Discrimination

During the 1920's, racial tensions in American society reached boiling point. New non-protestant immigrants like Jews and Catholics had been arrived in their masses from south-east Europe since early on in the century. Together with Orientals, Mexicans and the Black population these minorities suffered the most at the hands of those concerned with preserving the long established White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (W.A.S.P.) values that were an integral part of American life. Prejudice and racism reared its ugly head in many areas of society, with people showing a tolerance for racist views in the media, literature and towards organisations like the Ku Klux Klan. Also the language, living and working conditions and Government legislation that ethnic minorities were subjected to is further evidence that the twenties was an openly discriminatory decade. It was also during this period of grave hostility directed at ethnic groups that America's 'open door' attitude of "Give me your tired, your poor" towards immigration, officially became a part of history.

In the 1920's Anti-Immigration Organisations that had been founded in the latter parts of the first decade of the twentieth century began to receive much larger and an increasingly influential following. The Immigration Restriction League was one such group, it claimed to have 'scientific' evidence that the new immigrants from Southeast Europe were racially inferior and therefor posed to threaten the supremacy of the USA. They believed strongly in WASP values and certainly did not wish to see them become polluted by other religions from minorities like Catholics and Jews. This Social-Darwinist belief was not just popular with the masses, but it's appeal spread to people of considerable eminence. For example the principals of important American universities like Harvard, Stanford and Chicago were numbered among the Leagues supporters. Another similar organisation looking to conserve the American way if life was the American Protective Association. A leading member, William J.H. Tranyor spoke for their cause when arguing against giving the vote to "every ignorant Ago and Pole, Hun and Slav" and all other "criminal riffraff of Europe" that arrive on Americas shores. During the 1920's the growth and continually support of anti-immigration fraternities from the American people serves to highlight the increasing resentment and concern over foreign influences. The influential author Madison Grant, whose book "The Passing of a Great Race" became a best seller in its time, echoes such sentiments. Grant, another Social-Darwinist, called for absolute racial segregation, immigration restrictions and even forced sterilisation of "worthless race types". In his book he described ethnic minorities as "human flotsam" and that the "whole tone of American life, social, moral and political has been lowered and vulgarised by them". Madison Grant, together with authors that shared a similar perspective on ethnic groups, influenced many people in America, the fact that this type of literature was popular shows this.

The language that native-born Americans adopted to describe those of ethnic minorities can be used as an indicator of their dislike of them. To begin with nicknames for minorities were only mildly abusive, but as time went on the terms became uglier. For example the term used to describe a person of Latin background was "Spic", said to originate from the expression "No Spic Inglis". Also Italians had a number of names, 'Dogo', Guinea, and 'Greaser'. Other nicknames for minorities that became popular in the twenties were kike, Chink, Polack, Hun and numerous others. Black people around this time were still being referred to as either Negroes or more commonly Niggers. Although these colloquial terms are fairly mild compared with those used today, their sheer presence in American vocabulary at the time tells us that people were becoming much more intolerant of the ethnic minorities they encountered.

In reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, came widespread fears that a similar communist revolt might sweep through America. This so called 'Red Scare' was the accumulative belief that it was the foreign influences, especially those immigrants from eastern Europe that were to blame for the 'Bolshevik inspired' incidents throughout the USA, such as labour strikes and riots. On the 20th January 1920, at the height of the Red Scare, the Justice Department co-oridinated federal marshals and local police in raids on the homes of suspected communists and anarchists. With no search warrants, they arrested more than 6000 people, grossly violating civil rights and simple decency. These "Palmer Raids" named after the then Attorney General, Mitchell Palmer, who arranged them, reflected the paranoiac mood within the nation towards foreigners. Even though the Red Scare died out by the end of 1920, it did leave an acrid aftertaste on the USA. Throughout the twenties there was an upsurge of nationalism with the term 100 % Americanism coined at this time and more people began to clamour for tougher restrictions on immigration. For example in a letter to the New York Times in 1922, the writer stated "America for Americans, I say" and in referring to the immigrant issue, "Keep 'em out, at least until folks here get a better life."

The foreign connections of so many radicals strengthened the belief that the state was in danger from 'alien' influences and celebrated cases like that of Sacco and Vanzetti merely enforced this idea. They were two Italian immigrants, arrested for robbing a paymaster in Massachusetts on the 15th April 1920. The evidence against them was extremely weak, but they were found guilty and sentenced to death in 1921. The judge was openly hostile to the defendants, calling them "those anarchist bastards" in private and made it clear that they must be guilty because of their national origin. Many in rural America supported the executions, they believed that cities were full of foreigners determined to overthrow the existing America way of life. The Sacco and Vanzetti case is an example of how racial prejudice can cause justice to suffer.

In response to the call for further restrictions on immigration, Congress passed two laws. Firstly the Emergency Immigration Act in 1921, which restricted new arrivals to 3% of the foreign born of a nationality. In 1924 the Johnson-Reed Act stiffened these terms, limiting the number of people from any nationality to 2% of the total number of that national origin living in the USA in 1890. This law also set a permanent limitation of 150,000 people a year coming into the USA. This new act,