Full transcript
0:02So, in the last two clips,
0:04I described how Americans' attitudes
0:08towards immigrants changed from the
0:101890s to 1920.
0:13In the 1890s, people debated the place
0:16of immigrants in the United States,
0:18but many people argued that what people
0:21worried about could be fixed through
0:23Americanization policies.
0:26By the 1910s,
0:28people came to believe that
0:29Americanization was ineffective and in
0:32some
0:33instances dangerous, which led to the
0:35Palmer Raids, the Red Scare, and the
0:38reactions to the House of Morgan
0:41bombing.
0:43So, by the time the 1920s opened up,
0:46the Red Scare had created a suspicion
0:49towards outsiders,
0:52a general distrust of anybody involved
0:55in labor unions,
0:57and a general hostility to reformers who
1:00wanted to continue finding ways to
1:04rebuild efforts to help Americanize
1:08immigrants to the United States.
1:10A lot of Americans in the 1920s
1:14had seen the last couple decades as a
1:16period of tremendous change, and it was.
1:19And what they really wanted to do was to
1:22now enjoy a period of time of political
1:26and social conformity. They wanted a a
1:28quiet decade where Americans could
1:31embrace what President Warren G. Harding
1:34called normalcy.
1:36Right?
1:37So,
1:39what a lot of people embraced was the
1:41idea
1:43that people who were not American enough
1:46had become a threat to individual
1:48liberty. So, what they're saying is is
1:50that
1:51because outsiders, they believed,
1:55tended to band together
1:59into dangerous groups
2:02that threatened the economy, that
2:05threatened civic well-being, that
2:08disliked American way of life,
2:11that anybody who wasn't American enough
2:14was a threat to
2:16an American citizen's ability
2:19to make money,
2:21to enjoy democracy that that represented
2:24their needs.
2:25So, these people needed to be
2:28ostracized.
2:30Americans needed to be protected from
2:32these dangerous outsiders.
2:35Right?
2:36In the 1910s, there had been a sort of
2:39rising trend, this conversation
2:42saying
2:44outsiders were dangerous. Now, this
2:46outsider identity was really vague. At
2:49various times in the 1910s and early
2:511920s, people who were Jewish were
2:54defined as outsiders and dangerous.
2:56People who were feminists were defined
2:59as dangerous and outsiders.
3:01People who were in unions were defined
3:04as dangerous outsiders. Even big
3:07corporations were sometimes defined as
3:09dangerous outsiders. So, this idea of
3:12like who an outsider was
3:14was really fluid and can be used in a
3:18lot of different ways.
3:20For instance, the Ford Motor Company
3:24created what they called the
3:26Sociological Department. Uh today we
3:29would call it sort of like HR or Human
3:31Resources.
3:33But what Ford did was hire a team of
3:36sociologists to help him create
3:39a homogeneous workforce that would work
3:43the way he wanted them to work to make
3:45him as much money as possible.
3:47Ford was anti-Semitic. He hated Jewish
3:50people. So, the Sociological Department
3:53was supposed to root out any Jews who
3:55worked for the Ford Motor Company around
3:57Detroit.
3:59They were also supposed to make sure
4:02that if Ford was hiring immigrant people
4:04from immigrant backgrounds, so people
4:06from Eastern European or Southern
4:08European backgrounds,
4:10that they were actually becoming
4:11American. So, when you got a job
4:14assembling Model Ts for Henry Ford,
4:18the contract you saw and said that for a
4:20year
4:22you would allow the Sociological
4:23Department to visit your home when
4:25you're at work to interview your wife.
4:29Sociological Department asked your wife
4:31what kind of foods she was preparing.
4:33They wanted to make sure that
4:35you were being fed American food and not
4:37Polish food or Greek food.
4:40They wanted to make sure your kids are
4:41actually going to the public schools
4:43that Ford supported. Those schools were
4:45teaching kids
4:46lessons in Americanization that Ford
4:48supported.
4:50They wanted to make sure that you went
4:51to church at least once a week. And they
4:53asked where you went to church. So,
4:55Ford's Sociological Department
4:57really took on some
5:00invasive tactics to make sure that the
5:03Ford Motor Company had the type of
5:05workforce Ford had. And in return, if
5:07you worked for Ford,
5:09you had to give up certain individual
5:11freedoms. The freedom to worship the way
5:14you wanted to worship, the freedom to
5:15eat the way you wanted to eat, the
5:17freedom to raise your kids the way you
5:18wanted to raise. Or, wink wink, nudge
5:21nudge, you had to be very good at hiding
5:22these things if you wanted to work for
5:25the best paying employer in the United
5:27States for working class people at the
5:29time.
5:31Other evidence that
5:33100% Americanism was gaining favor
5:36during the teens and '20s was the rise
5:38of the second Ku Klux Klan. Right, the
5:41second Klan
5:42uh emerged around 1909 and it began
5:46picking up pace in the 1910s,
5:49but it exploded in membership in the
5:511920s.
5:53The Klan worked diligently
5:57to define outsiders and people they saw
6:00as immoral as dangerous to the American
6:04way of life.
6:06Drinkers, jazz musicians, people who
6:09were black, people who were Jewish,
6:12people who committed adultery, these
6:15were all dangerous outsiders.
6:17People who existed in the United States
6:19who threatened important American
6:21traditions, according to the Klan.
6:24The Klan would have millions of members
6:26in the 1920s.
6:30This general acceptance of 100%
6:33Americanism, that there was an us and
6:35there was a them,
6:37supported
6:39further immigration restrictions in the
6:411920s. Now,
6:44there were a number of immigration laws
6:46passed in the 1910s.
6:48These tended to be wartime and temporary
6:51actions,
6:53and I'm not going to walk through all of
6:55them, but what I will say is that
6:56increasingly with the two or three laws
6:59that come up before 1924,
7:02we can see the laws more clearly
7:04defining outsider as somebody who is
7:06ethnically or racially different. So,
7:09the laws
7:10increasingly worked to make the United
7:13States a whiter place. You have to be as
7:15white as possible if you want to get in.
7:17Right?
7:19The Immigration Act of 1924
7:21was built on a couple of acts, one from
7:251917 and one from 1921 that were
7:28temporary. Right? The 1917 law was a
7:31wartime act. The 1921 law was temporary,
7:36but the important thing was it had
7:38established a quota system.
7:41Right? Saying that only a certain number
7:43of people from various countries around
7:46the world could come in. And what this
7:48quota system did was it tended to favor
7:53Western and Northern Europe over other
7:55parts of the world. Right? Uh so, the
7:581924 Act took that quota system. And
8:01sometimes the Immigration Act of '24 is
8:03actually referred to as the quota law.
8:07But that Immigration Act of '24 limited
8:09the number of immigrants allowed entry
8:11into the United States by establishing a
8:14quota visa limit of 2%
8:19of the total number of people of each
8:21nationality according to the United
8:24States Census of 1890.
8:27So,
8:29if you were from Czechoslovakia
8:31and you wanted to get in,
8:33the federal government said, "We're
8:35going to let 2%
8:37of the people from Czechoslovakia who
8:40came here in 1890 in in 1925 and then in
8:441926."
8:46And the people who wrote the law went
8:49through a process. Like originally, as
8:50you can see in this political cartoon,
8:53originally it started at 3%, but then
8:55they decided to drop it to 2%. They said
8:573% was too many. Originally, they
8:59started off with the census of 1900.
9:03But then they realized that would let
9:04too many Southern and Eastern Europeans
9:07in. It would let too many people from
9:09Asia in. So, they moved the census data
9:12back to 1890 and to 2% so they could get
9:15the limitation that they wanted.
9:18That 1921 law that I mentioned, it had
9:22allowed only 357,000
9:25total Europeans into the country.
9:29Some nationalities were totally
9:31eliminated from immigrating to the
9:34United States according to the 1924 law.
9:39It completely excluded immigrants from
9:41Asia with the exception of
9:43Filipino people who were considered to
9:45be American nationals because the
9:48Philippines were under US jurisdiction
9:51at the time.
9:53Other things the 1924 Act did
9:56was established the category illegal
9:58alien for the very first time in
10:01American history.
10:03It also established the Border Patrol
10:06for the first time in American history.
10:09And the Border Patrol's job was to
10:12prohibit illegal aliens from entering
10:14the United States.
10:16Almost the entirety of their work was
10:18done along the Mexican and Canadian
10:20borders.
10:22Not keeping Canadians out, not keeping
10:24people from Central or Latin America
10:26out, but keeping out Southern and
10:29Eastern Europeans who came to Canada or
10:31came to Mexico and then tried to cross
10:33into the United States through that
10:35border. So, it's very clearly an entity
10:37meant to target
10:39Southern and Eastern Europeans who 100%
10:42Americans believed were the greatest
10:45threat to the American way of life
10:48because they were the people they
10:50believed harbored the most anti-American
10:53values.
10:54The Immigration Act of 1924 closed the
10:57so-called golden door, the door into the
11:00United States and to opportunity.
11:03An us versus them mentality
11:07had become codified by law. The
11:09Immigration Act of 1924
11:12built and then maintained that there
11:15were Americans and then there was
11:17everybody else.
11:19Not a lot of people questioned this at
11:21the time. Non-politics was a sort of
11:23watchword of the day. In general,
11:26participation in politics was declining
11:28in the 1920s because
11:30the economy was booming and people felt
11:32like the worst threats to the American
11:34way of life had been repelled in the
11:36late late teens and so people just
11:39wanted that normalcy they've been
11:41promised.
11:42But people didn't forget
11:46how immigrants and workers were treated
11:48into the 1930s. There were Americans who
11:51continued to speak out for immigrants
11:54who tended to be working class.
11:56And they just had to wait until things
11:58changed to begin advocating for them.
12:01So,
12:02by the end of the 1920s, what 100%
12:05Americanism had done
12:07was
12:09convince Americans that the nation
12:12needed protecting from outsiders
12:14and that it needed to not engage with
12:17thoughts that weren't already accepted
12:19values in the United States.
12:23The catch is is America was changing.
12:26What America was was very much in flux.
12:30So, that's a very problematic thing to
12:32say we're only going to embrace American
12:34ideas when
12:35what American was was changing because
12:38of all the economic, political, and
12:40social cultural change of the previous
12:4350 years.
12:46Americans who were seen as most American
12:50tended to be the people who could fit
12:52in.
12:53They came from a broad, middle-class,
12:55white, Protestant society.
12:58But they were not indicative of who
12:59America was becoming. There were a lot
13:01of people living in the United States
13:03who simply did not fit into that
13:05category.
13:07So,
13:08the ideas
13:09that these immigration restrictions had
13:11somehow protected the United States from
13:13people who didn't fit in
13:15weren't necessarily true.