Not like us

In the thirty-five years after 1890, more than 20 million immigrants came to the United States - a greater number than in any comparable period before or since. Despite American mythology about "melting pots" and "tossed salads," the newcomers were often treated in hostile fashion. Tracing their experiences in confronting the forces of American nativism, Roger Daniels finds that a period of supposed progress was instead filled with conflict and xenophobia.

If so many immigrants came to American shores in this period, how can it be called an age of nativism? "The answer," Mr. Daniels writes, "is that by the 1890s powerful anti-immigrant forces had already become organized. Slowly but surely these nativists worked toward what became their major triumph, the so-called National Origins Act of 1924." But immigrants alone were not the focus of reactionary forces; African Americans and Native Americans also suffered abuse and neglect.

In his analytical narrative, Mr. Daniels examines the condition of these three groups, with attention to legislation, judicial decisions, mob violence, and the responses of minorities.