S
Sophia
Guest
Immigration and Eugenics - A
erica Until 1945
http://www.white-history.com/hwr54i.htm
Part Two: Blacks in America 1870 - 1945
The history of America's Blacks from the time of the end of the Reconstruction period to the end of the Second World War is marked by three main phases: first a period of intense disenfranchisement; then a period of segregation; and then a wave of serious race riots which threatened at one stage to erupt into open race war in
the largest American cities.
Disenfranchisement
The disenfranchisement process was started by the White Southern Democrat state governments when they introduced literacy tests in order to obtain qualified voters rolls. Although this process excluded a number of Whites, the hardest hit were the Blacks.
In this way, the number of Black voters in Mississippi before 1890, stood at about 190,000; by 1898, this had been reduced by a simple literacy test to just
a few thousand. In virtually every state a similar process was followed: in 1896, there were 130,344 Blacks registered to vote in Louisiana; by 1900, the new Louisiana constitution had reduced that number to 5320.
Only 3000 Blacks in Alabama were registered to vote out of the more than 180,000 black men of voting age in 1900.
The flip side to this policy - an aspect which is never raised because it is politically incorrect to do so - is that these figures serve as a stark reminder of the level of education of the American Bla
ck population; this combined with the fact that illiterate Whites, also numbering in their thousands, were also discriminated against in exactly the same fashion, gave the state governments the ammunition to make the policy publicly justifiable at the time.
Separate but Equal
The Southern Democrat state governments also implemented a program of segregation. Finally a railway coach segregation issue
was taken to the US Supreme Court in 1896. In a famous decision known as Plessy v. Ferguson, the court approved separate public facilities for Blacks, holding that "separate but equal" accommodations were constitutional. The Plessy doctrine provided constitutional protection for segregation for the next 50 years.
After 1900 the legislation enforcing segregation was carried to new heights:
Ӣ a 1914 Louisiana statute required separate entrances at circuses for Blacks and Whites;
Ӣ a 1915 Oklahoma law segregated telephone booths;
Ӣ a 1920 Mississipp
i law made it a crime to advocate or publish "arguments or suggestions in favor of social equality or of intermarriage between Whites and Negroes."
Ӣ Arkansas provided for segregation at race tracks;
Ӣ Texas prohibited integrated boxing matches;
Ӣ All states had segregated schools; and
Ӣ All states prohibited mixed race marriages.
Segregation was not, as is commonly believed, restricted to the South. In 1910, the northern city of Baltimore in Maryland became the first city in America to officially delineate separate Black and White suburbs, and was followed by Dallas, Texas, Greensboro, North Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Norfolk, Virginia, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Richmond, Virginia, Roanoke, Virginia, and St. Louis, Missouri.
The policy of segregation was carried out at the highest level: when Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, the first action he took upon arriving in Washington DC, was to order the segregation of all federal fa
cilities in the American capital.
Race Riots
American society was almost torn apart from the south to the north in a series of race riots which were the most serious racial disturbances since the Reconstruction period, and would only be surpassed by the race riots of the 1960s and 1980s in that country.
The primary cause of the race riots was usually the result of a particular incident, most often a criminal act by members of one or another of the races. However, the sheer fact that such incidents could spark off massive riots was by itself an indication of the underlying racial tensions which boiled underneath the society at the time.
Ӣ 1898: Several Blacks and Whites die in racial riots in Wilmington, North Carolina;
Ӣ 1906: In a repeat of the incident in Wilmington, dozens of Blacks and Whites are killed in several days racial rioting in Atlanta, Georgia;
Ӣ 1908: A race riot occurs in Springfield, Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln. Two vicious
Black on White murders spark off a White riot during which a White crowd kills two Blacks and burns down a crime infested Black suburb known as the "Badlands."
Ӣ 1917: A race riot occurs in St. Louis, Illinois; some 40 people, mainly Blacks, are killed in the violence;
Ӣ 1917: A Black army battalion goes amok in Houston, using firearms against White civilians. Two Blacks and eleven Whites are killed in the fighting.
Some 63 Black soldiers are court marshaled and thirteen are hanged as a result;
Ӣ 1918: A Black riot in Chester, Pennsylvania, spreads out to attack White passersby: two Whites are
killed and three Blacks are shot by police;
Ӣ 1918: The riot in Chester spreads to Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. One White is killed and three Blacks are shot by police;
Ӣ 1919: The first of the infamous "Red Summer" race riots occur. Eventually 26 different riots take place between April and October. These included disturbances in the foll
owing areas:
Ӣ May - Charleston, South Carolina;
Ӣ July - Gregg and Longview counties, Texas;
Ӣ July - Washington, D. C.;
Ӣ July - Chicago; this was the worst of the 1919 riots. Sparked off when some Whites threw a few stones at a Black swimming in Lake Michigan; the Black swimmer subsequently drowned. The police refused to arrest the stone throwers as there was no link between the stone throwing and the drowning. Dissatisfied, a Black mob then went on a rampage in Chicago for several days, resulting in 38 deaths;
Ӣ July - Knoxville, Tennessee;
Ӣ July - Omaha, Nebraska;
Ӣ October 1-3 - Elaine
and Phillips counties, Alabama;
Ӣ 1921: In June, a serious race riot occurs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, involving Whites and Blacks: 21 Whites and 60 Blacks are killed;
Ӣ 1943: Conflicts over housing and jobs develop between Black and White workers, breaking out into open racial conflict
in Detroit, resulting in the deaths of 25 Blacks and nine Whites before federal troops restore order.
Below left: A tram on fire in central Detroit, 1943, set alight during the Black riots in that city. Below right: Police make some arrests in Detroit, 1943.
The Chinese in America
During the last quarter of the 19th Century, as the railways expanded down through California, increasing numbers of Chinese laborers were imported to the state from the Far East by the railway companies, knowing that they could be paid less than White laborers in California itself. This led to a considerable amount of discontent amongst White workers in California, especially when it became obvious that the Chinese laborers were seriously affecting the unemployment rate amongst Whites.
Above: Chinese emigrants line up to enter California: their mass immigration sparked off massive White protests and eventually in 1882, all Chinese immigration in the USA was banned by the US Congress for a ten year period.
Under the fiery leadership of the Irish born laborer Denis Kearney, White workers formed the Workingmen's Party of California in 1877: shortly thereafter a number of anti-Chinese riots took place. The Workingmen's Party attracted sufficient electoral support to ensure that California passed laws limiting the number of Chinese allowed into the state. This was followed in 1880, by the US Congress passing a law regulating Chinese immigration - and in 1882, the US Congress banned all Chinese immigration for ten years.
The Japanese in America
Japanese laborers had also initially been drawn to the California labor market, as had the Chinese. Concern over the continued Asian immigration led the San Francisco Board of Education to announce in 1906, that as from that year, Japanese students would have to attend a Chinese school, along with Korean children.
The Japanese government protested - not at its citizens being segregated from Whites, but for being put together with the Chinese and Koreans - and
the matter caused an international incident between the two countries. President Theodore Roosevelt managed to persuade the San Francisco board to reverse their policy decision; in exchange he entered into a "gentleman's agreement" on immigration between Japan and America which effectively stopped most Japanese immigration.
Webb Act of 1913
Concern at rising levels of Asian immigration caused the government of the state of California (to where many Japanese immigrants were aiming) to pass the Webb Act in 1913, by which Japanese as a race were denied the right to acquire land or long leaseholds in that state. Japan protested that thi
s act violated rights given it by treaty with the national government, but the federal government disclaimed the power to interfere with state laws such as the act in question.
Finally in 1924, Asian immigration was stopped entirely. A California law, which was still in force in the 1940s, authorized the segregation in the public schools of children of Japanese, Chi
nese, Indian, and South or Southeast Asian ancestry.
All Japanese Interned
As World War Two approached, anti-Japanese feelings increased further. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, plans were made to prevent the activities of a suspected fifth column inside the 112,000 strong Japanese population in California - of whom only 70,000 were American citizens. On 19 February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which ordered the arrest and transportation of all 112,000 Japanese in America to concentration camps in the Midwest.
Eugenics
During the last part of the 19th Century and the early part of the 20th Century, America became the world's center for racial science. By the time that Theodore Roosevelt became president of America in 1913, and lasting right until the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, explicitly racial policies were followed by virtually all American presidents.
When D.W. Griffith's classic 1915 film, Birth of a N
ation, which told the story of the Reconstruction period and the rise of the original Ku Klux Klan, was publicly praised by American president Woodrow Wilson, the film was an immediate hit, with audiences all over America flocking to see the epic.
Madison Grant
The chief racial theorist at the time in America was Madison Grant (1865-1937) who counted amongst his personal friends at least two American presidents. Grant wrote two of the most influential works of American racialism: The Passing of the Great Race (1916) and The Conquest of a Continent (1933). In both these books Grant expounded on racial anthropology and the need for eugenics - or racial improvement by selective breeding (in the same way that specific breeds of animals are reared).
Above: Madison Grant, the author of the two most influential works of early American racialism: Grant was personal friends with at least two American presidents and significantly shaped American racial policy in the early part of the 20th Century.
In hi
s book, The Passing of the Great Race, Grant called for a halt to non-White immigration into the United States. The book was an international best seller, being favorably reviewed by Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and numerous other equally influential publications.
Sterilization Laws
Grant's work sparked off a wave of research into race in America: by 1921, at least eight other major works had been published - all overnight successes, and all proposing eugenics and a ban on non-White immigration. By 1921, the effect of all these works had filtered down into society: twenty-four states passed laws encouraging sterilization of those who were retarded, insane, or had criminal records.
Lothrop Stoddard
American president Warren G. Harding, publicly praised eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard's book, The Rising Tide of Color, at a public speech on 26 October 1922; this was followed the same year by the appointment of one of Grant's compatriots, Harry La
ughlin, as an expert witness on eugenics and racial differences in IQ (as had been measured in the U.S. military) by the U.S Congress Subcommittee on Immigration.
1924 Immigration Law
A huge wave of immigrants to the United States occurred between the 1840s and the 1920s. During this era, approximately 37 million immigrants arrived in the United States. Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, approximately the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the United States.
Between the 1840s and the 1870s, Germans and Irish groups predominated. Between 1854 and 1892, more Germans arrived in any given year than any other ethnic group, except for three years when the Irish predominated.
Above: Lothrop Stoddard, the leading American eugenicist whose works, along with Madison Grant, became the basis
for American immigration legislation.
Starting in 1880 however, the waves of immigrants started to come increasingly from Eastern Europe: millions of Eastern European J*ws and Southern Europeans, all considerably "darker" than the original White settlers in America who had all virtually exclusively come from the Nordic sub-racial dominated countries of Northern and Western Europe.
The influx of Southern Europeans in particular was opposed by the American eugenicists, and became the subject of much work and investigation. The end result of this work, combined with the earlier investigations and evidence by Harry Laughlin, produced the 1924 Immigration law. In 1924, the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion put before the Congress led to the Johnson Act of 1924, which cut down to little less than a tiny trickle the number of immigrants into America, limiting those who did enter to those of specific Northern and Western European ancestry only.
This law remained in force until 1965. Grant was a
cknowledged as the father of these immigration laws; and he went on to found the American Eugenics Society with Laughlin, the U.S. Congress appointed eugenics advisor.
First World Eugenics Conference
The science of eugenics became international: the First World Eugenics Congress was held in London in 1912. The later British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was one of the official sponsors, with the then British prime minister, Arthur Balfour, delivering the inaugural address.
Second World Eugenics Congress
The Second Eugenics Congress was hosted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York, with more than 300 delegates from all over the world - except Germany, as that country was still ostracized after the First World War. The guest list was impressive: including the future American President Herbert Hoover and the scientific genius Alexander Graham Bell, who was also the Congress's honorary president, amongst many others.
Third World Eugenics Congress
The Third World Eugen
ics Congress - and the last - was held at the American Museum of Natural History in New York again in 1932, where prominent attendees included Dr. J. Harvey-Kellogg (from Kellogg's cereals) and Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, the developer of the theory of evolution.
The Suppression of American Eugenics
Grant's second major work then appeared in 1933: The Conquest of a Continent, detailing the racial make-up of the United States and warning that
racial integration would cause modern America to disappear. The book, published by the well known Scribner and Sons publishing house, became the focus of a boycott organized mainly by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.
This occurred despite Grant making no specific remarks about J*ws in the book: but by this time the Nazi Party had come to power in Germany and the American racialist movement was to a large extent held responsible for helping to prepare the scientific background to Nazi policy, and as such the propaganda mills were turned against G
rant as much as they were turned against the Nazis.
Finally the Jewish anthropologist, Franz Boas, launched an all out campaign against eugenics. Combined with the propaganda linking Grant's work to the openly anti-Jewish Nazi government in Germany, fewer and fewer public figures were prepared to associate themselves with eugenics, and by the end of the Second World War the science had been successfully suppressed in America.
After World War II, the US Congress passed laws allowing those who had been persecuted under the Nazi occupation of Europe free entry into America: A minimum of 500,000 and very likely far more J*ws and others streamed in under the Displaced Persons Acts of 1948 and 1950, and the Refugee Relief Act of 1953. The Asiatic Barred Zone was only lifted in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which also for the first time allowed immigration from every country in the world.
The American Dream
Nonetheless, by the end of the Second World War the United States of America rem
ained as racially divided as ever. Racial politics continued to set the agenda for all major policy developments: the American Dream was still aspired to by all, but only remained a reality for a few.
Chapter 55