AP US History Document Based Question
Directions: The following question requires you to construct an essay that integrates your
interpretation of Documents A-O and your knowledge of the period referred to in the question. In the essay
you should strive to support your assertions both by citing key pieces of evidence from the documents and
by drawing on your knowledge of the period.
QUESTION: For the period between 1875 and 1925, explain the ways in which the American people
changed their perception of immigration, why that perception changed, and the legislative policy
revisions which followed.
Document A
Racial Issues Dominate Rights of Citizenship, 1922
"When the Asian citizenship controversy came before the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1920s, it
firmly set the seal on Asians' inferior status. Takao Ozawa said that `at heart' he was `a true American,'
speaking English at home to his children, who attended church and public school. Having resided in
Hawaii and California for twenty years, during which time he had been graduated from Berkeley High
School and had attended the University of California at Berkeley, Ozawa felt fully qualified when he
applied for citizenship in Hawaii in 1 916. But he was Japanese, not white, and his application was denied.
He appealed. In 1922, the U.S. Attorney General told the Supreme Court that Japanese should be denied
the right of citizenship because they could never assimilate and, moreover, were a threat to American
agriculture. The Court unanimously concluded that Ozawa was `clearly' not Caucasian and, based on his
racial origins, remained ineligible for citizenship.
The following year, the Court carried the matter one step further. A high-caste Hindu, Bhagat Sing
Thind, had been granted citizenship in Oregon as a World War I veteran, but the Bureau of Naturalization
sought to `denaturalize' him as an ineligible alien. Although conceding that Thind was indeed Caucasian,
the Court did an about face and disregarded the racial origins position it had pronounced in its recent
Ozawa decision. It declared that Thind was not white according to the `understanding of the common man'
and thus did not meet the criteria for citizenship. The denaturalization was upheld...." Elliott Robert
Barkan, And Still They Come - Immigrants and American Society, 1996, pp. 16-17.
Document B
Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans on Immigrants and Aliens, early 1920s.
"The world has been so made that each race must fight for its life, must conquer, accept slavery, or
die. The Clansman believes that the whites will not become slaves, and he does not intend to die before
his time. The future progress of civilization depends on the continued supremacy of the white race. The
forward movement of the world for centuries has come entirely from it. Other races each had its chance
and either failed or stuck fast, while white civilization shows no sign of having reached its limit. Until the
whites falter, or some colored civilization has a miracle of awakening, there is not a single colored stock
that can claim even equality with the white; much less supremacy." North American Review
"We believe that the pioneers who built America bequeathed to their own children a priority right to
it, the control of it, and of its future, and that no one on earth can claim any part of this inheritance except
through our generosity. We believe, too, that the mission of American under Almighty God is to perpetuate
and develop just the kind of nation and just the kind of civilization which our forefathers created.... Also,
we believe... that the American stock, which was bred under highly selective surroundings, has proved its
value and should not be [through intermarriage with the foreign-born mongrelized.... Finally, we believe
that all foreigners were admitted with the idea, and on the basis of at least an implied understanding, that
they would... adopt our ideas and ideals, and help in fulfilling our destiny along those lines, but never that
they should be permitted to force us to change into anything else..... "The ForumArnold S. Rice, The Ku
Klux Klan in American Politics, 1972, pp. 19-20, and 21-22.
Document C
Labor Union's Warning to Immigrants, circa: 1910
If you are an American at heart, speak our language.
If you don't know it, learn it.
If you don't like it, MOVE."
David Burner, Virginia Bernhard, & Stanley I. Kutler, Firsthand America, 1996, p.708.
Document D
Congressional Debates over the Issue of Immigration Restrictions, 1 921
"We should stop immigration entirely until such a time as we can amend our immigration laws and
so write them that hereafter no one shall be admitted except he be in full sympathy with our Constitution
and laws, willing to declare himself obedient to our flag, and willing to release himself from any obligations
he may owe to the flag of the country from which he came.
It is time that we act now, because within a few short years the damage will have been done. The
endless tide of immigration will have filled our country with a foreign and unsympathetic element....
The time once was when we welcomed to our shores the oppressed and downtrodden people from
all the world, but... that time has now passed; new and strange conditions have arisen in the countries
over there; new and strange doctrines are being taught. The Governments of the
Orient are being overturned and destroyed, and anarchy and bolshevism are threatening... (the Old
World)....
Now is the time to throw about this country the most stringent immigration laws and keep from our
shores forever those who are not in sympathy with the American ideals... We must protect ourselves from
the poisonous influences that are threatening the very foundations of the Governments of Europe; we
must see to it that those who come here are loyal to our Nation and impress upon them that it means
something to have the privileges of American citizenship. We must hold this country true to American
thought and American ideals...." Congressional Record, April 20, 1921 as quoted by Frederick M. Binder
and David M. Reimers,The Way We Lived: 1865-Present, 1992, pp.165-166.
Document E
Congressional Debates over the Issue of Immigration Restrictions, 1921
The speaker is James V. McClintic, Democrat of Oklahoma.
"Some time ago it was my privilege to visit Ellis Island... I stood at the end of a hall with three
physicians, and I saw them examine each immigrant as they came down the line... (to determine) .. .each
individual's physical condition. I saw them place the chalk marks on their clothing which indicated that they
were in a diseased condition....
Practically all of them were weak, small of stature, poorly clad, emaciated, and in a condition which
showed that the environment surrounding them in their European homes was indeed very bad.
It is for this reason that I say the class of immigrants coming to the shores of the United States at
this time are not the kind of people we want as citizens in this country. It is a well-known fact that the
majority of immigrants coming to this country at the present time are going into the large industrial centers
instead of the agricultural centers of the United States, and when it is taken into consideration that these
large centers are already crowded to the extent that there was hardly sufficiently living quarters to take
care of the people (already there), it can be readily seen that this class of people, instead of becoming of
service to the communities where they go, they will become charges to be taken care of by charitable
institutions.
The week I visited Ellis Island I was told that 25,000 immigrants had been unloaded at that port.
From their personal appearance they seem to be the off casts of the countries from which they came....
Congressional Record, December 10,1921 as quoted by Frederick M. Binder and David M. Reimers, The
Way We Lived: 1865-Present, 1992, pp.166-167.
Document F
History of the Literacy Test for Immigrants
Prescott F. Hall, a leader of the Immigration Restriction League, said that Americans had to decide
if their nation was "to be peopled by British, German, and Scandinavian stock, historically free, energetic,
progressive, or by Slav, Latin and Asiatic (Jewish) races, historically down-trodden, atavistic and
stagnant."
A twenty-two year crusade ensued in which the literacy test was introduced five times in the House
of Representatives, passing both the House and the U.S. Senate in 1897, 1913, 1915, and 1917. Only the
1895 bill failed in both houses of Congress. Presidents Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, and
Woodrow Wilson vetoed the bill.
President Cleveland argued in his veto message that "the time is quite within recent memory
when.... immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.... (fond
themselves)... branded as undesirable." Cleveland also said: "It is infinitely more safe to admit a hundred
thousand immigrants who, though unable to read and write, seek among us only a home and an
opportunity to work than to admit one of those unruly agitators and enemies of government control
(socialists or anarchists) who can not only read and write, but delights in arousing by unruly speech the
illiterate and peacefully inclined to discontent and tumult." Roger Daniels. Coming to America: A History of
Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 1991, pp.276-77.
Document G
A Congressman Warns About Immigration, circa: 1927
"Today, instead of a well-knit homogeneous citizenry, we have a body politic made up of all and
every diverse element.Today, instead of a nation descended from generations of freemen bred to a
knowledge of the principles and practice of self-government, of liberty under law, we have a
heterogeneous population no small proportion of which is sprung from races that, throughout the
centuries, have known no liberty at all.... In other words, our capacity to maintain our cherished institutions
stands diluted by a stream of alien blood, with all its inherited misconceptions respecting the relationships
of the governing power to the governed.
".... It is no wonder, therefore, that the myth of the melting pot had been discredited.... The United
States is our land.... We intend to maintain it so. The day of unalloyed welcome to all peoples, the day of
indiscriminate acceptance of all races, has definitely ended." Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History
of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 1991, pp. 283-284.
Document H
E.A. Ross was a well-known sociologist in the period just before World War I, observes the "New
Immigrants" - 1914
"Observe immigrants ... in their gatherings. You are struck by the fact that from ten to twenty per
cent are hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality.... They... clearly belong in
skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Great Ice Age. These ox-like men are descendants of those who
always stayed behind."
Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, American Pageant, 1 991, p.575.
Document I
The only w ay to handle it
Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy, American Pageant, 1991, p.748.
Document J
Annual Immigrant quotas allowed into the United States by Nation, 1924-25.
A
B
C
D
1
Austria
785 Italy
2
Belgium
512 Latv ia
3
Bulgaria
4
Czechoslov akia
3073 Netherlands
1648
5
Denmark
2789 Norway
6453
6
Estonia
124 Poland
5982
7
Finland
170 Russia
2248
8
France
3954 Sweden
9561
9
100 Lithuania
3845
142
344
Germany
51227
Switzerland
2081
10
Great Britain
34997
Y ugoslav ia
671
11
Greece
100
12
Hungary
473
13
Ireland
14
28567
Document K
"Unguarded Gates," written in 1885, is a poetic expression of opposition to the human wave of
immigration beginning to sweep into the United States at that time from southern and eastern Europe.
Unguarded Gates
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates
Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land
Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,
Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,
Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past
The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine
A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,
Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year
The red rose blossoms somewhere - a rich land,
A later Eden planted in the wilds
With not an inch of earth within its bound
But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have been in dungeons dreamed,
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
And through them press a wild motley throng -Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,
Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,
Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Ke It, and Slav,
Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn:
These bring with them unknown gods and rites,
Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.
In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,
Accents of menace alien to our air,
Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!
O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate
Lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn
And trampled in the dust. For so of old
The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,
And where the temples of the Caesars stood
The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.
Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, America Firsthand: From Reconstruction to the Present. Vol.
11,1995, pp.102-10.
Document L
The Membership Oath of a Nativist Society [American Protective Association] Pledged to Halt
Immigration, 1893
I do most solemnly promise and swear that I will always, to the utmost of my ability, labor, plead, and wage
a continuous warfare against ignorance and fanaticism; that I will use my utmost power to strike the
shackles and chains of blind obedience to the Roman Catholic Church...; that I will use my influence to
promote the interest of all Protestants everywhere in the world...; (and) that I will not employ a Roman
Catholic in any capacity, if I can procure the services of a Protestant....
Document M
Document N
The old and new immigration by decade. White equals the leading nations of the "old" immigration. Black
the "New" Italy, Austria Hungary, Russia.
Document O
Document P
“ Isolationist America of the 1920s, ingrown and provincial, had little use for the immigrants who
began to flood into the country again as peace settled soothingly on the war-torn world. Some 800,000
stepped ashore in 1920-1921, about two-thirds of them from southern and eastern Europe. The "onehundred-percent Americans," gagging at the sight of this resumed "New Immigration," once again cried
that the famed poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty was all too literally true: they claimed that a sickly
Europe was indeed vomiting on America "the wretched refuse of its teeming shore."
Congress temporarily plugged the breach with the Emergency Quota Act of 1921. Newcomers from
Europe were restricted in any given year to a definite quota, which was set at 3 percent of the people of
their nationality who had been living in the United States in 1910. This national-origins system was
relatively favorable to the immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, for by 1910 immense numbers
of them had already arrived.
This stopgap legislation of 1921 was replaced, after more mature reflection, by the Immigration Act
of 1924. Quotas for foreigners were cut from 3 percent to 2 percent. The national-origins base was shifted
from the census of 1910 to that of 1890, when comparatively few southern Europeans had arrived. (Five
years later the Act of 1929, using 1920 as the quota base, virtually cut immigration in half by limiting the
total to 152,574 a year. In 1965 Congress abolished the national origins quota system.) Great Britain and
Northern Ireland, for example, could send 65,721 a year as against 5,802 for Italy. Southern Europeans
bitterly condemned the device as unfair and discriminatory--a triumph for the "nativist" belief that blueeyed and fair-haired northern Europeans were of better blood. The purpose was clearly to freeze
America's existing racial composition, which was largely northern European. A flagrantly discriminatory
section of the Immigration Act of 1924 slammed the door absolutely against Japanese immigrants. Mass
"Hate America" rallies erupted in Japan, and one Japanese superpatriot expressed his outrage by
committing suicide near the American embassy in Tokyo. Exempt from the quota system were Canadians
and Latin Americans.
The quota system effected an epochal departure in American policy. It recognized that the nation
was filling up and that a "No Vacancy" sign was needed. Immigration henceforth died down to a
comparative trickle. By 1931, probably for the first time in American experience, more foreigners left than
arrived. Quotas thus caused America to sacrifice something of its tradition of freedom and opportunity, as
well as much of its color and variety.
The Immigration Act of 1924 marked the end of an era--a period of virtually unrestricted immigration
that in the preceding century had brought some 35 million newcomers to the United States, mostly from
Europe. The immigrant tide was now cut off; but it left on American shores by the 1920s a patchwork of
ethnic communities separated from each other and from the larger society by language, religion, and
customs. Many of the most recent arrivals, including the Italians, Jews, and Poles, lived in isolated
enclaves with their own houses of worship, newspapers, and theaters. Efforts to organize labor unions
repeatedly foundered on the rocks of ethnic diversity. Immigrant workers on the same shop floor might
share a common interest in wages and working conditions, but they often had no common language with
which to make common cause; indeed, cynical employers often played upon ethnic rivalries to keep their
workers divided and powerless. Ethnic variety thus undermined class and political solidarity. It was an old
American story, but one that some reformers hoped would not go on forever.”