The Columbia Documentary History of Race and Ethnicity in America

“I THOUGHT TO WRITE A HISTORY of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.” Historian Oscar Handlin’s words convey some of the inspiration behind this book. To understand the development and complexity of contemporary American society, it is important to know the history of immigration, race, and ethnicity. Voluntary and involuntary immigrants; different races, religions, and linguistic groups; conflicting nationalities; the development of a sense of ethnicity; initial interaction with Native Americans; the emergence of a dominant culture all shaped an American identity and society.

This book, then, seeks to explore that shaping, to get a sense of how the peopling of America took place. Written as a general history using race and ethnicity as its primary focus, this study is also intended as a primary research resource for students of this subject. It is divided into eight chronological chapters covering the following periods: 1600–1700, 1701–1788, 1789–1836, 1837–1877, 1878–1900, 1901–1929, 1930–1964, 1965–2000. Although any chronological division would present some problems in regard to overlap for some group histories, these dates were chosen with the intention of highlighting certain events and issues that are pertinent to an ethnic and racial history while avoiding repetition as much as possible. For example, 1965 marks the passage of a new immigration act that reversed earlier laws based on national-origins quotas; 1901–1929 covers the period of large-scale Eastern and Southern European migration, the main immigration restriction laws, southern African American migration north, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan; 1837–1877 is the time of substantial Irish and German migration, expansion into Mexican territory, Civil War and Reconstruction, and the removal of the Cherokees on their “Trail of Tears.”

Authors in these chapters were asked to write essays that would bring together the history of racial and ethnic groups and discuss the variety of experiences with migration, intergroup relations, nativism and racism, identity formation, etc., among a number of groups in different locales. Another focus of each essay was American society’s views on immigration, race, and ethnicity during that period and what changes were evident. Each author was also asked to provide a number of primary source documents that further illuminate the topics and era under study. These documents form a crucial part of the book, for they allow students to read firsthand the formative written historical record. Documents are drawn from a variety of sources and include, for example, the 1655 petition of Jewish merchants to the West India Company regarding the admission of Jews to the colony of New Netherlands; an 1819 play that illustrates the discussion over Indian assimilation; an 1855 letter from a German immigrant to his relatives in the Old World; an 1897 court case regarding the “whiteness” of Mexicans in the United States; W. E. B. DuBois’s 1903 essay challenging Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist approach; an excerpt from Italian-American educator Leonard Covello’s 1958 memoir on educating immigrant children; letters form the 1909 Jewish Daily Forward; an interview with a Chinese American worker regarding a 1938 strike in San Francisco; the 1966 platform of the Black Panther party; excerpts from the 1978 Supreme Court decision in Bakke v. California regarding affirmative action; and excerpts from a 1997 town meeting for the Commission on Race.

The authors of this volume ably wrote the essays, selected the documents, and thereby provided a comprehensive effort to merge immigration and racial and ethnic history into one narrative. They were given some leeway on what they chose to emphasize in their narratives, but each provided an effective analysis of the main immigration, racial, and ethnic events and issues of their period. As with any book that encompasses the work of multiple authors, the emphasis and writing style in each is slightly different, depending on the focus of the author. The essays range from a narrative to a more theory-based work, and some stress foreign policy or culture more than others. However, certain themes stand out in all that together define American society: diversity, Americanization, ethnicization, the predominance of race as a national obsession, and the development of a sense of whiteness among European Americans. This last point is particularly revealing, since the people in each group came with their own national or regional identities. Many of these people were vilified for their old-world traits yet eventually found commonality and protection in their whiteness. How this transpired and what it says about the development of American life is one of the important concerns of this book.

The essays that follow weave together the various strands of the American story. Carol Berkin (1600–1700) relates the contact between colonists and Indians and the effect each had on the other; intra-European rivalries for land and power; the multiculturalism evident early on in places such as New Amsterdam as English, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Africans, French, Germans, Jews, and Muslims intermingled; and the beginning of slavery. In the next essay, Graham Hodges (1701–1788) continues the themes raised in the earlier essay, discussing the relations between Indians, the English, and the French as well as interethnic/religious rivalries, but he extends his narrative to include Spanish colonists in New Spain in the present-day western United States. Slavery was by then a secure fixture in the colonies, although slave revolts occurred. Virginia’s slave population soared from approximately 26,000 in 1730 to about 100,000 in 1750 and to more than 287,000 in 1790. The American Revolution’s impact on ethnicity and race relations is noted as well.

Marion Casey’s chapter (1789–1836) carries the story through the Jackson administration and thus deals with America’s expansion westward, the Alien and Sedition acts, anti-Catholicism and nativism, attitudes toward slavery and African Americans, ethnic colonization efforts, and Indian removal and reservation policies.

The absorption of new groups through expansion (Mexicans) and large-scale immigration (Irish, Germans, and Chinese), as well as the topics of slavery, abolitionism, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Indian Wars are the hallmarks of Michael Topp’s chapter (1837–1877). In this era, nativism reached a high point and focused its wrath on the Irish and Chinese. The 1875 Page Law set the precedent for the soon-to-be-passed Chinese Exclusion Act. Who the excluded or included groups were took on sharper focus as nativist and racist activities increased.

Mae Ngai (1878–1900) takes us into the beginnings of Southern and Eastern European immigration as hundreds of thousands of Jews, Italians, and others left their shtetl, village, and city to come to America. A mass migration to America from small towns in Galicia and Sicily and from such cities as Bialystok and Naples occurred. Jim Crow laws, designed to institutionalize segregation, were passed throughout the South, and the Plessy v. Ferguson case established the separate but equal doctrine. Assimilation, cultural subordination, and the acceptance of “scientific” race theories affected the treatment of all minorities, whether black, Mexican, Indian, Chinese, or Southern and Eastern European. This factor was especially evident as the United States dealt with the territories gained after the Spanish-American War.

During Andrew Heinze’s period (1901–1929) the foreign-born population increased to the highest level in the history of the country, representing 14.7 percent of the American people in 1910. U.S. cities reflected what was happening nationally: by 1910, New York’s inhabitants were 41 percent foreign born; Chicago, 36 percent; San Francisco, 34 percent. Furthermore, a large migration of southern blacks to the North occurred. Reaction to the immigrant increase took the form of immigration-restriction laws, which culminated in the National Origins Act of 1924. During these decades there was considerable discussion of maintaining the country’s racial balance and preventing the newer groups from controlling America’s future. A sense of superior and inferior races continued to dominate the public consciousness. In addition to immigration-restriction laws, race riots revealed the public’s hostile reaction to the changing demographics. In these riots, whites attacked blacks throughout a city, in black and white neighborhoods alike. Atlanta’s 1906 riot reflected continued hostility toward southern African Americans, but riots became a national, not just a southern event, taking place in Springfield, Illinois (1908); Chicago (1919); and elsewhere in the nation. The revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915, with its attacks on blacks, Jews, Catholics, and the foreign-born, further illustrated the tensions during this period. This was also the era of Sacco-Vanzetti, Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic publications, and the anti-Catholicism evoked by Al Smith’s campaign for president.

Thomas Guglielmo and Earl Lewis focus their chapter (1930–1964) on the issue of racial identity and whiteness. Picking up on discussions in earlier chapters of scientific race theories, and continuing on to look at changing racial identities as well, the authors analyze how various Americans came to terms with shifting racial definitions. While the immigrants of European origin and their descendants began to coalesce within the white racial category and thereby benefited from America’s color line, blacks and others fought the social and political implications of their designations. World War II and the struggle against Nazism’s racist hatred was an important factor in eventually helping to transform America’s racial structure, although during the war the incarceration of Japanese Americans revealed the extent to which excluded groups could be mistreated. Following the war, African Americans took the lead in confronting racial discrimination and pushed southern governments, through various court cases and mass on-the-street protests, to dismantle the segregation system. The end of this era brought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the soon-to-be-passed (1965) Voting Rights Act and Immigration Act.

In the concluding chapter (1965–2000), Timothy Meagher takes the story to the end of the twentieth century. He notes that during these thirty-five years “a new structure of thinking about ethnicity and race … emerged.” Meagher moves us through the civil rights movement, Malcolm X’s influence, Black Power, and the urban race riots of the 1960s. Largely inspired by the movement for black equality, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans responded with similar efforts to transform the American racial and ethnic political and cultural landscape.

“Red Power” protests led to recognition from the federal government in the form of favorable legislation such as the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. It also increased pride in Indian culture. “Brown Power” reflected the Latino efforts in regard to politics, cultural pride, and self-assertion. Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and other Spanish-speaking groups pushed for their political and civil rights and for a pan-Hispanic identity. Asian Americans came together in a new pan-Asian movement during this time as well. As with the other groups, Asian Americans sought their civil rights, political empowerment, and cultural identity. “Yellow Power” became their slogan. Even white ethnics were drawn into the new focus and became part of an ethnic revival.

Changes in the immigration laws in 1965 and after resulted in an increasing number of immigrants from Asian and Latino nations as well as black Caribbean countries. This migration, and the ethnic movements triggered by the African American struggle for equality, began changing not only U.S. demographics but the power structure and conceptions of race and ethnicity. Meagher concludes by analyzing the significance of a “white ethnic” identity, multiculturalism, ongoing conflicts involving minorities, and the continued racial divide.

Readers will come away from this book with a clearer sense of the important role that immigration, race, and ethnicity have played in national events and development. The essays and documents can help clarify who the American people are and what has shaped their identity and society. This is an ongoing story as the country continues to receive immigrants, discusses the incorporation of newcomers, debates the continuing role of race, and watches as ethnicization ebbs and flows. The complexity of this story is reflected in the differing opinions of the authors in regard to, for example, when a sense of whiteness began to develop, how persistent the ethnic divisions among European immigrant groups were, and whether those divisions are still relevant.