
3. According to Gregory what did Steinbeck get wrong in his interpretation of the Okie experience in California?
4. How would you compare the Bracero program to the experience of Japanese or Chinese immigrants in the west?
5. How have economic outcomes for Okie immigrants compared to the economic outcomes of Latino and Asian immigrants in the mid to late 20th century?
6. What was the relationship between the Bracero program and the UFW and how was this relationship significant to the strike and grape boycotts of the mid 1960s?
7. How do you explain the simultaneous success of Chavez and La Causa and the landslide victory of Ronald Reagan in his race for Governor of California in 1966?
1. According to Robert Self what is metropolitanism and how was it challenged by the Black Panther party? How is this concept linked to what Self calls "the urban crisis? What is the relationship between the city, the suburbs, and black radicalism in Oakland California?
2.What did the Black Panther mean when they called for the creation of a "peoples economy" and how was this different from the New Deals liberal economic policies?
3. How was black power defined and understood by the different constituencies in Oakland?
4. Can you interpret Richard Nixon's speech on the philosophy of government as a reaction against movements like the black power movement in Oakland? What was Nixon's philosophy and how would you contrast it with the idea of a peoples economy advanced by the Black panther Party? Who does Nixon refer to when he mentions "the silent Majority"?
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