This course explores how the United States has become the most ethnically diverse nation in the world through a process that has forced the country continually to accommodate various ethnic groups who have often been viewed as unassimilable and thereby to broaden the meaning of the American identity. Beginning with Supreme Court decision in the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, students will explore how a racially divided society has transformed itself while also continuing to experience lingering economic and social problems for African Americans and for other ethnic groups arriving in later periods of immigration.