Bigotry In The 19th Century Analysis

Bigotry is the product of ignorance, and the quintessential features of intolerance are blindness and prejudice. The tolerant course has always been an accommodation of diversity, but each generation forgets the anguish of those who suffered from bigotry. In the United States, tolerance has never been easily achieved. Rather, it has been accompanied by pain and shame. The Puritans hanged Quakers who dared enter Massachusetts; blacks suffered lynchings and the humiliation of crosses burning on their front lawns. In the nineteenth century, there were signs reading “No Irish Need Apply,” and Jews were banned from jobs, universities, swimming pools and property ownership. Catholics were restricted from jobs and the Chinese were excluded by law.

It appears that this same characterization can be made about current Americans. When Democracy in America was published, the United States population was thirteen million; if de Tocqueville were to return today, he would find a larger number of patriotic organizations and the same massive changes in people. American history certainly supports the view that the contribution by immigrants to American society and culture has been enormous. Between 1880 and 1940, many immigrants were derided as “undesirables,” and there was a crescendo of arguments to limit their number. Yet many of these people moved to the top of their professions in the worlds of art, entertainment, sports, law, medicine and business. In the American vernacular, they “made it

During this program, which endured throughout the Great Depression, thousands of Mexicans, including U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry, were deported.
The Biggest Mass Lynching in U.S. History
There is a piece of history not mentioned in history books or in Hollywood movies. It was called “Anti-Italianism.” In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anti-Italian immigrant movements developed in several areas of the United States. Italian immigrants were seen as the enemy in the United States, especially during a time of tensions when it came to employment and economic hard times. Between 1885 and 1915, as many as fifty Italian immigrants were lynched in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Colorado, Kentucky, Illinois, Washington, and New York. The most egregious example occurred in New Orleans in March 1891 when eleven Sicilians were lynched. On the dark, drizzly evening of October 15, 1890, popular New Orleans Police Superintendent David Hennessy was gunned down by assailants unknown. When asked who had shot him, Hennessy, who succumbed after ten hours, purportedly whispered,