Once Upon an American Dream: Arrival - Navigating the System Then and Now

The Heurich House Museum and the Bipartisan Policy Center are proud to present “Once Upon an American Dream,” a three-part panel series exploring the stages of the immigrant experience in America: migration, arrival, and integration.

Our second panel will take place as a virtual happy hour on July 9, 2020, at 4 p.m. and explores “Arrival: Navigating the System Then and Now.” In light of serious conversations about racism happening in the wake of the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, this panel focuses on the Black immigrant experience in the United States. We will discuss the intersection of immigrants and the Black population in the region when Christian Heurich arrived to Baltimore and Washington, DC shortly after the Civil War, the history of racism in the U.S. immigration system, and how that history affected how immigrants arrived and navigated through the system then and now.

This panel series explores issues core to the Heurich House Museum’s mission. Christian Heurich’s life embodied a rags-to-riches story where an immigrant’s spirit of creative entrepreneurship yielded success and a family legacy. Yet, the journey to achieve the American Dream comes in many forms and depends on many factors, from gender and race, to education and training, opportunity and luck. Grab your favorite cocktail or “mocktail” and join the Heurich House and the Bipartisan Policy Center on Zoom as we dive into these questions. Panelists will be announced in the coming weeks.