1Running head Leadership Practice Paper .docx

1
Running head: Leadership Practice Paper
Leadership Practice Paper

Leadership Practice Paper
Becoming a good leader is difficult. Good leaders
influence a company’s performance, culture and profit. So how
to be an outstanding leader is this paper’s primary objective. A
good leader not only can inspire action which encourage
employees achieve their goals, also needs good communication
skill. Let me start with the five practices of exemplary
leadership, which are model the way, inspire a shared vision,
challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the
heart. (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). These five methods suit for
anyone who wants to be a leader.
Model The Way
Before a leader lead other, he needs to identify the core
values. What you can bring to your team or corporation? How
you share you values and goals to your workers? When clarify
this question, you can start you work then. For example, if
leaders realize their core value is earnest attitude and focus on
details to the work, share the goals to workers. When they work
in daily life, the employees would know their leader’s attitude
and goals in work, then they will use the same attitude to
learning and try to achieving their goals.
Before become a credible leader, we need to clarify our
values, the first step to clarify values is find your voice. You
can explore yourself, what you really are, what’s your really
care about. Your values effect your life, let your values guide
you (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Say it in your own words, when

you express you though with others, you need use your own
voice which can convince others and make them listen you
carefully. Build organizational commitment can make
employees feel more feelings of belonging. The higher of
clarify of personal values, the higher of organizational values
(Kouzes & Posner, 2012).
Live the shared values and teach others to model the
values are two aspects of set example. Leaders could express
their values and standards to workers. The co-workers watch
their leader’s each action, each choice they make, every word
they said, all influence employee’s thoughts, action, behavior
and attitude. Let’s focus on details, the primary thing is
knowing how to spend time and attention wisely, leaders always
know what to do most of time, what kind of things we need to
put more attention. Also when we talk to employees, try not use
display your status and position’s words. Such as employee,
boss etc. that would make you became part of your organization,
no distance between leaders and workers. For example, I know a
leader who is really nice person. She respects every employee
whose work for her, they look like a team, leader set a goal for
organization, they put effort together and success. Ask
purposeful questions can make employee know what’s leaders
concern, what leaders really want. Seek feedback is a method
make leaders know what they did is good or bad effect in
worker’s heart. After know the results of feedback, leaders can
do a self-reflection, what need to change in the future. In
organization, everyone should be role model, words are aligned
with deeds.
Inspire a Shared Vision
Inspire the shared vision, as a leader, she/he should have
imagination about how to develop company’s future, also
should be feel exciting about the future. Leaders needs to share
his/her imagination to employees, make this become
everybody’s vision.
Imagine the possibilities and find a common purpose are two

parts of envision the future. Before imagine the future, we need
to look back the past, what’s right, what’s wrong, learning from
the past experiences. Attend to the present, observe
environment around you, what’s happened, what kinds of
situation now. When I first lead a team to perform a show, I
didn’t know how to do that, everything screw up and I didn’t
know how to fix that. The result is I failed at first time. But
after that, our team start become better, because I did a
conclusion about which aspects we need to change. So we did
better at second time. This is a good example of learning from
failure. After that, leaders need to prospect the future, what’s
our goals, we also consider about graphics, social, economics
problems. People can’t feel any possibilities if they don’t have
passion to achieve goals. By knowing what others think, can
hear yourself from others and can find out what’s work meaning
to others.
Exemplary leaders can make combination between his goals and
others life. What can bring to employees after they achieve this
goals, why they want to cooperate with the boss. Everyone is
unique in organization, make them feel special can increase
their self-esteem and self-respect. When they know they are
unique in workplace, they would pay more attention in the
work. Connect your dream to others, workers would feel
common sense of make future come true. In Martin Luther
King’s speech, he is a good example of animate the vision. If
we want to motivating others, we need appealing to their
dreams.
Challenge the Process
Challenge is the opportunity for greatness. People do their best
when there’s the change to change the way things are (Kouzes
& Posner, 2012). One premise of challenge is how to set our
mind to change the status quo. After decide to change, we need
to search good opportunities and better solution about the
problem, then implement the plan. When I talked with my friend
who is the manager in a Chinese restaurant, he said the

restaurant closed between 4 to 6 pm, employees can take rest
and shift exchange. But the problem is there is not many
customers between 2:30 to 4 pm. Most of workers didn’t have
any work to do, so the actually rest time become 2:30 to 6 pm.
But 4 to 6 pm is a good time to go for dinner. This policy keeps
for 6 years and it just because his boss needs to pick up her son
in this time. As a manager, he thinks the restaurant loss too
much profits between these two hours. My friend wants to
change the rules, but the result is he didn’t do it, because he has
no courage to make change, even he does it, he still couldn’t
make sure changing time can increase restaurant’s profits. In
this case, maybe we can have said my friend is not a good
manager, because he knows the problem, but still didn’t change
it. However, this situation always happens in most of
organizations. People wants to change, but afraid of results of
change. If they failure, that’s will be the big blow, they became
timid in their business career. So if we want to make our
organization better, daring to change should be the first step.
After we decide to change in our mind, finding a good
opportunity should be the second step we need to do. Such as a
new leader just come to an organization, he found most
employee use their phone when take rest, they just sit there and
play some mobile games. Actually, this behavior shouldn’t be
punished, because they didn’t do anything wrong. But
relationship between workers become alienation, they don’t talk
each other and communicate something about work. Considering
of this, a good leader should be find a better way to improve
this situation. Maybe it happens in most organizations, many
leaders won’t worry about it, because play mobile game is
personal right. But a good leader will mention this situation and
find a better way to change it. On the other hand, a good leader
should give more observation all around. For example, pay
attention about competitor’s action, what advantage they have
but we didn’t, why we don’t have that, how to make change
became our organization better, all should be a leader’s
responsibility. Also give more attention of company’s

environment, employee’s behavior, their work attitude etc.
anything happened in company can be good opportunities to
change.
When we find a good opportunity and make decision to change,
the next step we need to do is create a plan. a leader should be
doing some researches about problem, finding a good solution
that can persuade workers accept this decision. Creating a plan
needs many steps, we can separate them to small steps, and we
only need to achieve them step by step. Such as we mentioned
example above, the employees spend their rest time to play
mobile games, the leader want to change this situation. The first
step is change the structure of office, make workers more
closely each other. So they can have more communications.
Also, create a game zone that employees can play with each
other when they are rest. It should be better if the game zone is
in groups. After that, company can organize more group
activities to make relationship stronger between employees etc.
if we use these small steps, that can improve this situation
certainly.
Otherwise, when we take action, we need to learn from each
step. If a step failure, we need to know why it fail, how to
improve this next time. If a leader make change, he needs to
know how to make his employees accept this decision and they
can adapt your requirements. Sometimes, make a decision is a
great risk in company, it will face to lose profit, reduce
employee’s satisfaction or change worker’s attitude of work.
Therefore, when leaders decide execute his plan, he must be
prepared to take a risk.
The last thing I want to say is results of innovation. If leaders
get succeed in this reform, they need to keep going. Finding
other opportunities make organization better. But if they failed
this time, leaders should find problems from this experience,
also daring to challenge positively. A leader can’t afraid of
challenge if they failed one time, they should have confident to
make better next time.
Enable Others to Act

Leaders know that they can’t do it done. They need
partners to make extraordinary things happen in organization
(Kouzes & Posner, 2012). That shows how importance for
leaders to find partners. So achieving a dream needs every
employee’s efforts, leaders and workers need trust each other,
promote relationship between them. Leaders need to foster a
successful team to help the organization stronger.
I was help my friend do some detail things when he works
in organization. He is the boos in the company. The company is
travel agency. I just need help him to explain route and content
of consumer’s travel. He builds a tour guide team that lead
consumers to Korea, Japanese, and some travel cities. The
problem is every guide got different tips when they go different
places. Some places can get more tips, some not. So they start
quarrel each other, doubt each other. the guide who give service
for low tip group didn’t have good attitude, always flight with
consumers. Therefore, the company got lower profit at the end
of year. For this case, I think the leader can create trust with
each other. such as organize more activities, training for them.
that might make their relationship stronger than before. Also,
give each employee same opportunities make them feel equally.
As a leader, he has responsibility to make sure the team he
fosters has the same goal and same feeling about job.
Leaders invest in creating trustworthy relationships, they
build spirited and cohesive teams, teams that feel like family
(Kouzes & Posner, 2012). So as leader, they should show their
trust in the work, so the employee will trust manager, their
relationship will be more cohesive. After that, we need make
team become stronger. Workers need to have confidence about
their selves. Sometimes, leader’s unintentional actions would
make workers feel stress and think confusedly. Therefore, the
company can create an environment that make workers become
more confidence and developing competence.
Encourage the Heart

Encouraging people in an organization is basic behavior that
leaders need to do. Whatever in life and work, get others
recognition could bring more efforts and achievements. When I
was a child, I got 72 of 100 on a math exam. The score looks
very low but the highest score in our class is 80. So when I
came home told my grandpa my grade was rank top 10 of our
class, I didn’t see any surprise in his face. He said that’s a
pretty low score. So no courage and praise, I felt really sad. The
result is I never got A after that. Thus, get others courage is
very important to our future.
First, Leaders need to recognize employee’s performance. The
performance can have based on their achievement, attitude of
work and their behavior. I know a person who work in Bank of
China, she’s work is do some basic things, such as make
deposit, open account, withdraw etc. I always talk with her, she
complained her boss every time, told me how did she have flight
with customers today. I’m just confused why she always flight
with consumers, once she told me, because she helps the bank
increased over 1 million deposit since she came here. But there
is no reward and praise for her. She felt upset, whatever she did,
her leader just ignore it, so she didn’t have passion and
effective on her work, that’s the reason she always quarrels with
consumers. Therefore, as a leader, she must be observing
workers, how much effort they put in organization. Also don’t
stingy praise for employees, it’s not hard to admit their efforts
and performance.
Second, good leader always believe their employees can do
better than before. People only noticed that good leader can
bring high performance and achievements for organization, but
they didn’t notice that these employee’s performance become
better every time. An extraordinary leader has strong faith in
worker’s ability, they trust their employee can make
organization better. If an organization use test, education
background, intelligence quotient and emotional quotient to
identify their employee’s ability, what they can do for company.
I think this method is not smart. Human potential is unlimited,

maybe something they can’t do it today, but not because they
can’t do it forever. Hence, a leader should be trust employees
can bring high performance and increase ability for company.
In addition, leader can communicate with workers about their
thought. Tell employees what leaders goals and directions for
organization, also let employees know your expectation for him
or her. This is an easy step for leaders, they only need to say a
few words. But need to make a clearly direction before. So
whatever happens, workers know their direction and goals. Also
have to analysis each employee to give them accurate
evaluation, such as what they need to change in the future. For
example, when I was in a team, I didn’t talk too much with
other teammates, but I still did my part. Our team leader didn’t
blame me anything, she always says thank you to me after I
finish my part. Also she helped me to change my part, tell me
what she need me to do for this team. I really like her, and I put
a lots of effort for this team, just because she never stingy
praise. Obviously, she’s communicate make our team more
effective and achievements. All of our team members have good
relationship with her, because she gave us clear direction,
useful suggestion and praise. Communicate direction, goals and
expectation are really important for leaders whose wants lead
company become better.
Otherwise, celebrate the values and victories are necessary for
an exemplary leader. When an organization win the project that
bring company many profits, leaders should be celebrating for
this, because it can remind employees that they are the main
part of successful. Celebrating wins also can make workers get
motivation to continue their excellent working. Such as I went
to the college, my family all seat together to have a dinner for
celebrate my good performance. I would feel very happy,
because I am part of our family and they really care about me,
how my feelings, my future etc. As same as in organization,
when leaders celebrate for some victories and values of
employee, workers would feel they are the indispensable part in
the company, so they will have more passion to do their job.

Besides, celebrate can build good relationship between leaders
and workers, also workers and workers. Leaders should be
having strong relationship with workers, celebrating is a good
way to achieve the goal. Research on celebrations said
“Celebrations infuse life with passion and purpose, they bound
people together and connect us to shared values and myths.”
(Kouzes & Posner, 2012)
Conclusion
All of above, leader is not about position, money and
reputation. leadership is about relationships, about credibility,
and about what you do (Kouzes & Posner, 2012). Leadership
credibility, is the foundation when leaders needs to build their
credibility in the work to employee. Relationship between
leaders and employees, can decide company’s performance and
culture. So give enough trust and confidence to employees can
make company become stronger. The five practices of
leadership which are model the way, inspire a shared vision,
challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the
heart (Kouzes & Posner, 2012) suit for anyone who wants to be
a great leader.

References
Posner, B. Z., & Kouzes, J. M. (2012). The Leadership
Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in
Organizations (5th edition). San Francisco, CA: The Wiley
Brand.
The top 10 reasons why leaders should celebrate wins. (n.d.).
Retrieved November 20, 2016, from
http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/22191/reasons-leaders-
celebrate
Love, Alaina. (2009). “You Can Lead, But Can You Inspire?”
Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.
~; The Imposition of World War I
·1Era English-Only Policies and
'~ the Fate of German in North
~ Amer i ca
':~ Terrence G. Wiley
": Caiiiornia State University, Long Beach
OVERVIEW
For over three centuries German immigrants have been arriving
in North

America . In the United States, those of German ancestry now
com p r ise a
principal component of the nat ional population. They have also
been an
important factor in growth in the Canadian population. Yet
today, with the
exception of a few tourist-oriented German enclaves in urban
areas, and
save for the persistence of a small number of deutschephones in
some rural
areas , the German language and culture have left only a faint
mark o n the
dominant cu ltur e . Given the extent of German migration to
North America,
the question can be raised as to why the influence of the
German la nguage
and German culture is not more apparent.
A popular answer is that Germans easily assimilated because
they saw
the value of learning English and" American " ways . A
detached analysis
of data related to language shift and language loss across
generations
supports the view that linguistic assimilation in to English has
been routine.
211
GERMAN AS AN IMMIGRANT-MINORITY LANGUAGE:
18TH CENTURY TO WORLD WAR I
" ' Ia n u a es in N orth Am erica can b e c a tego-
From a hist orical p ersp ech v e, , Ig I g . ' ra n t an d creoles re

s u lting
, d ' ld colo ma a ter Imnl1g t
rized as 111 ig en ou s. 0 2 ' Ian ua es fa1 int o th e first cat eg
ory. Eng-
fro m la ngu a ge co n ta ct . Indwn g, g Swedish a nd Dutch ,
for exa m ple,
lish . Sp anish, Fren ch , G er ma n'hRussla n, th e l ang~ages
spoken b y coloni sts
ar e call ed "co lo nial" becau se t ey w ere ( .
I . I eriod is prob ab ly bes t cate go rized With
2 Alrica n American lan gu age duri n g the CO ivolunta ry imm
igr a nl s (se e Ogb u & Ma tute-
creoles . Ens la ved African Am encans W~~~ l~or furt her d is
cu ssion o f th is term ). U nhk,e
l3ianchi 1986, a nd Gibso n & Ogbu, 1 , bi led to po licies 01 fo
rced langu a ge era d i-
, . f . A ricans were s u [ec rr • h t t
Eu ropea n col o nist s. A ri ca n m e l' 1 "co m p u lsory ig nor
an ce Wit res pec 0
ca tio n o f Ihe nati ve ton g ues as we ll as a po ICy 0
En glish litera cy (see Weinbe rg, 1995)
7""" . . e rl lea rn ed Englis h a n d glad ly sur-
former la ngu age m1l1 0nt y group~ eag han e for assim ilat ion
; a nd (b) t h a t
rendered th eir nat i: e ,la n gu a ges ll,~ , ex~, ! nd Am eri cani
zation led to na-
their will in g s u b miSSion to Ang I ica Ion
~tiona l u n i t y a nd c U l hl r~l ha~~o;:-concentra ti ng o n th
e h ist or ical d eve lop-
'" . These m yt hs are co n Ion ~ i nor it langu age in th e Unite

d St ates
. ' 'mmlgra n t rrunor i y
Dlent of Ger m a n as a n I . t b th im media te a nd lo ng term--
of
<"and then b y a na lyzi ng th,e ,lm PfaWc- ldoW 1' 1in both th
e U n ite d Sta tes and
. I u age pohCles 0 or a , . d
•. antl-Germ an a ng ~ " f I im os itio n o f Engli sh -only p
ohCles an
. Cana da. Lega l ramlhc~tl.ons 0 t re Pd ' nd th e im p lica tio
ns of th e Ger-
' ~ other rest r ictioni st p O,h Cl es are exhP o;e , a e min orit y
gro u ps a re br iefly
: man Amer ica n ex pe ne nce for o t er an gu ag
,~: CO~~d~;~iyme r ~198~) ha~
nt:;t~:a;:~~~:~:~;~~e~~~:~~~s~:~~~a~
~: are typ icall y s tu d ied sll1
l
gu ~::ong th e im por tan t eve nts o f th e era were :
:>depa rture from n orma cy,
t . " . n rnon l called " hyp hens" ) of the 1CJ 1G
The il nt ih yp hen isill (Im nllgril nts w erc CO! . Ye HOSc cul
io ns of 19 17-18, t he
P
resi d enti il c am p ,1ign, th e sc thtlon and c sp lton."t
g
1'la ws o f 19 21 an d 19 24, a nd

"0 th . 111gratl on res n c IOf I
Reel Scare of 1<ll 9~;L , c fill! .' f he ca rl and mid -1920s .. , t
the gro w L1
the "A merica n Plan o f a nl lll~nll ~~~S~:~rI~ 1 o f Ih: Ku Klu
x Klan (p . 97 )
of the Am eriCill1 Legio n, an
" -{ ver ab no r ma l the se events m ay se em wh en
McCl ym er ad d ed : I owe " -t of th e g e n er al p o liticiza
tion of culture
, ' I ti " th e y were p al
seen 111 ISO a 10n tl d to th e rest o f tw ent ieth ce n tury
- ' d f 1914-25 bequ ea , e ,
whi ch th e pe no 0 . 'II id nt in po p u lar attitudes a nd i de
olo-
, "( 97) Its ma rk IS s ti ev i e . ' I E
Ame nca p . , ultu ral d ivers ity as the rag e of " offIcIa ng-
gies to ward lan gu age a n d c I a nti-im mi ra n t init iati v es
of th e
lish" in itia tives o f th e lat e 1 9~Os a nd"t '~ c an o hob~a "
(Craw for d , 1992a )
19905, a nd recent m ani festatIOn s of HI SP P
bear wi tn ess ,
•,
" t. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-O NLY PUULlt.:>
IM acias' (1992) w o rk o n indige nous lan g ua ge po licies has
also bee n cont ribu tory , as it
un d ers cor es so m e of th e lim itati o ns of the d ominant im

m igra n t pa radig m w h ich freq ue n tly
ass u mes that lin gu isti c assi milation is a n ine vi tab le rite o
f p assage (see Kloss , 1971, a nd Wiley
& Lu kes, 1996, for furt her di scuss io n o f t he im mi gr an t p
aradi gm) . Fin ally, Leibo w itz (] 969;
s ee also McKa y & Weinst ei n-Shr, 1993) ca lled att enti o n to
th e persis ten ce o f Eng lis h la ngua ge
and literacy p olicies as "ga tekeepe rs " to soc ial access a nd
econ o mic p a rticip a tion .
212
A ltho u g h a co nsi de ra b le a mo u n t o f em pi rica l data
supports th is view, I ,
carefu l rev ie w o f the hist orical e xpe rien ce o f Ge r man
Am ericans-not to',
m en tio n that of m an y oth er gro ups- in d ica tes th at th e re
is mu ch more to'
th eir s to ry. Ju st as th er e are pu sh-an d -pull fact ors th at h
av e influ enced,
immi g rati on , so too a re th er e s imila r factor s that ha ve a
ffect ed th e linguistic'
a nd cu ltu ral ass im ilati on o f thos e of Ge r ma n or ig in
How ev er, to frame
iss ues on ly in te rm s of Eng lis h ling uis tic assi m ilat io n is
to ove r look an ,
important aspect o f langu ag e minority exper ie nce , na m ely
th e deve lop- j
m erit and mainten an ce of bilingualism a nd biculturali sm. ",
As I h a ve a rg ued elsew he re (Wiley, 1996a , 1996b; Wiley &
Lu kes , 1996),::,
th e id eol ogical d ominance o f Eng lis h m on olingualism
influ en ces th e way }
in wh ich m a ny sch olars from th e U ni ted Sta tes a nd o ther
Eng lish dominant ,

co u n tr ies fram e th eir researc h q ues tio ns ab out lan gua g
e mi norit ies. When'~'
resea rch ers assum e th at an int erg enerational sh ift to En gli
sh is inevi table, '
th ey o fte n na rro w th e s co pe o f th eir resea rch q u es tio
ns to a focus on the ; "
a cqui siti on of Eng lish a n d th er eb y fail to co ns ider b ilin
gual ism a n d bicul- '"
turali srn as legitimate a ltern a ti ves to m on ol in g ualism a n
d mon ocultural- -~ '
ism , Thu s , s tro ng e mpir ica l arg u me n ts h av e b e en
mad e fo r the :t
un idi recti onal s h ift from o ther la ngu a ges toward Eng lish
(e.g ., Veltman, . ;
1983). G iv en the p reocc upa tio n w ith the rate of assim ilati
on to English , ~
th e re ha s nei the r bee n mu ch con cern for d ocum ent ing th
e d e vel opm ent of -
s ociet al bil in g uali sm nor for an al yzing the forc es th at
work ag a ins t it.
In expl orin g th e fat e o f Ge rma n in th e Un ite d Sta tes, thi
s an aly sis utilizes
a hist or ical -st ru ctu ral a pproac h (Tollefso n, 1991; Wiley,
1996a). This ap-
p roa ch assum es that the formati on o f lan gu age po licies a
nd lan gua ge
attitu d es a re b est stud ied w ith in b roa d hist orical s oc
iopo litica l an d s ocio-
eco no m ic con te xts . In de ve lo pi ng this d iscussio n, th e
pio neer ing wor k of
Leibowitz 0 969, 1971, 1974) ha s al so be en influe n tial in un
d er s coring the
need for a n an al ys is of lan gua ge p ol icy across mult iple
domai ns inclu d ing
education, reli gion , an d the p opular me dia .'

Langua ge p olicies ha v e ra rely been implem ented s tr ictly
as en ds in
th em selv es; rathe r, th e y ha ve been used as mean s to ac
hieve othe r pur-
p oses , Th ey ar e often instrum ents o f soc ia l co n tro l in
strugg les be twee n
gro u ps . As Leibowit z (1974) note d , p olici es imposed durin
g pe r iod s of
m a jor po litica l ex tre m ism ha ve been us ed to se ttle o ld s
cores a nd ha ve had
cons equen ces well be y ond the er a of th eir im po si tio n, In
de velop in g the se
conclusion s, thi s cha p ter cha lle nges p opular m yth s
(Wiley, 1986) th at (a)
r ··
,',
215~" WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES
inclin at ion" of Germa ns to fight In dians (C ra w fo rd ,
1992b, P: 9), I n lat er
tars Franklin dropp ed his strid en cy towa rd th e use of Ge r
ma n _ Quit e
iexpee ted ly, despite h is p rotestati ons , G e r m a n co n ti n u
e d to b e u s ed i n are as
here G er m a n immi g rants w er e co nce n tr a te d .
The Early 19th Century (1800 to 1835)
Th e ea rly 19th century was marked by lan guage toleran ce and

by o fficia l
recog ni tio n o f lan guage choice (Macias, 1992) . Foll ow in g
the end o f the
N ap ol eon ic wa rs, of which the War o f ]812 was o n ly a
part, G erman
imm igration to th e United St at es increa s ed , Howeve r,
unlike the G erman
reli gi ous refu g e es o f the 18th ce n tu ry, th os e of the n ew
er generat ion were
m o re likel y to b e p oliti cal re fug e es Th e majority so ug h
t farml and and
se tt le d in th e-then-w est ern states o f Ind iana, Illin oi s ,
Ohio, Wis consin,
~
~~Cerman in the Revolutionary and Early
' RepUblic an Periods
~:Du ri ng the A merica n Rev ol ution, as H eath ( 992) and C
ra w fo r d 0 992b)
.have n ot ed, th e Co n ti n e n ta l C ongres s had lib erall y
translat ed im p ortant
~ documen ts into G e r m a n an d Fr ench b el iev in g that
Enli ghtenme n t "id e a s
(' of political lib ert y were univ e rsal, after all, and th er e was
no re a son to
"res tr ic t their e x p ress io n to En gli sh" (C rawford , 1992b,
P: 9), In t h e ea rl y
i years o f the Re publi c, Ge rman w as in an anal og ous p
osition to th at of
'{( Sp a n is h in th e U n ited S ta tes toda y, Ger ma ns w ere
hi ghl y co nce n tr a te d in
l' some regions of th e new co u n try, with th e largest co nce n
tr a tio n i n so u th -

::' eastern Penns ylvan ia (Gilb ert, 198]), A cco rding to Cra w
for d (19 92c), by
'." "178 7 Ger m a n A me ric a ns represe n te d a p ro p ortion
o f th e populati on co m -
parabl e to th at o f H ispan ics tod a y (8 .6 p er cent v ers us 9
,0 percent ) ." M or e-
ov er, "T h e y too k pride in th e Ge r m a n lan gu a g e and cu
ltu re, re s e nt in g Ben
Fran klin's eff ort s to 'Angli fy ' their chil dren " Rec ogni z ing
the r e ality o f
lin gu istic and cu ltura l div er s ity amon g th e Republic ' s
new citizen s, the
Fram e rs o f th e Co ns ti tu tio n "d e cl in ed to give English
of ficia l sta tu s in o ur
Con s tituti on or to s to p print ing publ ic d o cuments in Ge r
ma n ," A c cording
to Crawford th is was n o o vers ight: "T h e p re va ili ng view,
th en and th rou gh -
out m ost of our h ist ory, was th at a demo cr at ic g o v e rnme
n t has no bu sin ess
tell in g the p e opl e h o w to tal k" (p 177) . H owever, d esp
ite the fram ers'
o r ig ina l int entio n s , M olesk y (1988 ) noted th at "s ile nce
o f the Con stituti on
on lan guag e matt e rs ha s had tw o o p p osi ng ra m ifica ti o
ns " (p . 35) , F or s o m e,
it see m s to en coura ge toler ati on for min o r it y langua g es
w he rea s lea ving
op en th e questi on o f language minority r ights, whereas o th
e rs have inter-
p reted its sil en ce o n language m atters as o pe n in g for lan
guage restr iction-
is m and th e impositi on o f English- onl y p oli cies (se e al s o
Piatt, 19 92) ,

(see Fishman 1966 M I kv .,
may also be ~ade; be~w~e:' ~1~8~; and ,I~:~ento, 1996),
Further d istincti .... .
guages with armies, and o th e r c~~~l~~~al anguag es , tha~ is,
col onialla •
wa s an offi cial imperial language irn a~guages. Spanish, for
examp~
Spanish col on ial emp ir e, wh ereas E/~ise o n conqu ered
peoples in .,
Clal-imperial language u sed for off 8
1
sh was a d Ollllllant-but unof
c o lo n ies-eve n though " Eng la n d ' s IC:
li
p~rposes thr,oughout "" Eng .
g u a g e problems in their d eterminatfon cy ma~e,rs dId not,
co nsider la '
co lo n ies" (H e a th 1992 p 20, I o f poliCI es f or their N ew
World
, " ,se e aso l-!e a th, 1976 , 198 1). ,
.. "
.JI' ~· ~
German in the Colonia! Period :
h
Because C erman was not an im eri a l la ' ',:
development is s im ilar to that o f o th e r n,gua ? e "' N ?rth A
m eri ca, lIB
G e r m a n col onists were lin u i ti , , ~Ill on ty ImmIgrant

languag~"
d ' g S IC mlllOntJes wh o imrni do m m a ted by the Engli sh
TI I' G nligrate to colonies '
, te ear lest erman settl e t i h •
was. ~stablished in 168 3 (Co nze n, 1980) Th' men, III t e colo
n ies ~
fcllnJlIes "fr o m the Germ an t f K ' I,~tee~ M eunonin- an d
Quaker :~
" ! d own 0 refeJd arnved ' PI ' J d J '
o u n ed th e co m m u ni ty o f Germ an " III 11 a e p h ia and "
~
majority of the early G erm a ' ,town (Cas te IJa ns, ] 992, p ]5)
, The _>~
f n ImmI g rants to North A ' (i
ro m the late 17th through the ]8th centtlr' , ~enca Immigrating
,c.
edu cation was lilrgely secta ri a d , Ies ) were reli gIOUS refu g
e es , Their :'j'
, u an an p rIvately fu d d d
typicall y the primary lan guage f ' tr _ , 11 e r an Germa n was
Prior to the A ' R 0 , ms I uction ( LeI bow i tz , 1974 ),
meri can evo lu t Io n so m ti
notably by Benjamin Franklin against G e sen Im~nt wa s e
xpress ed, most
In a 1753 letter to a memb er' C , erman r e u ctance to u s e
English,
pla ined, "Few o f their childr en ~f ~harllCam ent, Franklin
(1753/] 992) com-
B k III e o u n try learn En g!' h th '
man y 0 0 s from G e r m ilny " Fr k!" hn i IS ; ey Import

dent as he s tated : ' ,an in s e t me and cla s s bia s es we re e
vi-
Those ICerrn illl s/ w ho com o hither ~r'
their ow~ Na tio n, and as I gnO riln ce'i sc;o7~~;ler illly Ihe
mo st ignorant Stup id Sort of
wo uld nll sleild it, and w ith Suspicio I ~: ten ded of Cred ulny
w hen Knilve ry
the English und erstand the Ce rrna L, W l en o nesty wo uld set
it right; as few of
from Ihe Press or Pul'l i t ' tis ' /,110 5'1n iln gu,il g,e, and so
cannot add ress them ei ther
. ,,, 1111 POS SI 1 e to ' .
entertain. (p. 19) remove any prej ud ices they once
Evidence suggests that Fr anklin ' s re iu d i ,
th e ir langua g e w ere ro ot ed ' , I p) Ices ~galllst the Germans
and
, 1I1 SOCIa and eco n o rni id '
III 1732, he h ad failed in an e ffo r t t I I hi C CO I1SI erati
ons , Earlier
o a u nc 1 IS own G I r
newspaper, and he dropp ed oth G . errnan- a ng u a g e
d e l' erman-Janguage bli hiue to the succes s of a G erman ' pu
IS Illg v entures
also introdu ced G e r m a n al~ngCon:tPhetFlt_or (e
l
r~wford, 1992b) . Franklin had
A d WI renCl III 1749 as I ' . .ca emy (Moore, 1937) , He al h ,(
an e ec tivs III h is
so ad reservah ons about th e " ifpaci 1St

3lt is important 10 recogn ize that th ere wa s co ns ide rab le
div ersity w ithin the German
imm igrant populat ion See, for ex a m p le, Rippley (1980)
Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries (1870s to 1914)
After the Civil War much o f the nation's p olitics were
preoccupied first with
Reconstructi on and transcontinental expansion, and later with
massive
industrialization and th en imperialism as manifested in the
Spanish Ameri-
can War (898 ). Imp erialistic end ea vors turned brutal as the
United States
forcibly put d own the Ph ilippine Insurrection 0899-1902). G
erm a n immi-
gr ation peaked in the last three decades o f the 19th century as
nea rly 2.8
million'' entered the country, but it then declined sharply in the
first two
de cades o f the 20th centu ry when fewer than 500 ,000
Germans immigrated
(Pitt , 1976).
Kloss (1977) , in his en cyclopedic study of language p olicies
in the United
States, concluded that 19th-century language policies were, for
the most
part, tolerance-oriented. Althou gh Kloss marshaled a consid
erable body of
evidence in making this case, Macias (992) noted that there is
also an
indicati on that the tolerance wa s applied se lective ly to
certain groups . He

suggested that tolerance was not arbitrary; rather, it was
calculated . For
Germans and o th er Eu ro pe a n immigrants, religious bigotry
and economic
competiti on b et ween groups w ere important contribut ing
factors to inter-
217/: 9. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES
~ .
succeeded in the having German-language instructi on all owed
in th e first
German publi c s ch o ol in 184 0 (Leib owit z , 1974 ; see also
Schlossman, 1983).
Pri or to the Civil War, anti -Catholic and anti-immigrant
sentiment in-
:i creas ed dramati call y. "C a tho lic d emands for s ta te a id
to parochial sc hools
;~ and their protests again st the use of the Protestant Bible in
the public schools
,'. caused viol ent rea ction " (Pitt, 1976, P: 283) . In 1844, anti-
Catholic vio lence
;,., in Philadelphia culminat ed in the burnin g of two Catholic
churches and
~l_
. ~i many Irish C a th o lic homes . Thirteen were killed and
more than 50 were
. injured . Because a s u bs ta n tia l porti on of the German
American p opu lation
was Catholic, they too be came targets of e th no re lig io u s
bigotry.
Antebellum Nativism peaked in the 1850s under the leadership

o f the
1: aptly named Kn ow-Nothing party, wh ich , by 1854 , had
succeeded in
electin g a number of g ov ern o rs and co n g ress io n a l and
state r e p re-
sentatives Among its more ambitious goals wa s a 21-year
naturali zation
period (Pitt, 1976) . A b ra ha m Lincoln's comments regarding
th e party re-
flected the sentiments of liberals of the period when he stated :
"W h en the
Know-Nothings get control, it [the D eclaration of
Independence] wi il read
all men are created equal , excep t negroesand [oreignersand
Catholics" (p . 284) .
With th e co m ing o f the Civil War, the Know-Nothing
movement and its
attacks o n immigrants and Catholics ended .
The Mid-19th Century (1836 to the Civil War)
By the 1830s, ma ss immigration was in creasing partly i n re
sponse to J:
structural changes in the U .S. economy. Many immigrants were
eco nomi- }
cally hard-pressed o n arrival and became co nce n tra ted in the
urban areas ) ,
of the Northeast. Th e newly arrived: '.
Minnes ota, Michigan, Iowa, and Mi ssouri. Because Germans
tended to be .~;
the . maiority in many regions of these states, the German
language was :E
ma.lI1tall1e~, and s chool laws w .ere usually agnostic on the
issue of language '>.: '

of mstruction (Kloss, 1977; Leibowitz, 1971, 1974; Macia s,
1992) . German
wa s also widely u sed as the language of schooling becaus e
most teachers :'
in these areas spoke German (Macias, 1992) . "
"'>
Down-and-out immigrants o ften look ed li ke th e dr egs of
humanit y In th eir first
years h ~re they w ere weigh ed down hy po vert y. Driven hy
wa nt and hy th e dcsire
for familiar languages and [ac.cs. Ih osc who stayed in cities m
oved in to th e ghe ttos
that develop ed In the 1U]()s and 11l4()s (Pill , 1~ 7(" p . 2131)
Such was N ew York's Kleindeutschland , which was the home
of some
100,000 Germans. Economic competition between groups was
often mani-
fested in interethnic social conflict (Macia s, 1992) .
During this period, languag e became more salient as an
identifier of
gro~p m.embers~ip . " Ra the r than being taken for granted a s
part o f being
an 1~1Imgrant, It became one of the markers o f being an
immigrant"
(~aClas, 1992, p. 5) . Lan guage prejudice was exacerbated by r
eligious
bigotry, Anglo-Saxon Prot estants considered Germans notor
ious "Sa bba th
breakers " who sacrilegiously enjoyed beer drink ing, theate r,
music, and
d~ncin~ o~ Sunday, as was the custom in Eu rope (Pitt, 1976) .
Facing

~tJgmatl.zah?n fo: their "f oreign" languag es and manners and
lacking
int egration 111 th eir adopted land , Germans and o the r immi
grants formed
mutual aid societies and devel oped their own social and edu
cational
infrastructures . German immigrants " m a d e the s tro n g es t
efforts to retain
their Old World ways. German ghettos supported their own
churches,
schools, rest~urants, li~raries, and beer hall s . The 40 German-
language
newspapers 111 the u.s. III 1840 had in creased to 133 by 1852"
(p. 281)
G radually, langua ge tolerance and the right to language cho
ice were no
lon~er taken as given . Th e first major lingu istic chall enge ca
m e in Ohio
dunng the late 1830s when an attempt wa s mad e to end
instruction in
German . Germans responded at the p olls by backing Dem
ocratic ca nd i-
dates and used their political clout to ensure th e continued use
o f Ger-
man-but not to the exclu sion of Engli sh As a re sult, in 1837 G
e r m a n was
put on an equal basis with English . In 1840 G erman Am
ericans als o
THE FATE OF GERMAN DURING WORLD WAR I
Culture Wars 1914 to 1917

As noted, German immigration had been declining since the
18805. Many
among the German-American population were assimilating
culturally a~d
linguistically into the dominant s ocie ty. However, at th~
outbreak ~f war til
Europe, German and other foreign languages were widely used
in some
area s of the country, particularly in th e Great Plains states . In
some localities
of Nebraska, "German was used more than English," and the
ability to
speak a forei gn language was e ven consid ered an important
qua lificat ion
of a go od store clerk (Manley, 1959, P: 114). According to
Conzen 0980; also
2199. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES
agreed that "language saves the faith " and had strived to
pr,eserv~ ~he
language as long as possibl e (Conzen , 1980). In response to
the rmpossition
~ of Engli sh -only ins tr u ct io n, a broad coaliti on o f German
Lutherans, Ger-
i man and Polish Ca th olics, Scandinavian Lutherans, and
German Free-
: thinkers voted in D emocrats supporting a n ti-Ed w a rd s (in
Illinoi s) and
J anti-Benn ett (in Wisconsin) party platforms . In 1893 both act
s wer e rep ealed
./ (Leibowitz, 1971, 1974; see also Luebke, 1969). The success
of this reve rsal
J:: was largely symbolic, h oweve r, as the prima cy of Engl ish

-only instructio,n
" had becom e an accorn pli sh ed fact (Macias , 1992). By
1900, th e p u bhc
~: schools were making inroads in the parochial school share of
the German
:; language edu cational market. In that year public s chools w
ere edu cating
. 42% of students receiving German instruction-a 7% increase
ov er 1886
'-:. (Conzen, 1980) .
J In additi on to ch ur ch es and schools , the press was another
v isible force
(:- in cultural and linguistic preservation. However, according
to C onzen
::;. (1980), the press was also a forc e for assimilation because-
s-in ad d it ion to
'i- using the native language-it also provid ed information about
th~ d~mi-
", nant culture and how to adapt to it. During the 1880s, German
publications
accounted for about 80 % of the foreign-language press in the
United States .
"The total peaked at a lmo s t 800 in 1893-1894" (p . 420) .
How ever, given the
decline in immigrati on , by 1900, German publicati ons had
declined to 613.
By the early 20th- century, a number of factors were shaping la
n guage
policies . Urbanization and industrialization were increasing
and pUb.lic
scho oling was being extended. Macias (1992) contended that
anot her SIg-

nificant factor was th e increasing consolidati on of fed eral
control over
regional or local ethnic ar eas . He ar gued that tolerance-
oriented langua ge
policies occurred whe re the federal government's controls were
weak.
However, more restr ictive p olicies were likely to be
implemented where
there was an increas e in federal control, a rural to urban shift
in population ,
and an increase in migration to an area by English speakers .
218
group c?n~icts. A.s milli on s of newcom er s e n te red the co u
n try, with th/ ,
new ma~onty cO~.ll1g from east ern and so u the r n Europe,
anti -immigration :,'
and anti-Catholi oism reemerged as a growing forc e in nati onal
p olitics
und er the leadership of the Amer ican Prot ective Ass ociati on
(A PA). It is .~
important to note th at widespread xen ophob ia a nd anti-
Ciltholi cism co-oc- ;:
~urred with the r is: ~f Jim C:ow ism and the re su rge nce of ra
cial op p ression ~;~
III the .South . NatIvI st sellllme~ts o f th e time w ere re flec
ted in popular f
magazllles and newspape rs, which p ortrayed the publi c
schools as instru- . ..
ment s for Anglo-Protestant accultu ration, Editori al s a nd p
olitical ca rtoons " !~
regularly depict ed Catholi c s chools as tools for the H oly
Roman s u bversion :
(see Apple & Apple, 1982). In terms of language p olitics, the
period between ''''

:880 and 1900 ~as significant be cau se "it wa s durin g this
period that ' ~~,
increased repressive and exclusive lan gua ge legi slation was
pa ssed by state ~,
legislatures" (Macia s, 1992, p. 13), 'i~
Largely because o f its association with Catholic education, the
German .'::.. '
language increas ingly became a target of A nglocentric school
legislation in " ~
the ~a.st and t:tidwest during the 1880s. " As a result of the
legislation !
requIrIng E.ngl.lsh as the only medium of instructi on in the
publi c schools
and the a~tI-ahenGe~m.an feeling, the Germans d eveloped
large numbers
of new pnvate and relig ious s ch ools" that displaced publi c s
ch ools (Macias, ,
1992, p . 14). In 1886,65% of s tu d e n ts receiving G erman
instruction were :
~ein.g educated in parochial and secu lar p riv ate scho o ls-
38% were receiv- :: .
Ill~ instruct ion in Catholic schools, 23% in Protestant schools ,
and 4% in
private scho ols (Con zen, 19S0). Because "German instruction
in the public
schools was always precariou s" o n ly the parochial sch ools
and rural
schools were effective in keeping " th e s econd generation
within the cu ltu ral
fold" (p . 420). N evertheless, to co m p e te with th e loss of
students to these
schools, many public s cho ols o ffered instructi on in German .
In an effort to counter the German retreat from public educati
on, a

number of s ta tes passed laws banning sectarian books in an
effor t to thwart
Catholic education. Between 1889 and 1890 New York Ohio
I111'n I'
o • " , 05,
WISCO?s.m, Nebr~ska, Kansas, and North and South Dakota
passed laws
~res~nblllg English as the lan guage of instruction, in part be
cause instruc-
non m German was seen as promoting Catholicism (Leibowitz,
1971,1 974).
The most noteworthy examples of the new linguistic intolerance
were the
1889 Edwards Law of Illinois and the Bennett Law of
Wisconsin. These laws
clea.rly ~ltempted. to end lan~t~age tol erance and the right to
language
choice in educatlO.n by requIrIng both public and private
elementary
schools to use English as the language o f instruction .
German Lutherans, who also used German as a medium of
instruction
fou .nd them~elves ensnared in the same anti -German lan guage
m ora ss a;
their Catholic brethren. However, Protestants and Germans had
long been
221
LLU
see Holli, 1981; Luebke, 1968), the outbreak of war in Europe
rekindled'~

ethnic pride and interest in ancestral homelands . "Indeed , the
heightened : "
ethnic consciousness of the war years was a boon to German
newspapers ;
and organizations' previous dependence upon a constihlency
that was;~ _
rapidly assimilating" (p . 422). The German press proudly took
a pro-Ger-':'_
man stance and editorialized for U .S. neutrality. In 1914, U.s.
support for ':
the allies was far from a given . The United States had, after all,
fought two7
wars (the American Revolution and the War of 1812) against
England, and§
England had toyed with the notion of recognizing the South
during the J~
Civil War. Moreover, a sizable minority of the U.S. population
(about 13%)-':';,<
was either first (2.5 %) or second generation (I 0.5%) German
according to {
the 1910 census . "
Initially, there were pro-German mass demonstrati ons,
collections for :':
war relief, and lobbying for arms as well as loan embargoes in
German .'}
American communities, and German Americans worked to
defeat Wilson's " ':
reelection as his pro-British sentiments became more evident
(Conzen, /
1980; Holli , 1981) . Nevertheless, Conzen (980) concluded that
for rnost "'
German-Americans, pro-German activity "was a confirmation
rather than ',;'
a betrayal of their status as full American citizens" (p. 422) , f/

In cities with large imm igrant populations such as Chicago, for
example, ,~~,
the war in Europe generated "culture wars " among immigrant
popula- ' ,"
tions . In 1914 , according to Holli (981), only 750 ,000 of
Chicago's 2.4 [.
million were native-born according to a school census . First-
and secondv v
generation Germans (about 400,000) constituted the largest
ethnic block. ,::
The city also had a large number of Austrians (nearly 59,000) as
well as ~
other groups of Irish, I~ussiall-]ewish,and Swedish origin-many
of whom
had little sympathy toward the Allies , However, there were also
some
230,000 of Polish origin and 45,000 of English-origin whose
loyalties were
with the Allies.
Pro-German sentiment was initially flaunted by many German
Ameri-
cans. When war was declared in Europe, a throng of 5,000
German Ameri-
cans jubilantly marched to the offices of Chicago's major dailies
. Holli
(981) noted that pro-German chauvinists tended to depict the
war in
ethnically offensive terms by characterizing it as a war between
"Sla vs and
Teutons" and "Western Civilization versus Russian barbarians."
Even more
inflammatory were their referen ces to " na t ura l serf races, "
"half-Asiatic
barbarians," and backward "hordes of the Muscovite" (p . 411) .
A number

of incidents of interethnic violence occurred amidst the highly
volatile
climate,
Optimistic about the outcome of the war, hopeful German
Americans
argued for compulsory German language instruction, believing
destiny
would ordain it as a world language. However, as the war in
Europe raged
-----------_..", " ' '' - - - ''
' ," 1',9. WORLD WAR I ERA EN GLISH -ONL Y POLICIES
:' d tI e United States moved from a neutral to an increasingly
.o n, an as 1 , , ti Id 110t be
-,pro-A ll ies stance, it became apparent that their asplra IOns
wou
realized .
i US. Entry Into the War and the Impact
,::of Entholinguistic Intolerance
.. Wh n the United States entered the war against Germany in
1917, most
.; Ger~an Americans were unprepared for the onslau~ht that was
a b ou t to
: ' befall them . Although the majority of "German-
Amen~annewspapers and
:, associations quickly declared their loyalty" to the United
~tates, : storm
" of anti-Germanism raged between the fall of 1917 and spnng

1918 (~on-
" 1980 422 , see also Luebke 1974, for a detailed history of the
p e n od ).," zen , P: r , I'd tl
G' Americans became ensnared in both mass rysteria an re
errnan I' f "t t I
attempt of the federal government to ready the Ll.S. popu ation
o r 0 a
l.t' war," German Americans were blamed and suspected for
acts of sab?~a,ge,
" "Certainly German agents were after the food supply as well
as the trtilities.
," And the entire state [of Colorado] was warne~ [by the
Oellve~,PostJ that
(frequently German-made) might contain ground glass
(Dorsett,sausages , , dIG
1974 . 281). Among one of their more insIdIOUS all~ge p ot~,
erman
Am:rfcans were accused of conspiring to subvert Native
A~encans,f ro m
their patriotic duty of joining the armed services. When Native
An:encans
, C I d Utah Wyoming and Nevada opposed the draft, their
oppo-
In 0 ora 0", bl di d ' f
' . t as being based "on an understanda e IS a m or asition was
no seen G
government that had confiscated their lands . On the contrary,
errnan
a ents had in filtra ted the tribes" (p . 283). . .
g Amidst this climate of purported national vulnerability, ,state
govern-

ts were asked to create state councils of defense . According to
Manley
~~~4) in Nebraska, as in other states, the Council of Defense
"had ,b ee n
envisi~ned principally as an agency to mobilize the
~ta~e'slecon~mlfct~-
sources"; however, it soon became clear that the pnnClp~ :vor 0
~
council would involve investigations of loyalty and patnot~sm.
In Ne
braska where more than quarter million of the state's population
of about
1 2 miliion were either German-born (some 57,000) or of Germa
n desc~nht
, I b f " ts" cn whic( b t 201 000) the council had an amp e num
er 0 suspec ,
a ou , r d h ' d I' Withto conduct its work. Several of its
members argue t, at mea, lng
"hesitating patriots" the Council "operated under a 'lllgher la,:
than the
Constitution: that the decisions and actions of,the State Council
were not
bject to judicial review"; and that witnesses interrogated by the
counsel
su " "k I dge of the chargeshad no right to counsel, cross-
examination, nor now e
brought" (p . 2) . I ' ,
State councils of defense had several popular targets : schoo s,
urnverst-
ties, churches, and unions. In each case use of the German

language was
223
In refl ectin g on th e climate of int imi d ati on th at it had
helped to cr eate,
the N eb raska Co u ncil o f Defe nse rat io nal ized th at "i f fo
reign lan gua ges
could b e ab olish ed . . . th e ali en p opul ation w ould be
removed fr o m its
tenu ou s an d dan g erous p os ition " (Ma n ley, 1964, p . 13).
In th e true s pi ri t o f
rep ressi on , th e Co u nc il reasoned th at it wou ld b e bett er
if th e re m oval of
German fro m ch urch es an d scho ols w e re volu ntary in or d
er to "a ppease
'the ever-in creasing prejudice agai ns t eve ry th ing Ge rma n'
w hic h th rea t-
en ed to res u lt in d iso rd er a nd viol enc e" (p . 14). Pre ssure
for " vo lu n tary "
rejection o f Ge rma n took th e form o f charac ter assa ssin at
ions, release s fro m
em pl oym ent, a nd th e boycotti ng of Ger ma n-ow ne d bu sin
ess - som e 285 of
wh ich we re boycott ed in Colora do a lone (Dors ett , 1974) .
In Colorado, "ja ils were full o f p eople w ho a lleged ly ma d e
p r o-Ge r-
man s ta te me n ts or w ere s u s pe ct ed of s py in g," a n d so
me "were h eld .. .
for day s, an d e ven we eks w ithout du e p ro ce ss of Ja w "
unt il th ey were
clea red b y th e fed er al Sec re t Se rvice (Do rse tt , 1974, P:
288) . A n tici p a ti ng

more strin g ent mea sures to b e ta ken ag a ins t th e Ja pan ese
in World War
II, s u perp a tri o t ic ci tize ns o f M es a Co u n ty, Co lora do,
p ropos ed co nve r t-
ing a local Indian s ch ool int o a n in term ent camp for Ge r
man Americans.
Althou gh th eir re co m men da tion wa s not act ed on, Ft. Dou
gla s i n Utah
was u s ed to intern a number o f ali en s s us pe cte d o f b ein
g nati onal
se curit y th reats .
In Texas a German Luther an Pastor was whippe d after he
alleged ly con tinue d to
prea ch in Ge rman . .. . In So uth Dako ta a count y counc il of
de fense itself becam e
the obj ect of mob thre ats whe n it met to co nsider the quest
ion of granting permi ts
to pastors or Germ an churches to give synopses o f their se rmo
ns in Ge rma n at
the close of English-language services. In Neb raska a Ge rman
Lu ther an pa stor of
a Church in Papillion was beate n by a mo b. . .. Schoo ls and
churches w ere
ransacke d (or German -language books. In South Dako ta, Ya
nkto n high sc hoo l
stude nts we re praised (or h;lving d umpe d the ir Ge rman-
language textboo ks into
Ihe Missouri Rive r as they sang Ihe "Star-Spa ngled Banne r."
The bu rning of
Ge rman -language bo oks as pa rt of supe r-pat riotic exercises
occurred in Oak la nd,
Hoope r, and Grand Island , Nebraska. In Boulder,Colorad o a
Ge rma n-hook-b urn-
ing rally was spo nsored hy the Universi ty of Colorad o pre
parat ory school. Early

in Septe mbe r 191 8, the Lut he ran paroc hial schoo l in
Herington, Kansas was
destroyed by fire by sup e r-patriots. (pp. 9-10)
'1,
, :. elud ed th at th e World Wa r I er a att ack o n p rofe s sors
o f Germ an Ioreshad-
;' owed th e acad em ic purges of th e 1950s .
L .· As th e w ave of e th no ling u istic res tr ictionis t effor ts
swept the cou n try,
" som e 18,000 pe rso ns in th e M idw est al one w er e fin ed
for lan gua ge vio la-
tions (Craw for d, 1995). Accordi ng to Lu eb ke ( 980), in m a
ny com m u n ities
mob r u le lead to Ger m a n Amer ica ns being threaten ed and
beaten; some
wer e ta r red a nd fea thered ; o thers had th eir h om es a nd bu
ild in gs pa inte d
yellow as a s ig n of di sl oyalty :
'~i 9. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLI CIES
~. ::.:....-.:.....:..........:.....- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --- --------
222
- - - - - - - - - . ~W~I~LE:.!.Y ',"
,l
se: n as p ro o f of d isloya lty. Accord ing to Manle y (964), in
a co n fro n tation (.i
wi th the Luth er an M issou ri Syn od th e Neb ras ka Sta te Co
u nci l argued: :

lit) bel i e~ed that ."the (orclgn l angu ag~ papers, the sectio nal
schoo l training .. .
a nd the Cerman,~ c.Propaga nda e lllaniltlJlg (rom pu lpits
occup ied by Kai ser age nts.
cx p ~,a lnel d t~le t d rsGloyalty" of the Ger man Luther ans.
These "Ne braska cae-
sars -Ilat IS, tne errn an Luthera n pa stors-m ust be curbed a nd
their use of
the Ger ma n language e nde d . A pro pe r pat riotic sp irit co
uld never be secured so
long as the Ge rman la nguage co ntinued to be wide ly used .
(pp. 8-9)
The N eb raska Co u nci l a ppli ed th e sa m e logi c regard ing
th e co nne ction
between langua~.e an d l? ya.lty to a numbe r of con tex ts . For
exa m p le, it
a nnou nce~ th a.t IIlstr~ctlon III sc hoo ls, wo rs hip se rvices
in ch urches, [and]
co n ve rsa ti o ns III p u b lic an d ov er th e teleph one mu st
be in En gli sh " (Man-
ley, 1964, P: 9). In Jefferson County th e local co u nci l
ordered telephone ,
op era tors to "c u t o ff p a r ties" w ho us ed German (Ma nley,
1959, p . 114). .; '~l
Ced a r CO~,nty pa~o~s :v e re admoni sh ed to re fra in from u
sin g German so .;..
as no.t to cause rrrrtation or m isund erstand in g," and th ey we
re issued ;;.
pem~ I ts for th e us e of for eign lan gua g es un der threat of
re v ocati on for ;~
a busive overus e (p . 115). .:,''''
~anl.ey. 0 : 59) not ed th at lib : a ries were a no the r po pu lar
ta rg et o f eth- ' ~>
nollll gUlslIc into lera nce, and -Ill so m e cases-the d ominant

p ress itself ~
t1~at led th e atta ck o n freed om of expressio n . In lat e 1917,
fo r ex a mp le, the .:(i.
~ 1~I~ol ll St ar, ~ n e ve r-ze a lo us ad vocate for th e cau s e
of Am ericani zation, {
in itia ted a d nve to p urg e from th e N eb ras ka State Libr a
ry Co m m ission .
s om e 1,000 Ge r man- la ng uag e books . Th e co m miss io n
det e rm in ed that the
boo ks we re prim a r ily o f intere st to eld erly Ge rma n
American s . A re p or ter
: rom the S tar e~amined th e books a nd not ed th at m an y h
ad been prin ted
111 Germ an , which w as taken as pr oof o f th eir p r opa g an
d a val u e for Ger-
many ~ecause th ey " w e re no t A m eric a n bo oks w ith A
mer ican id ea ls trans-
lated 1I1to German " (Ma n ley, 1959, p . 126). In November o f
1917 the
Nebrask a State Counc il of Defen se vote d un anim ousl y to
have a ll Ce rrnan
boo ks rem o ved from th e p u bl ic libra r ies .
Wilco x (993) obs erved that univ ersiti es w ere also "a fa vor
ite ta rg et for
ze a lots, wh~ were a nxio us to bel iev e that faculties ha rb or
ed p ol itica lliber-
a ls an d rad ~ca ls . Pr.ofessors a t severa l u ni ver siti es were
di smiss ed on a~
cou n t of t~elr perceived la ck of s u pp or t for Ameri ca an d
th e Alli es" (p . 59).
A t th e L!lHv~rsity o f M ich ig an m ost of th e Ge r m a n p
ro g ram wa s dis ma ntled
wh en ~ I X?f ItS ~rofessors w :re rem oved . Wilc ox conten d
ed th at a t th e heart
of th e inciden t w~s a co n flict ov er how much ide olog ical di

versi ty Ameri-
cans wou ld all ow 111 publi c uni ve rsi ties" (p . 60). A t M
ich igan, th e Germa n
pro fessors. w e re ou sted by a coa lition of ex tre m is t profess
ors wh o acted in
co nce rt WIth p ow e rful a lum ni. Togethe r th ey w e re a ble
to in fluen ce th
regents and administration to re move the Ge rma n facuIty.
Wilcox con~
An y person firm or co rpo ration in the State of Nebraska who
shall publish, within
the State of Nebraska, any newspaper, magazine, book,
pamph~et , or other
printed mailer in whatever form, in any langu~ge other than the
E.nghsh language,
shall as soon as print ed, file a copy th ereof WIth the State
Coun cil o~ Defense. In
additi on to such a copy ther e shall also be filed w ith the State
Coun cil of Defense
a co py of any translation s thereof into the English language
required or furni shed
Impact on the German-Language Press
Alth ough th e G erman-language press had be en gradua.lly
declinin~ for
several d ecades, wartime repression g rea tly accelerated rts
descent. TIle
total number of G erman-language publi cations declined from
554 in 1910
to 234 in 1920; daily circulation was only about a quarter of its
1910 level"
(Con zen, 1980, p. 423). After the United States entered the ~ar,

cou~ty
councils of defense requ ested German Americans to cancel
their s ubscrip-
tions (Manley, 1959); "In October, 1917, the United States Post
O~fice. De-
partment crea ted a system for licensi~g foreign-langu~ge
publications .
Before [books or peri odicals] cou ld be CIrculated ,
translations of each w.ere
to be filed with local postal auth orities" (p . 120). In Nebraska
such regUlre-
ments became part the state's sedition act. According to Section
6:
2259. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES
The attempt to coerce Lutheran pastors into patrioti c stance~
cor:npro-
mised th eir religious views be cause many felt o~ligate.d to
ma1l1tal~ the
principle of s epa ra tio n of ch urch and state . ~he t:h ssoun
Synod pu blished
a pamphlet in its defen se that stressed the historical posture of
the c h ur ch .
It not ed that Ger m a n Luth erans had fled to the United States
in 1 838 to
escape persecuti on in their homeland, that the maj ority of
Luthera ns were
American-born, and that the church had not attempted to
rationalize
German wartime acts such as the sinking of the Lusitania
(Manley, 1959).
Some cong reg a tio ns re sisted the imposition of English
because m~ny of
their members-especially the elderly-eould not understand

Engllsh. In
a modest accommodation, the Nebraska State Council moved to
allow one
day of foreign-language religious service per week . However,
give.n the
Anglophon e op p ositio n to foreign-language use, "the Stat~
Council ad-
vised ministers who were offering fore ign-language services
for older
members of their congregations not to advertise or promote the
special
services" and care was taken to ensure that English -speaking p
ers ons
would n ot att end these meetings (Manley, 1959, P: 164).
The impact of repressi on on language shift amon~ G~r,mans an
d speak-
ers of other European immigrant languages was slgl11f1~ant
The us~ of
Engli sh "accelera ted rapidly in the churches as elsewhere;
1111917 one-SIXth
of the Miss ouri Synod Lutheran Churches held at least one
English.servic:
a month , while at the end of the War, three-quarters were doing
so
(Conzen , 1980, p . 23).
The Assault on Religious Expression
Those who .steadfastly tried to retain their language for religi
ous reasons
were especially vulnerable to persecution . Luebke (1980) noted
that in
several Midwestern states German-speaking Mennonites were
viciously
attacked for their resolute maintenance of German as well as for

their
pacifism. In 1918, police narrowly res cued a Mennonite from a
mob who
h ad b~gun hanging him. Elsewhere, Mennonite students were s
everely
ostracized In the s u m m er of 1918, "so m e o f the m ost cons
ervat ive Men-
nonites of the Great Plains states decid ed that their status
within the United
States had become intolerable" (p. 10), and more than 1,500 left
th e United
States seeking refuge in the prai rie provinces of Canada.
. Zealots were not satisfied with m ere ethnolin guistic restricti
on-
Ism-they demanded public patr iotic demonstrations of loyalty.
Accord ing
to Manley (I 959), Lutheran ministers and their congregations
were singled
out an~ put und er intense scrutiny to demonstrate their loyalty.
In April of
1918, fIve Luthe ran pastors were denounced for refusing to
parti cipate in
a Lancaster Council of Defense patriotic rally held in Lincoln .
In retaliation
the Council threatened to use its influence "aga ins t those who
had declined
to participate" (p. 153). The fanaticism of th e attack was noted
by the
Nebraska State [ournal, which compared the incident to the New
England
witch-hunt hysteria.
WILEY
Manley (1959) conclu d ed that atta cks on G e rma n lan gua g
e and cu ltu re

also had sign ificant con sequences for o the r ethnolinguisti c
grou ps . "Restrio-
tions were being placed upon people who had always exhibited
the highest
patriotism, even though they did not sp eak English" (p 165) In
Plainview,
NE, a resident complained that his Danish-speaking m other,
who had been
a generous contributor to the Liberty Loan drives, "w as now d
enied the
comfort of her religion" (p . 164). Th ose of Swedish descent
likewise suffered ,
C. A. Lennquist, wh o h eaded a home for children, protested to
the Council
t~at "t o ~,eprive an imm igrant of his language w as the same
as 'di gging out
h is eyes (p , 168) . Unmoved, the Nebraska C ouncil stayed the
course, and
its members expressed sat isfacti on that the s ta te "w ou ld
soon be swept clean
of the German languag e" (p. 172; emphasis added) . In the end
, the eradica-
tion of one's ancestral language became an essential component
of Ameri-
canization and the rite of passage into the Anglo-American fold-
at least for
those who would be all owed to assimilate.
The psychological impact o f ethnolin guisti c repression is
impossible to
c~lculate. How~ver, th~ pl ea. of one Nebra skan woman is
telling. Writing
directly to Pres ident WIlson III 1918, she impl ored: '''I beg
you with all my
heart not to make us destroy our language which we hav e
learned from

parents and grandparents' " (cited in Manl ey, 1959, p. 115).
224
.',
, .
"I.; "
->
to the Post O ffice D epartment of the Federal Government
(cited in Mlnle 1959
p. 304) ,~ ,
There is at ~he present.limc much di scussion among schoo l
offi cials con cerning
the advisability of co ntinuing the study of the German language
in o ur schoo ls.
In order to co me to a sa ne d ecision on thi s problem as w ith
any pro bl em it
becomes necessa ry 10 we igh th e pro s and co ns accurately
and wi tho utpre ju dice
(p.2 5 7) .
227
Taking advantage o f the nati onal "em erg e n cy" as an oppo
rtunity to
prom ot e tea cher education, Coffman further argued that
teacher training
could no longer be left to local discreti on, because "the welfare
and safety
of th e co u n try demand federal recognition of tea cher

training" (p. 64). In
an effort to gain status and resources for teacher education, the
field was
linked to the noble purpose of national self-defense , Coffman
exhorted:
"The nati on must understand that teach ing is a fo rm of high
patriotic
servic e, and that the edu cation of the masses is as necessary
for s ocia l
solidarity and se curity as for so cial progress" (p . 65) .
Teacher competence
was to be m easured by patriotism and the ability to promote
Americaniza-
tion throu gh En glish-only instruction.
N ot all educators agreed, and a stubborn minority argued
against basing
educational language policy solely on the contemporary
political situation .
"Their words were written in the educational periodi cals and on
the pages
of the newspap ers of the day" (Moore, 1937, P: 30). In South
Dakota, for
example, C ommissioner of Edu cation r. r. Claxton steadfastly
h eld to the
position that:
wh at th ese teachers did and w ere doin g for German y all
teacher s in the f u ture
mu st d o fo r Americ a. 1hei r patriot ism mu st b e of th e simo
n-pure qu ality. The y
mu st be familiar w ith and teach the facts about forei gn land s,
but the id eals the y
seek to implant must he Ame rican ide als, and the language of
the graded sch oo ls

in w hich these ide als are imparted must be the English
language. (p. 63)
" We cannol afford to eliminate Ihe Ge rman language enti rely.
... I want it
definitel y und erstood that my opinion is not influen ced by the
entrance of the
Un ited Sla tes int o War. I d o not believe our present relati ons
w ith th e Ge rman
impos sible to study German without b eing influenced to a
certain extent
by German thought" (p . 262) . In a final appeal to feigned
rationality, C ord y
concluded: " Le t u s w e igh these facts sanely and let us decide
that modern
civilization has n o ne ed of the products of a people who are
the 11uns of .
modern times " (p . 263) .
For many e d uc a to rs, merely dropping Ge rman from the
curricul u m was
an insuffici ent remedy for the lingering ill effe cts of German -
la nguage
instruction. In 1918, L. D . Coffman (1918) , dean of the C
ollege of Ed ucati on
at the University of Minnesota, writing in an NEA publication,
con tended
that "what the ro ot is to the tree , . . the German language is to
Germany"
and that the "sin ister influence of German Kultur" was part of a
conspiracy
of "many un-Am erican schools and many un-American
teachers" (p . 62) .
Coffman depicted German teachers as having utilized every op

po rtunity
to dev elop " a n affection for Germany which the war, in many
instances,
has been unable to di sturb" (p. 63) . To reverse the alleged
Germa n indoc-
trination, C offman prescribed Americanization imparted
through English:
9. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIESWILEY
In"detailing his "il,ccurate" and "unprejudiced" view, Gordy
explained
t~a~ the G,erman mind while ~Iert for progress, is
overwhelmingly ego-
tistic, sordId: and has been stimulated, in its last frantic states
by the
dread[ed] rilsease-Teutomania" (pp . 260-261; emphasis add d)
A
Id b I' , G e . s a
:,ou - e inguist, ordy observed that German , as "a language
lacking
In e~phonysav~rs of the animalistic and does not produce a
certain mental
pol~h and, refinement ,of nature ess~ntial to civilized people"
(pp.
261 262). Like many of hIS co n te m p o raries , he believed
that " i t w ould be
The National Debate on German Language Instruction
?,uring . the war, writers in the popular press argued over the
merits of
drop~mg German altogeth er" from school programs (Goodri ch
, 1918, p.

197). GI:en the ~o~u.larsupport for eliminating the German
language from
the curncultlln'"lt IS Important to ask where educators stood .
According to
Luebke (I :80>, Many educators lent th eir authority to the war
on German-
language m.struction i~ t~e schools" (p . 5) . Prominent
educational journals
and educatlOn~1 ass.oClahons such as the National Educati on
Association
(NEA) I~n~ their weight to the attack on German and support
for English-
only policies . The NEA even pressed Congress to pass the
Smith-'T
A t hi h ired rownes
c ' v: IC :eqUlre .states to be denied federal funds unless they
enforced
laws Imposlllg Enghsh as the language of instruction (Burnell,
1982).
Som~ educators ~eiled th eir atta cks in psuedo-object ivism .
For example,
G ordy, In a 1918 article for the Educational Review, began :
1.1.1.>
St~te counc~ls of defense carefully reviewed the German-
language press
for SI.g1.S of disloyalty. In Nebraska , a hist ory profess or
was retained to
s crutini ze the press. Many in. the state argued that all for eign-
language
new~papersshould ca.rry English translations . In response,
Walter Roskcky,
president of the Foreign Language Press Association co u n

tered that the
"~ebraska Press Association ha.d been unable to name a s p
ecific act of
di sloyalty on the part of the foreign newspapers," and he
cautioned: '''Let ';0
us remember that it is a SYSTEM we are fighting, NOT A
PEOPLE"' - '
(Manley, 1959, P: 125; emphasis in original) .
'.:'
;9. WUKLU WI K I t: KA t.NL.L1~H-UNLY ....ULlUt.~
Th e variation in the melh od and in the extent of this
delegation of a~ l ho r i ty by
Ihe state 10 the local district is one explanJlion for the
differences which a.ppea r
in the methods used to olirnina te the study of the Ce rma~
languil ge In . th:
second ary schools. For example, in California, the s l u~y of
Ge rman was elull.l -
natcd by resolution of the State Board of Educatio n: In Loui sl
an a , .th ~ dev ice
used was legislalive enactmenl; in South Dil~ola , the same
objective ~as
attained under the direction of the SIJte Council of Defense; If1
Iowa, elim Ill ~ -
tion was accomplished by the direction of the State Supe rin
tendent of P~bhc
In slruction . In the majority of the stales, however, the
authority 10 e ll. lllIna le
Gcrmiln as il study was vested en tirely in the hands of the local
co m rnuruty. (pp.
29- 30 )

em pi re should il Heet in iln y WilY Ihe policy of ou r schools
in regilf(j 10 German
instruction." (cite d in Moore, 19 3 7, p . J1)
Official Actions Against German-language Instruction
.,
D es pit e C lax to n's p rot est, an d th ose o f a m in o r ity o f
o thers , " by the middle' .
o f th e sch ool y ea r 1917-1 918, th e tid e o f anti-G erm an
lan gua g e feelin g was :'
appro ach in g its hei ght" (Moo re, 1937, P: 34) and th e assault
o n German- :~. '
langua g e instru cti on wa s in h igh gear. In N eb ra s ka, th e
Cou nci l o f D efensa -i
r ecru ited a p rofess or of Sla vic langua g es from th e Uni ve
rsity of N ebraska "·
to s urv ey th e ex te nt of forei gn lan gu age u se in th e sc hoo
ls . A mo ng her) ...
revelations were that so me 12,000 chi ld re n w ere attendin g
parochiat:~ ·
sc hoo ls w he re Germ a n wa s tau ght or u sed . M or e s ta r
tling to th e co u ncil!
f.
was that s eve ra l s u pe rin te nde n ts report ed that so me sc
hoo ls began the day .~
with th e si ng in g of th e G erm an anth em and more th an 100
" fa iled to display .,
th e American fla g " (Manl ey, 1964, P: 9). .
In December of 1917 both th e tea chin g a nd th e us e of a ll fo
reig n Ian- i
g uages- no t jus t G erm an - wa s bann ed in N ebras ka . Pri

vately, it was ;,
a d mi tt ed that the "S ta te Co u nci l a ctuall y had no leg al
bas is fo r requiring .4-
any s choo l to ban Germ an , But .. . a 'well defi ne d se n time
n t' in th e s ta te 1l;
demand ed that all sch ools u se o n ly ' the lan gua ge of o ur co
u nrry" (M a nley, ~'
1964, p . 12). That " we ll d efined s entim ent" has b een m or e
aptl y describ ed <
as "disrespect for th e la w " (Lu eb ke, 1980, p . 9) . Wh en
local sc hool boards ''0';
m oved too s lo w ly, Am er icani zers resor ted to burglary.
Germa n textbooks vf
w er e stolen from Sewa rd h igh schoo l (Ma nley, 1959). ·t
Des pite th e gen er al climate o f re pr ess ion ge nerated by th
e w a r, it is -:,
impor ta n t to n ot e that in some areas Ge r ma n in stru cti on
rem a in ed p opular. ,.
For exa m p le, as lat e a s Ap ril of 1918, tw ice as man y
Trenton, N ew Jersey
stud ents were enrolled in Ge rma n co urses as in Fre nc h o r
Spa nis h co u rses
(Moore, 1937 ). Given lan gua g e lo yalt y to Ger ma n it is im
p o rt a nt to see
officia l En gli sh -only lan gu ag e p ol ices, and th os e restr
ictin g G e rm an a nd
o ther fo re ign lan gu a ges , as impo rtant instrum ents of soc
ia l co n tro l. In this
re gard , Le ibowit z (1974) n ot ed that in th e earl y 1900s th e
Fed eral gove rn - ~
m ent urg ed states to p ass s ta tu tes m an d atin g En gl ish a s
th e lan gu a ge of
instru cti on in b oth publi c a nd priva te sch ools . Fed er al
urgin g in thi s are a
dem on strates that the nat ion al gove rn me n t w as not a

neutral bystand er in
matter s of edu cati onal lan gu ag e po licy. Accord in g to
Leibowitz, in 1903, 14
s ta tes h ad a s ta tu to ry req u ire m e n t impos in g Eng lis h
a s th e la ngua ge of
instruct ion . On the eve o f Wo rld War I in 1913, 17 s ta tes
had s uc h a
re gulati on. By 1923, a total o f 34 ha d im pos ed th e requ ir
em ent. Thirt y-on e
s ta tes pa ssed new, o r addition al, ed uc a tio na l lan gu a ge
p oli cies bet w een
1917 and 1921, ac cord in g to Ed wards (1923). In 15 of th ose
s ta tes the
impositi on of Engli sh- onl y p olicies was ex p licitly lin ked
to r estri cti on s on
.~ other lan gu a g es. Man y s ta tes m a d e it illegal to tea ch
for ei gn lan gua g es in
~ the low e r grades, u suall y either b elo w G ra de 6 or G ra d
e 8. . ,
. ' Des p ite encouragemen t from th e federa l governm.ent,
~onstl tl.Jt1 o na ~ ly
~ the prim ary res po nsi bility for edu cational .p ol icy res id
es 111 th e a~th onty
, of th e s ta tes. and durin g th e war th ey, III turn , all owed
co nSIder ab le
. ~ disere t i on to local dis tricts in the admini stration o f p ol
icies . Thu s, ther e
:;; was no uniform p a tte rn for excis ing Ger man from th e
schoo ls. In a r e flec-
. '~. tive s tudy und e rt a k en less th an 20 years aft e r th e wa
r, Moore (1937)
JJ observed :

;~~ ~
Th e b runt of the anti -German statut es w as felt in the pr im
ary g ra des;
how eve r, th er e was a lso a d et r im e ntal effec t a t th e seco
nd a ry le v el. In
Mar ch 1918, th e Literacy Digest und ertook a sur vey of se
cond a ry s chools
aroun d th e co u n try to d et ermine h ow man y ha d d ro pr:e
d. G e,rma n lan -
guage s tudy. O f th e 1,017 sc hoo ls repo r ti ng , 149 (a bo u t
15 Vo) in d icat e d that
the y h a d e limina ted Ger ma n (Moore, 1937). H o w ev er, in
ar eas ~here th e
atta ck on Germa n h ad be en m o re v iciou s, s tud e n ts s h u
n ne d Ger m a n as
an elective . Bu rne ll (1982) not e d that in 1918 the Uni v er
sit y of Mi ch ig a n
(wh ich had fired si x of its Germa n -language fa cul ty ) se n t
o u t a s u rvey to
200 M ich igan h igh sc hoo ls . In 166 s ch ools , Ger~a n w as
not se lecte d b y a
sin gle s tude n t. Th is was es pecia lly re marka b le III a st a
te wh e re 11% of the
popul at ion claim ed Ge rma n an cestr y. . "
By th e ear ly 192 05 th e combi na ~ ion o f a l~ ostJ1 e SO CI
a l clima te and th e
for ce of offici a l res trictio n h ad a d isastrou s Im pa ct o n
Ge r m a n la n gua ge
enrollm ents . As G ilber t (198 1) d ocum ente d , nationally
u.s. sch ool ~nroll -
ments in Germa n had i ncreased from 10.5 % in 1890 to a
record hI gh o f
nea rly 24% i n 1915, but th en plun g ed to less than .1 % in

1922. Compar~-
tivel y in stru cti on in Fre nc h ro se from a bo u t 10 % III
1915 to ov er 15 % III
1922. ' Bet w e en 1915 a nd 1948 the p ercent a g e o f hi gh sc
hoo l s tu de n ts
nid yin g Germ a n ha d d rop p ed from nearl y o n e fourth of
all s tude n ts to
~ess than 1% (Le ibow itz, 1971) . State d a ta r ev eal s s im
ilar d ecl ines . In
Michi gan in 19 15, for ex a m p le, o ver 96% of the hi gh
schools offe~ed
Ge rma n co m pared to o n ly 7.5 % in 1920 (Bu rne ll, 1982).
Becau se man y h ig h
Americanization and Anglification : Panaceas
of Assimilation or Placebos for Intolerance?
sc hoo ls d roppe d Cerrn an-Ian gu a g e ins tructio n, un ive rs
ity ad mi ssio n re-
q uireme n ts fo r fo reign -la n gu ag e prereq uisi tes were like
w is e re laxe d or
a me n d ed .
During the war y ears many states and local governments pass
ed Ameri-
ca n iza tio n la w s req uiri ng ad ul ts to ta ke pres cri be d
courses in America ni-
za tio n . Pu nd its, poli ticians, a nd academics deba ted the ext
ent to which
vario us Europ ean -orig in groups co u ld be assimila ted as
well as the meri ts
of America niza tio n . Eastern a nd southern Europea ns were d
ee med less

m elt a ble by Ang lo-Saxon chauv in ists an d, thu s, less likely
ca nd ida tes for
Ame rica niza tio n . N ev erth eless, a wave o f A m erica nizati
on efforts swep t
th e co u n try . Its many s u p porters a rg ued th at it was in d
is p en sabl e for
p rom ot ing assi m ila tion a nd nat ion al security.
H owever, aga ins t the p opular tid e o f Am er icani za tion th
e re w ere some
advoca tes o f cu ltura l pluralism . Th e m ost n otable o f the
day was Horace
Kall en wh o, w rit ing in Na/ iVII in Febr uary 1915, a rgu ed
ag ai ns t b oth A me ri-
cani zat ion and A ng lifica tio n. He co nte n ded that th e U n
ited States "need
not be h eld to a mon o lingual s tan dard for Eng lish w as to th
e nat ion what
La tin was to the Rom an Empire ," th at is, a "Ia ng uage of the
upper and
d ominant clas s, not necessa ril y th e m ass es or the p ro v in
ces" (cited in H olli,
1981, P: 420). Kall en insis ted th a t eac h group "na tu ra lly
wou ld h a ve its ow n
em oti onal life, its own lan gua ge , a nd its in te llect ua l for
ms in a 'tr ue Federal
Stat e' .. . [i.e .], a fed era tion or com mo nw ea lth of nati on
ali ties ." Possibl y
a head of h is tim e, Ka lle n's voice was littl e more th a n an ec
h o amids t the
cla mo r for A ng lifica tio n a nd A merica nizatio n .
Across th e nation sc hoo l d istr icts offered civ ics an d Eng lis
h classes for
the foreign -born, a nd businesses a nd la bor u n io ns organi
zed similar classes

(McC ly mer, 1982). In Colorado, "aliens, natu ral ize d
citizens, and chi ldren
of fore ig n-born p a re n ts were req uired to a tte nd " A
merica nizat io n classes
a nd "s ig n oat hs o f loya lty to th e U nite d Sta tes gov ernme
n t" (Dorse tt, 1974,
p. 292). Fur ther, re sid ent s of foreign bi r th or p arenta ge
were forced to join
th e Ameri ca First Societ y an d sign its pl ed g e: "I p ledge m
yself to b e, first
of all , an A m erica n; to promo te with all m y p ow e r a k
now ledge o f the
lan guag e, th e history, the go ve rn me nt and the id ea ls of thi
s co untry, and to
su pport h er by every w ord a nd act in h er strug gl e for th e
free do m of
m ankind ."
"The sign in g of th e a rm istice o n 11 N ovember 1918 e nded
the war
aga ins t German y, but th e wa r again st Germa n langu age a
nd cu lture in the
United Sta tes continu ed with scarcely a ny di minut ion " (Lue
bke, 1980, p .
11). The continuation of the assa u lt ca me as no surp r ise be
cau se "bo th
231
In so overheated a clim ate. no deviation from the newl y,.and
na~ro":,,l y, defi n ed
"Americ " n W<lY " co uld be reg<lfd ed as.trivial; some .p"
trlOIICorg" n.lzatlOn or oth~ r
was sure 10 launch a cam paign 10 erad lGl lc II..The.General
Federati on of ,:",om~n s
Club s, for exampl e, becam e convinceJ that im migrant mo

thers were. a reaction-
ary force" and d etermined to " carry the English language and
Ame ric an ~ay~ of
caring fo r babie s, ventilating the house, preparing Am eri can
vegetables, Instead
of the ine vitab le cabb <l ge" (p . 98 )
Th e A me rica n iza tio n mov em ent co ntinue d w ell int o the
mid -1 920s .
Desp ite its h ead y goa l o f tot al Am e r ican izati ?n , th e . e
ndea vo: w~s n~t
p ar ticul arl y effective, ei ther for teach in g En glIsh, or III p
repann g i mrru -
grant s fo r citize ns hip . T he moveme n t was larg el y d ecen
tr ali zed an d ma ~y
local progra ms lacked s uff icie n t resources (M~Cly~er:
1982). Th us , Its
ma jor im pac t was esse n tia lly id eo logic a l. Ame:lCa
~lz~tlO~ wa~ probab~y
more s uccessfu l in s tig matizi ng cu ltura l and IIng Ulshc d
iver sity than 111
facilitat ing as s imil a tion . By th e lat e 1920s a~d ~arly
1930s, it ~ad suc.c~eded
in co ntrib u ting to int erg en er at ion al con flict 111 m an y e
th nic famil i es by
weakening respect for th e la ngua ge and cu lture of p arents in
th e e y es of
child re n who were less th a n fu lly assimila ted (Montalto,
1982b) . Its e xcesses
led to th e es ta b lish me n t of an int er cultural ed uca tio n m
ovem ent that
sought to reinstill a sense of cu ltu raI pr ide for a ge nera.tio n
o f stude n ts left
in a cu lt ur a l lim bo in th e wake o f th e American iza tIOn m
oveme n t (see

Mo n ta lto, 1982a , for a d et ail ed accou n t; se e als o Wiley,
1993).
THE IMPACT OF LANGUAGE RESTRICTIONISM
AND REPRESSION IN THE UNITED STATES
Facin g officia l p olicies aim ed at eradi cat ing the u se of
Germ an hara ssment
from s ta te co u nci ls o f d efen se, th e ultranation ali sti c
press, mo~s , and even
law en force me n t many Ge r m a n Ame rica ns att empted th e
eq Ulva le n t of an
eth nic lob otom y: Na mes w er e ch a ng ed from Muelle~ to
Mill er (D ors ett,
1974). The v ery word "Ge rma n" ha d b ecome so d espi cabl e
that a Massa-
chuse tts repor t on ch ildre n's health rep ort ed data o n Libe
rty Measles ra~her
than Germa n M ea sles (Moo re, 1937). "11 w as a tim e to
submerge all s igns
Dem ocrat ic a nd Repu bli ca n ca nd id a tes h ad insi s ted o n
'p a tr iotic educa-
tion' a fter th e war" (Ma n ley, 1964, P: 15). T he Red Scare w
h ich followe~ the
wa r also e nsured th at th e m ov em ent for Amer icaniza tio n
wou ld co~tJ n ue .
In Ap ril o f 1919 th e Chicago Tribulle bo ldly proclaimed, "O
n ly an ag ile and
d eter m in ed im m igra n t p oss ess ed o f over mas teri ng
devo tio n to the la n d o f
h is b irth ca n h o p e to es cape A mericaniza tio n b y at least
o ne of th e m an y
proce sses now b eing prepared ~or h is specia l b e n e fit."
(McC.lymer, 198 2, p .
98). Regardi ng th is xe nop h obiC atmosphere for sing ular it

y, McCly me r
obser ved :
9. WORLD WAR I ERA ENGLI SH-ONLY
POLICIESWILEY230
o f Germa n- ness , an d th e Ger m a n co m m u n ity ne ve r re
cove red" ([3 eltramo'J;:
1981, p . 352) . .~. : .
In th e 1910 l.J.S. ce ns us , ov e r 2.3 m i llio n p eopl e clai
med to h a ve been '
G e:man -b o rn .a~ o pposed to less t han 1 7 m illio n in 1920
(C o n z e n, 1980);' <1,
Thi s w as a s tr iki ng dec li ne eve n w he n co nsi der ing mor
ta li ty a nd o u t-m j.o f
g ra tio n . S ta te d at a a re e v en m ore re v ea ling . Bu rnell
(1982) o bserved that in~! '
N e bra s ka I.l e~ rl.y 14 % o f th e popu la tio n had ide n
tified itse lf as being of:
G erman ongll1 III 191 0; h ow e ver, o n ly 4 .4% ma d e s im
ilar clai ms in 1920. In '
Wisc o nsi n , th e dis appea ra nce o f Ge rma ns wa s e ve n m
o re co nsp icuo us as '
th ~ ~ 920 data re p ort ed o n ly 6 .6% o f th e popu la tio n a s
be in g of German
o ng ll1 co m pa red to n earl y 29 % in 1910. Bu rnell co ncl u
ded : .,;.
No oth er N o rth ~me ri ciIn ethnic gr(~ u r, P~ S I or pr esent
has att em p ted so for cef ully
to o fflClil ll y co nceal thei r ISlcl ethnit: o nglil S One m ust
att ribu te th is reaction to

th e w ave of repr essio n th at swep t the Co nt inent and
envelop ed anyon e wi th a
Germ an past. (p . 22 )
In ethni cally d iv e rs e cit ies l ik e C h ica g o, public de mo
ns tra tions of the
ex ten t of o ne 's Americani z ati on fa cto red in to in tere th
nic ri valries. Holll ',
(198 ]) ob~erved tl.lilt m~ ny P olish , C z ech , a nd S la vic
Ame rica ns began . ~ :.
se lf-co nscio us ly d ls ta nc ll1g them s elves fro m th eir " h
yph e na ted " status. , : ,~
Some consp icuously be g an refer r in g to th eir a nces tra l h o
m el and s as ::~
" mo th e rlands"-ra t her than th eir " fa th e rl a n d s" in a n
effo r t to di s ta nce .f~
them selv es from ex p ress io ns that were a nalog o us to tho
se in Ge r m a n. ;,"
Incr easin gly, d uri ng the interethni c "cultu r e w a rs " a
demo ns tra tio n of ,"
A merica ni z a tio n becam e a m eans o f enhan cing the s ta
tus of o n e's ethnic '
gro u p Over th at of o thers. How e ver, eve n Ted d y Rooseve
lt, w ho frequ ently
a t tac ked " h yp h e na ted Am ericans," exem p ted Greek A
mer ica ns
Meyer v. Nebraska (1923): The Official Status of English
Versus the Salience of language Rights
In 1919, Ne b raska p as se d a law th at w as s im ilar to thos e
of o th e r states
w h ich prohibit ed fo re ig n lilllgu a ge instru cti on throu gh
Grade 8 . As not ed,
m ost s ta te~ a p pl ied su ch re s tri c tio ns to either G ra des
1 throu gh 6 or 1

throu gh 8 In a.n e ffo rt to m a ke fo re ign lan gu a g es in
accessib le durin g th ose
ages when ch ild re n w ould hav e th e be s t o ppo r tu n ity fo
r ac q uiri ng th em .
In 1923 a ll s uc h statutes were declare d unconstitutional (Piat
t, 1992; see
Edwards, 1923, for a co n te m pora ry re actio n) . Th e case th
at bro ug h t the
decisi on to a h ead wa s Meyer v. N ebraska, 262 Ll.S, 390
(1923; see C raw for d,
1992b , fo r text o f case) . M e yer tau gh t in a p a ro ch ial sc
hoo l in Hamilton
C.ounty, Nebra ska He was conv icted and fin ed fo r us in g a
Germ a n Bible
hi st ory b o ok a s a te x t for rea d ing bas ed on th e Nebrask a
s ta tu te . Mey er lost
in an appeal to the N eb ra sk a S u p re me Co ur t. Th e N eb ra
ska co ur t reaso ne d
•• V I ',.L LJ 1II111 ..... 1',. I L I"-'" ... . . ...... L .J I I ....., . -.
L. I: .....,L.I_I ... J
::fuat tea chin g a nces tra l langu a g es to ch ildre n o['
imm.igra n ts was unfav o r-
~ able to nati on al s a fety a n d se lf-i n teres t. H owe ver, 111
1923 th e Su preme
· Cour t over tu rned th e decisio n, a rgui ng that in pe ace time
n o th reat to
' na tiona l secu r ity cou ld justify th e e x tre m ity o f th e
Nebra ska la w . The C our t
~ argued th e N ebraska st atute viol ated the Du e Process C la
use of th ~ Fo u r-
: tee nth A m e ndme n t. It ru led in fa v or of Meyer b y a 7-2
m argm (see
' Craw for d., 1992b; Murp h y, 1992 ).
.t Ne v erth eless , for a dv oca tes of fre edo m o f lan gu a ge

cho ice an d lan gu a g e
":lrigh ts,4 th e rulin g esta b lis hed a shall o w precede n t. Fr
om th e C?ur~'~ p e r-
:':,spectiv e, th e s ignificant issu e in the case wa s the d ~fense
o f in d ivi d u a l
~": liberti es-no t la ngu a ge rig hts for their ow n sake . Th e n
ght to us e langu ag es
~ other th an E ng lis h was important o n ly in its associa tio n
w ith o th e r m ore
.i:' fund a m e n tal p rotect ion s. O liver Wendell H o lm es'
dissent was most f? re-
;, bodin g as h e argued th a t a ll ci tize ns of th e U ni ted St at
es s h o u ld be req u i r ed
i; to spea k a common ton gue (~urp~y, 199.2). Th e C~urt's
m~!ori ty di d n ot
, object to hi s p os iti on . Rather, It af firm ed It by a rg UI n g
that th e power o f
.j. the s ta te to co mpe l a tte nd a nc e at some sc hoo l a n d to
ma k e ~ea ~on able
I ': regulat ion s fo r a ll s ch ool s, includ ing II requirement
thai they shal! gIve instru c-
. . lio1ls ill Ellglish is 1I0t quest ioned" (cited in No rg re n &
N and a , 1 9~8,.P' 188,
empha s is a d de d ; s ee a lso Crawford, 1992c). Th us, f~ r
from estab ~ J ~h 1l1g th e
salien ce o f langu a g es rights, th e C ourt' s d ecision af firm
ed th e o fficia l sta tus
F. of Eng lish -l an gu a g e ins tr uc tio n . .
{ Foll owin g th e M eyer d ecisi on th ere wa s no r us h to
reesta~l ~ sh Ge~ma n-
,". lan gua g e in stru ction to its pre-wa r l evel~ . Ma ny. com

m u n ities w aIt,; d a
"', numb e r o f ye ar s before bri ng in g Ge rma n in st r u ct
ion ba ck becau s e a leg -
.~ acy of re p ress ion" pers is te d (Bu rne ll, 198 2, p. 14).
THE FATE OF GERMAN IN CANADA AND
THE UNITED STATES COMPARED
The Ge rman -o r igin popu la tio n in No r th A merica extends
acro~s na.tional
bound aries . Alt h ou gh th e re a re few studies that have
address ed llnmlg r~ n t
exp er ien ces a nd impac t o f lan gu age p olicies o n th em
from a compara ~ve
persp ect iv e .I Burnell (1982) h as d ern ou st ra ted th e im
P?rtance .of s tu d Yll1.g
the impac t o f Wo rl d Wa r I from su ch a perspec~ive ' .H~s
pr.lI1Cl~al fo~u~ IS
the "cross -c u ltura l impact of a s ing le eve n t o n a lingu isti
c rrun or ity res id ing
on either si d e o f a n i n tern a tio na l fro n tie r" (p 1).
Burnell ch ro n icle d man y
4See Ma cias (979) for an o verv ie w o f iss u es rela ted to la n
g ua ge ri gh ts . . .
5Lilng llilg e poli ci es a re freq uentl y a na lyz ed w ith in th e
co ntex ts o f nati o nal bo u nda nes .
Alth oug h th e ir wo rk is n o t s pec ia lly re la ted to imm igra
tion . Ph illip s on (1992) and To llefso n
(199 1) p ro vid ed irn porf a nl exam p les of cross-nat ion al a
na lys es o f lan g ua g e pol icies a nd th e
impa ct of Eng lish as the d o mi na n t wo rld la ngu a ge .

simnaritres III the wartime ex pe rie nc e of German Canad ians
w ith their . ~
k~ndred in .the Unit~d States . H owever, he also underscored
one significa~t:
dlffe:ence m Canadian language politics, that is, the official
status of French .~.
and Its numerical dominance in Qu ebe c. .:-
On the eve of World War I, German Canad ian s constituted a "s
m a ll but ~
cohesive " group that was con centrated in the " Be rl in (later
Kitch- i:,
ener)-Waterloo districts of Ontario, " wh ere they constituted
about 20% of ?
the population and in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta ,
where they .?l
comJ:>nsed at least 10% of t.he population (Burnell, 1982, p .
1). At the time, :"
English- and French-speakmg Canadians ac counted for around
700/.: f th .I . 0 0 e
popu ation, compared to German speakers, who comprised less
than 6%. . ;'i ~
Burnell (982) obs erved that bilingual schools in Canada
flourished in ""
area~ :vh~re Germ~ns wer~ cOl:centrat~d , especially in rural
areas and in '
localities infused With new imrmgranrs . Just as they did in the
United States. . .
In 1890, German Canadians had won the right "to receive in
structi on in ;"
Germ~n reading, gr~m~ar,and composition" on the request of a
parent or '; '
guardian (p. 3)..Thls, nght was a matter of considerable
controversy for ',~
,,,:glophones primarily because of their distrust of the quality

of French
bilingual s ch oo ls .
With the outbreak of war, "a n atm osphere of anti -Germanism
• ;
d d I .. , per '.
va e near y every aspect of Canadian life" just as it did in th e
United :f~
States, and German -language instruction was likewise excised
from mu ch t
of t.he C~nadian curriculum (Burnell, 1982, p. 3). German
professors at the ,:.
Un~verslty of Toronto were suspended just as their colleagues
were in the ',~
United States . When compUlsory education was mandated in
Manitoba in .
1916, a c1a~se wa~ ad~ed that prohibited se cond-language
instruction .
In drafting leglslation to end bilingual education in Canada :
Rese~rd,l qu estions 0 11 th e efficacy of learning a second
I;mgUilge w ere sim ply not
addr essed . Al thai hrn o ."wre wa s il pilucrly of d,lla on w
hether chi ld ren who se
moth er ton gue W,l Snot E:ngllsh would be mor e lik ely to
succeed in scho o l (8 II
1 'J1l2, p. 7), . urn e ,
TI~is was the ~~se even i.f they were entitled to bilingual
education.
Enghsh-only policies were Implemented in Alberta and
Silskatchewan'
howev er, an except ion was made to ilccommodilte speakers of
French:

J3~rnell conclu~ed that English -only policies were in ten d ed
to keep Cana-
dian Anglo chll~ren from learn ing a second language, which ,
in fact,
bec~.me the case 111 areas d ~l:linated by languages other than
English .
FI~all:,' co ncern s over bdll1gual education were linked to
fears of "Bol-
shevism (Burnell, 1982, p . 6) just as anxieties regarding
diversity were tied
to the .Red Scare in the United States . H ow ever, Mennon ites
, Ami sh, and
other Insular religious groups were generally " no t perceived as
a threat to
. the larg er Canadian suu",} ~ .. .
they did in the United States (p. 8) .
CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS OF THE IMPOSITION
OF ENGLISH-ONLY POLICIES AND AMERICANIZATION
" ';".
.~ Following World War I, Burnell (1982) noted that "a n ti-Ger
m a n feeling was
: largely replac ed by an anger directed toward all symbols of
foreign infl u-
~; ence" (p, 14). Nevertheless .. it is also important to rec
ognize that more than
.." xenophobia was at work. For those of European origin, the
force a nd
'j breadth of th e atta ck on div ersity may have been new ;
however, a care ful
:.: review of the experiences of indigenous peoples as well as
other peoples of

;. color indicates that the English-only movement was
concerned with f a r
'~ more than just language . In this regard , Tamura (993), in an
analysis of t h e
relationship between the English -only movement and the anti -
Japanese
campaign in Hawaii between 1915 and 1940, contended :
The English-onl y effort w as an inl egral part of the Ameri
canization cru sade.
Underl ying the cru sade w as the do ctrin e of Anglo- Saxon
supc riori ty-i- thc con -
vict ion that Am erican lr;tils d erived fro m th e English, and
that th e future of
Ameri can dem ocracy dep end ed up on the survival of th e
English lan guage and
the dom inan ce of th e Anglo ·Saxon "race." tp . 37)
To contemporary ears the notion of an Anglo-Saxon "race," as
opposed
to a German or Italian race , may sound pe culiar. However,
during the early
1900s, those of European o r igi n were frequently classified
into Nordic,
Alpin e, and Mediterranean races (Hakuta, 1986). In the
European racial
pecking order, Nordi cs w ere at the top and Mediterranians
(Greeks and
. Italians) at the bottom . Nordic supremacists of the time
considered Italians
" to be a "s u p er io r sort of Chinaman" (Wyman, 1993, P: 100)
, The war
encouraged some to make even finer distinctions between

"Anglo-Saxons"
and " H u ns."
Throughout th e war years, language was both a marker o f
foreigner
status and an instrument of raciali zation within the European-
origin popu-
lation . According to Miles (1989), raciali zation is "a process
of delineation
of group boundaries and an allocati on of persons w ithin those
boundaries
by primary reference to (supposedly) inherent and/or biological
(usually
phenotyp ical) characteristics. It is therefore an ideological
process" (p . 74) ,
During the World War I era , linguistic, religious, and cultural
differences
functioned like ph ysi cal differences in defin ing intergroup
boundaries of
race. In a s ense th ey helped to establish a two-tiered racial
classification
system: One tier defin ed race within the European-origin
population on the
basis of language, religi on, cu ltur e-a nd to a lesser degree on
physical
--- - "
d iffe rence~; th e o th~r de fi,ned race betw een Eu ropean s a
nd a ll o thers largely ~'
o n th e basis ~ f ph ysi ca I d Iffe ~ences an d seco ndari ly o n
th e bas is of language .;:.
an d cUl tu r: . ,Howev: r: as G erman Am ericans and oth e r
Europ ean -origin .;~
g rou p s assim ilated WIllIngl y, o r thr~t1gh co ercio n, into th

e Englis h-s pe a king )~
f~ld a nd adopt~d th e Angl O-,domlllat e cu ltu re, co lor an d
o ther physical ,~
d ifferences perS Is ted a s the p nmary d et erminan ts of ra ce
be h-v ee n those of ;'
Eu ropean .orig ~n and all oth er s . As th e s eco n d a nd th ird
g enera tio ns of ':r'
Eu : o p ean ImmI grants bec a rno lingu is ticall y hom o geni
zed th rou gh A ng lifi- "
cation , th ere w.as less co ncern a mo ng A ng lo-domi na te d,
Eu ropea n- or igin
peoples rega rding lan guage a s a mark e r o f "racial " differe
nces.
In re flec ting o n th e sig ni fica nce o f th e w a rtim e a ttack
on Germa n Am eri-
cans a nd o the r Europea n-o rigin langu a g e min or ities , it is
appa r ent that
they s ha re d m any si milar exp eriences to tho s e which h ave
m o re often
pla gu ed p eo pl es of colo~. Mu ch of th a t ex p erience ha s,
howev e r, been
fo rg otten , o r repress ed , m the co llective m em ori es o f
Euro pea n-o rig in
peopl es. Su bse guentl y, many a m o ng th eir thi rd- and fo
urth-g en eration
des cendants ~' Cl,ve com e to assum e that th ei r gran dparents
a nd great-gra nd-
pa rents all wllIlll gl y d es ert ed th e ir an cestra l ton gu es an
d cu ltu res . "
H oweve r, th e deg ree of com m onality in the exp erience of
discrim ination
e~cou ~~er by G er m a n Ameri can s and o th e r Euro p ea n-
orig in la nguage
mlll ontles compared to that of lingui st ic m in or it ies o f co

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