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Table of the Quota System Targeting Specific Immigrant Groups
In the years after World War I, Congress passed the Quota Act of 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924, also known as the Johnson-Reed Act. The 1924 Act established a quota for the total number of immigrants allowed per annum at [...]
Graph of "Social Inadequacy" Among Immigrant Groups, 1922
Proponents of eugenics believed that various forms of "social inadequacy", including mental illness, criminality, and physical handicaps, were the result of inherited genetic traits. Some studies, such as this one from 1922, attempted to link these [...]
A Senator Intends to "Shut the Door" on Immigration
America's reputation as a land of welcome for immigrants has often been compromised by periodic calls to "shut the door" on immigration. At the turn of the twentieth century, the arrival of unprecedented numbers of immigrants from Southern and [...]
A Would-Be Immigrant is Excluded for Being a Potential "Public Charge"
This memorandum records the recommendations of the Immigration Service Commissioner of the District Office of San Francisco regarding the fate of Samuel Kaplan, a would-be immigrant from Russia. The Commissioner upholds a previous ruling by the [...]
Timeline for Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War
This timeline tracks significant events in African American history between 1863 and 1960.
A Social Scientist Urges Americans to Give Mexicans "a Fair Chance in Life"
Progressive social scientists, like economist Alvin S. Johnson, disagreed with those who held Mexican and other immigrants as racially inferior an undesirable. Instead, he and his peers claimed that Mexican government and culture were "inferior" and [...]
A Social Worker Calls Upon Unions to Accept Mexican Immigrants
Ernestine Alvarado, of New York's YWCA, sharply criticized Americans who disparaged Mexico and did not welcome Mexican immigrants. She defended Mexican immigrants, calling them "bold dreamers," and castigated nativist stereotypes and unwelcoming [...]
"The Reason"
In the early twentieth century, African Americans had plenty of reasons to leave the rural South: disfranchisement, segregation, poverty, racial violence, lack of educational opportunities, and the drudgery of farm life. As the cartoon below from [...]
Map of Railroad Routes Followed by Black Migrants
African-American migrants to the North chose their destinations primarily based on their state of origin: those from Georgia and the Carolinas headed to cities along the eastern seaboard like New York and Philadelphia; migrants from Alabama and [...]
A Tenant Farmer’s Daughter Remembers Leaving Mississippi
In 1917, ten-year-old Rubie Bond left Mississippi with her parents and migrated to Beloit, Wisconsin. Her father, who worked as a tenant farmer in the South, had been recruited to work at a factory in Beloit. In 1976, she was interviewed as part of [...]