In this chapter, we're looking at the period
between 1790 and 1914 before World War I.
In 1790, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790.
This is the first law in the US
to define the eligibility of citizenship by naturalization
where free whites were considered citizens after two
years of residence in the United States.
This means that African Americans, Native Americans, and
other racialized groups that were here at the
time were excluded from citizenship, denying them the
opportunities afforded to citizens during this time period.
And this has had great
negative impacts on racialized communities.
When it comes to planning, think about
property rights, residential housing, transportation, et cetera.
During the 1880s and 1910s, there was a
mass migration of Europeans to the United States.
An estimated 20 million immigrants from
Europe arrived during this time period.
Now that's a lot of people.
And given the time, we see that
with such a high influx of immigrants,
particularly coming from Southern and Eastern Europe,
changed the demographics of the United States.
In particular, we're talking about cities in
terms of the impacts of this mass
migration of Europeans to the United States.
Jacob Riis, in his classic book How the
Other Half Lives, focused on documenting the lives
of these poor immigrants coming from Europe.
In cities like New York, he not only
took pictures of the abject poverty of European
immigrants, but also wrote about them, focusing on
the deplorable and overcrowded conditions of housing, for
example, and these two striking images we see.
On the one hand, entire family is living in one
bedroom apartments where there's no ventilation, no windows, no indoor
plumbing, and the other photo, which also is part of
this classic book, we see the deplorable housing conditions at
the time where a mass migration of immigrants were concentrated
in places like New York and other major cities in
the United States, while the United States embraced European immigration
with open arms.
At the same time, the government passed a
law specifically prohibiting Chinese as a racialized group
from legally entering the United States.
We see this antichinese hysteria depicted in this image
where the Democrats are proclaiming that the white man
is on top and is good for the country.
And this is something that continues to the
present where we see with the coronavirus, with
the former administration blaming everything on the Chinese
and creating anti Chinese sentiment.
So this is not something of the past.
This is also something of the present.
In 1892, Ellis Island opened the famous Ellis
Island as an immigration processing center opens the
door to the mass migration of Europeans while
at the same time excluding Chinese immigrants.
As I previously noted, to be able to
handle the mass migration of immigrants, we see
activists like Jane Adams in 1889, co-found
the settlement house, the Hull House in Chicago.
This house or the Hull House
provided services to recent immigrants.
European immigrants in
particular promoted assimilation.
The Americanization of immigrants, but was also
in favor of prohibiting more immigration or
restrictions against immigrants that were arriving.
Here's a photo of the Hull house in Chicago Where
you can see how large it is where thousands of
immigrants were served by Jane Adams and her staff.
Another influential person during this time period
in 1906 was Upton Sinclair.
He was an influential progressive and he wrote a
great novel called the jungle that had positive ramifications
in public policy in the United States.
This book exposed the terrible working
conditions of European immigrants in unsanitary
meat packing plants in Chicago.
Because of the uproar it created in the
national exposure, this led to federal reform, regulation
and intervention and meat packing plants.
What's important here is prior to this book, when it
came to the meat packing industry and other sectors, the
government was not regulating them, so people were getting sick,
people were dying and they didn't know why.
And thanks to Upton Sinclair In this novel, we now
see a benefit from federal intervention and how our food
is being processed and delivered to us to the present.
In 1913, California passed alien land
laws, which is also included.
In 1920, California passed these laws to ban so
called aliens from owning and leasing agricultural land.
This racist law was initiated by the
dominance of Japanese immigrants and Japanese American
farmers who were out competing.
The white farmers.
While Japanese were working as groups and using
their networks, Whites were working as individuals and
looking out for their self interest.
Therefore, the Japanese had a competitive edge
when it came to agriculture in California.
To dismantle this, the farmers petitioned the
state government to pass a law to
prohibit Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans.
Because of the racism for moaning these lands,
therefore, they were taken away from them.
In 1914, world war I starts.
As a result, we see a halt
of European immigration to the United States.
Here's an image of the devastation of world war I.
This is very important Because prior to that,
we had, in a short time period, over
20 million Europeans coming to the United States.
If it wasn't for world war one, that would
have continued and the United States today would have
been more of a European colony than it is
today in terms of its diversity.
In 1918, World War I ends and we
see a devastated Europe forced to rebuild.
As I wrap up this chapter in the
next chapter, I'll be discussing discussing key events
during the pre world war two era.