FREE Video Podcasts by Professional Historians

 

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Historian

 

Dr Kevin Yuill, Senior Lecturer in American History, University of Sunderland

Podcasts by Kevin Yuill
Podcasts on American History

 

DVD

GBP 14.99

Synopsis

 

In 1924 Congress passed the Johnson-Reed, or National Origins, Act, declaring racial and ethnic background as the most important determinant in gaining American citizenship. Those with Asian backgrounds were barred altogether. This session examines both the run-up to this crucial legislation and its impact on immigration up until it was superseded in 1966.

 

Contents:

Immigration to the United States in the Nineteenth Century
The New Immigration from 1890
The International Events Affecting Attitudes to Immigration
The Campaign for Normalcy and the Rise of the Ku Klux Klan
The Immigration Act of 1924
Immigration after 1924

Further Reading

 

John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1973, ©1955)
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 2001)
Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy and the Fashioning of America (London: Harvard University Press, 2006)
Roger Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890-1924 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997)
Kristofer Allerfeldt, Beyond the Huddled Masses: American Immigration and the Treaty of Versailles (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006)
James A. Barrett, “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working-Class in the United States, 1880-1930,” Journal of American History Vol. 79, No. 3 (December 1992), pp996-1020.
King, Desmond, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (London: Harvard University Press, 2000)
Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1957, ©1948)
Mae M. Ngai,, Impossible Subjects:Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005)
John Gjerde, Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History (Boston, 1998)
Kevin Yuill, “Creating an American Music: A Critical View of the Origins of Country,” Reconstruction 8.4 (2008)

Websites

 

Harvard Open Collections - Immigration This is my favourite site. It has original materials available not just to people with elbow patches and library card privileges but to the whole world! It is an example of exactly how digital collections on line should work. There are many primary documents and contemporary accounts that give insight lacking from contemporary books and accounts into just how Americans regarded issues of immigration and race. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Harvard!
Survey of Race Relations, 1924-1927 A very specialized site that has pdf’s of all the records of this interesting survey. Incredibly useful for understanding the hostility of those on the West Coast to the Japanese. Reference one of these documents in your essay and the teacher will have to be impressed (especially because this site is not that easy to find)! Like the Harvard site, an example of how to digitally record primary documents.

Below are some useful introductions to US Immigration History
Destination America Glossy and fairly commercial site but useful for timelines.
Immigration Part of the American Memory collection, this government site provides a general overview of American immigration and immigrants. British viewers may well find the sections a little bit irritating. There are student activities, educator guides, photos and links to useful resources. What is useful is to click on the (small) faces on the left to get a potted history of that nation's immigration pattern into the US. Very little of this site deals with 1924.
Immigration from Thinkquest. Fairly good educational (commercial) site with good visuals and sections on immigrants into the US in the past and present.
Spartacus A site clearly designed more than ten years ago, it has some information but, curiously, fails to list the 1924 Immigration Act!
From Haven to Home - 350 Years of Jewish Life in America
A Library of Congress exhibition that features more than 200 items of American Judaica from the LOC and other cultural institutions.