Our Immigrant Stories

My 16-year-old has to make a movie consisting of individual photos on the theme of immigration. I couldn't resist relocating some old photos posted to this blog a long time ago and forwarding them to him.

This is the ship my Scottish grandfather, Alexander Anderson, traveled to America on back in 1923.

Here is the manifest from that ship, with his name on it.

It a terrific class assignment for a high school student to research and express himself on the immigration issue. Dylan has plenty of perspective -- he knows about the Irish, the Chinese, the Jewish and the Latino immigrations.

He'll create a soundtrack for his movie. I suggested this song, which he didn't know:


Arlo, the son of the songwriter Woodie Guthrie sings it with Emmy Lou Harris.

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