The Power Elite Conference on Americanization

• In Event: American Culture: Crime, Capitalism, and Imperialism

Abstract

The United States’ Americanization program in the second decade of the twentieth century was established as a “racial project” (Omi and Winant 1994). This program specifically sought to combine together the multiple European white races into a single “new race”. The Americanization program was implemented through the National Council of Defense network of several state councils during World War I and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education. The data I use for this project comes from the Missouri Council of Defense papers on the Americanization program between 1917 and 1919. The process of inclusion for German-Americans at this time period required the acquisition of English and the abolition of German language practices, as well as demonstrating the capacity for self-government, among other factors. Active refusal of these processes by German-Americans, plus the political opposition to prohibition legislation, was noted as evidence of resisting assimilation and Americanization. As the political power of German-Americans to oppose prohibition legislation was specifically mentioned as active resistance to the program of Americanization, this research challenges the symbolic properties of Gusfield’s (1963) status politics paradigm used to explain the passage of prohibition legislation in the United States.

Author

• Andrew Bisto, Northern Arizona University