Learn about Immigration history with these old magazine articles. Find information on immigration in the 1920s.
Like many Americans in the Twenties, the journalist who penned the attached article was totally irked by the concept of an American territory – bound for statehood – having a majority Asian population. He wrote at a time when the nation was deeply concerned about assimilating America’s immigrants and his indignation can clearly be sensed.
A brief column from an American magazine that lucidly explained the mounting frustrations within 1920s Canada concerning the influx of Chinese immigrants to that country.
Click here to read about the Canadian POWs who collaborated with the Nazis.
In an effort to keep the writers and actors of the Works Progress Administration busy, FDR’s Department of the Interior produced a 26-part radio program intended to prove that America could never have become so great without the contributions of all the various hyphenated groups that make up the country. On Sunday afternoon throughout much of 1938, Americans could gather around their radios, if they had them, and hear their identity groups being praised by the Government: African-Americans tuned in on December 18th; the WASP show was on December fourth.
Horace M. Kallen (1888 – 1974) was a deep thinker who questioned the practice of Americanization (ie. assimilation). In this 1915 article, Kallen contended that although immigrants to American shores are required to develop allegiances to certain self-evident beliefs that are embraced throughout our republic – but outside of that, there is no reason that immigrants should not be able to maintain their own ethnic and cultural identities. In the Eighties, those who embraced this line of thinking preferred to call America a salad bowl as opposed to a melting pot.
The cheap yellow and brown men have driven out the Whites and Indians from the salmon fisheries and canneries, the farms and the mines.
– So reported the the Harper’s Weekly correspondent in the attached article that documented the 1907 anti-Asian race riots in Vancouver, British Columbia. Having visited San Francisco some time earlier, the journalist mused that similar mob-violence will result in the American West if the Federal Government does not take steps to soothe the racial tensions in some manner.
The Canadians of British Columbia were just as uncomfortable with Asian immigration as their American neighbors on the west coast. This article discusses the Canadian Prime Minister, at the time, Sir Wilfred Laurier, and what he planned to do about Asiatic immigration, such as placing a head tax on each Asian who migrated. The growth of the Indian Hindu population along the Canadian West Coast is also mentioned
A Harper’s Weekly correspondent filed the attached report that served as an eye-witness account of the 1907 anti-Asian riots that flared up in the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia. The riot triggered countless acts of violence and arson targeting the Asian communities of that western city. The widespread Asian migration to the Dominion of Canada was a result of the diplomatic agreements between Japan and Great Britain (Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922) resulting in a tremendous amount of racist tension among Canadian Whites.
Today, the surname Li is the most common last name in Canada.
Click here to read about the Japanese-American internment camps of W.W. II.
A report that anticipated a hefty load of European immigrants for 1923.
The Immigration Act of 1924 denied admission to the United States to wives of American citizens if these wives are of a race ineligible for citizenship. Hindus, Chinese and Japanese are ineligible. Hence the curious and cruel fact that while an Oriental merchant with his wife may enter America, the wedded wife of an American-born citizen is held at the coast for deportation.
