Court-martialed after they reported for duty but refused to obey orders at Camp Lewis in Washington State, the four were sentenced to twenty years of hard labor.
The Military and the Melting Pot. But the biggest collision ahead was over language. Message to Congress, 63rd Cong. Many conducted church services in their native languages, which now became illegal. Though the 1920s saw a resurgence of xenophobia and the imposition of tight immigration quotas, existing immigrant groups did not surrender the gains they had made.
As Charles F. Louis, a German-born immigrant was lynched by a mob in April 1918. This week marks the centennial of U.
They were disparaged as "hyphenated Americans. Intense social pressure heightened anti-German sentiment and fostered a climate of hostility bordering on persecution. They could live on city streets or in towns with German names. When members of minority groups spoke against entering the war in support of Britain, including some, but not all German-Americans, their patriotism was questioned.
They were imprisoned first in solitary confinement at Alcatraz and later at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. At Camp Gordon in Georgia, a program was initiated to accommodate the needs of foreign-born recruits.
Years later, in his memoir, the editor who wrote that article would call the trial "a farcical patriotic orgy.
Ethnic Minorities in a Neutral Nation: Unlike the native old stock Americans, the majority of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island starting in 1892 were Catholic or Jewish; they were by and large poor and poorly educated, and most of them lacked strong national or political bonds to their countries of origin. In 1910, the U. So he had to step on the broken beer bottles, cut his feet really badly. Pete Stehman, who grew up in Collinsville, says the townspeople didn't talk about Prager for decades, but over the years he became fascinated with the mob's crime and the town's silence.
Louis, and Chicago gave parents the option for their children in elementary school to receive their instruction in German as well as in English. The social life of the community was lubricated with the beverage Germans brought from the old country.
He has written a book about it. Some German immigrants chose to make changes themselves so people would not discriminate against them for their heritage.