Americanization Movement

Historical Roots

Americanization has been a key educational issue since Horace Mann's early nineteenth-century introduction of the concept of the common school. Mann believed the central and fundamental purpose of the public school was to teach good citizenship and democratic participation in order to produce a common culture for the good of society.

The first manifestation of Americanization occurred in the 1850s when large numbers of Catholic, Celtic, and Teutonic immigrants arrived in Protestant, Anglo-Saxon America. Nativists, Americans advocating stricter immigration laws, called attention to the increasing numbers of “undesirables,” predominantly Irish and German immigrants. The “Know Nothings,” named for their refusal to answer questions about their group activities, worked to prohibit undesirable immigrants from acquiring citizenship. Political Nativism reached its peak when supporters of the movement gained control of several state legislatures in the mid-185 Os. However, interest in Nativist groups waned as national attention turned to the pre-Civil War debate over slavery and secession.

Immigration numbers did not increase dramatically until the first decade of the twentieth century. Immigration reached a historical high between 1901 and 1910, with 8,795,386 immigrants recorded. The next decade saw the second highest number of immigrants (5,735,811) despite the advent of war, with 93 percent of those immigrants coining from Eastern, Southern, and Central Europe. This influx of European immigrants, whose customs, languages, and traditions were different from those practiced in America, raised concern among the citizenry. Anglo-American citizens responded to their suspicion, fear, and wartime hysteria with a new nativistic movement. Americanization was seen as the way to strengthen the country by compelling immigrants to assimilate and become naturalized citizens.

The height of the Americanization period began with World War I and ended with the enactment of the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924. The beginning of war in Europe precipitated a return of U.S. resident aliens and naturalized citizens to Europe for the purpose of supporting those countries they considered their homelands. This exit caused many Americans to question the loyalties of all immigrants. The purpose of the Johnson Immigration Act of 1924 was to strictly curtail the number of immigrants from any one country.

Movement Proponents

Americanization was advocated by citizens in all levels of government and social strata. As early as 1904, Theodore Roosevelt used assimilation as a theme in his campaign for president, stating, “We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one soul loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.” Woodrow Wilson, in a speech to new citizens in 1915 contended, “You cannot become thorough Americans [Page 44]if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.” Calvin Coolidge in his state of the union address in 1923 said, “America must be kept American.” Elwood P. Cubberly, Dean of the Stanford University School of Education, defined the purpose of the movement as that of breaking up ethnic groups and helping individuals assimilate to American culture, thereby instilling in them an understanding of the concepts of law and order propagated in Anglo-Saxon countries, as well as a respect for the democratic form of government.

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