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Social History

Department of History: Faculty Publications

1980

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Ethnicity On The Great Plains: Preface & Introduction, Frederick C. Luebke Jan 1980

Ethnicity On The Great Plains: Preface & Introduction, Frederick C. Luebke

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Immigrants from Europe formed a major element in the population that settled the Great Plains in the nineteenth century; their descendants constitute the majority of persons in many parts of the region today. A century ago, as the agricultural frontier moved across central Nebraska onto what is considered the Great Plains, foreignborn persons consistently formed a much larger proportion of the inhabitants on the western edge of settlement than they did in the state as a whole. Some years later the census of 1890 revealed that in North Dakota, for example, 42.7 percent of the population of that newly admitted …


Legal Restrictions On Foreign Languages In The Great Plains States, 1917-1923, Frederick C. Luebke Jan 1980

Legal Restrictions On Foreign Languages In The Great Plains States, 1917-1923, Frederick C. Luebke

Department of History: Faculty Publications

A major effect of World War I on American social history was that it focused attention on the nation's apparent difficulty in assimilating the millions of immigrants and their children who had streamed to the United States during the preceding two decades. The national mood, darkened by fears and resentments of long standing and deepened by systematic wartime propaganda, favored the adoption of stringent laws limiting the use of foreign languages, especially in the schools. During the war itself, restrictions were usually extralegal and often the consequences of intense social pressure recklessly applied. After the war, however, many state legislatures …