state:
Georgia
Local history:
Past is Precedent: Incarcerating Non-Citizens
What rights should non-citizens have?
Kennesaw State University
Exhibiting Partner:
Virtual exhibition open now
Check here for further details soon!
January 4, 2021May 28, 2021

States of Incarceration is now at the Levine Museum in Charlotte, NC

States of Incarceration is extended in NC! September 23, 2023 - January 31, 2023 at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC!

401 S Tryon St, Charlotte, NC 28202

go to www.museumofthenewsouth.org for more information.

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Georgia: Past is Precedent: Incarcerating Non-Citizens
What rights should non-citizens have?
Kennesaw State University

During World War I, the federal government imprisoned German civilians living in the United States in internment camps, one of which was in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Between 1917 and 1920, this camp housed more than 3,600 people. Most of them had committed no crime. They were simply not American citizens. Among the challenges these imprisoned people faced were a flu pandemic as well as separation from their families and property.

A century later, non-citizens are incarcerated in Georgia at the Stewart Detention Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prison in Lumpkin, Georgia. For most of the detained people, their only crime was coming to the United States. While awaiting asylum hearings, they are subjected to civil and human rights abuses, and, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic.

These sites represent bookends of a century in which the United States incarcerated non-citizens, depriving them of their freedom and civil and human rights.

Our Point of View

We are students in the Kennesaw State University public history program. Our studies focused on the incarceration of non-citizens in Georgia at two locations—Fort Oglethorpe, where German nationals were imprisoned during World War I, and the Stewart Detention Center, where asylum-seekers are held in one of the country’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement prisons. Most of us were unaware of the realities that incarcerated non-citizens faced, both 100 years ago and today.

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Georgia: Past is Precedent: Incarcerating Non-Citizens    Kennesaw State University
What rights should non-citizens have?
Georgia: Past is Precedent: Incarcerating Non-Citizens
What rights should non-citizens have?
  Kennesaw State University

National Exhibition Venue    Virtual exhibition open now

Public Dialogues and Events
| January 4 – May 28, 2021

See Full Exhibition & Events Schedule
Sep 15, 2020

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Refuge or Refusal: A Conversation about Turning Points in U.S. Immigration History

Description: 

Join the Museum of History and Holocaust Education and CivicGeorgia for a Welcoming Week conversation about legislative turning points in U.S. immigration history as well as the ebb and flow of welcoming and exclusion in the American experience.

The session will begin with a review of key moments in the history of immigration and citizenship policy in the United States along with the social, political, and economic context that led to changes. Participants will then join a break-out room for a facilitated discussion focused on one of the pre-selected themes (listed below) that run through this history.

Time: 
2:00PM to 3:30 PM
Venue: 

Virtual event.

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