English-Only Movement

The English-only movement is composed of two organizations, U.S. English and ProEnglish. U.S. English was established in 1983 by Dr. John Tanton, who had been associated with the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth and was a founder of the Federation for [Page 252]American Immigration Reform (FAIR), along with U.S. Senator S. I. Hayakawa (R-CA). But in 1986, a highly controversial memo by Tanton surfaced during the Arizona official English referendum campaign and was published in the Arizona Republic newspaper, which prompted Walter Cronkite (longtime anchor on CBS-TV evening news) to resign from the advisory board of U.S. English along with its president, Linda Chavez. In turn, Tanton and other former U.S. English associates founded ProEnglish in 1994, whose key objective was to defend the ...