The Research Scholars in Residence Program at Cal Poly
is pleased to present a lecture for the University and Local Community
Defining Racial Boundaries:
The U.S. Supreme Court
and Naturalization Policy in the 1920s
A presentation by Earlene Craver, Cal Poly Research Scholar in Residence
Tuesday, April 29, 4:00pm
Cal Poly Kennedy Library , Bldg. 35, Room 202A
In U.S. history, periods of high anti-immigrant sentiment have coincided with
increased restrictions on naturalization. This lecture will look at the attempt in
the 1920s to broaden the category of “aliens ineligible to citizenship” — a
classification applied to Asians. The lecture will discuss the ways in which two U.S.
Supreme Court decisions — Ozawa v. U.S. and U.S. v. Thind — shaped a
reexamination of naturalization policy particularly as it pertained to minorities
from the Near East.
Light refreshments
will be served.
Sponsored by the Office
of Research and
Economic Development.
Earlene Craver (Ph.D. University of Southern California, History) has published on a number of topics in early twentieth
century European and American history. Her work on the intellectual migration to the US in the twenties and thirties
includes “The Emigration of the Austrian Economists,” History of Political Economy (1986), and a 1978 television
interview with the 1974 Nobel Memorial prize-winner in economics, Friedrich von Hayek. This lecture stems from her
research on a 1923 legal case, “On the Boundary of White: The Cartozian Naturalization Case and the Armenians,
1923-25,” Journal of American Ethnic History (2009).