Hi /r/AskHistorians,
Following the US travel ban a couple weeks ago, I had the idea for a side project called What Would They Say About Me?. I wanted to show historical anti-immigration sentiments against groups now considered to be "fully integrated"; whose status as U.S. citizens or people who 'belong' here is no longer under question. The intent is to present these 100-200 year-old quotes (that sound so similar to the present day) in a way that implicitly connects modern day rhetoric with how readers' ancestors/family were treated.
I know current day events are off-limits in this sub. My "ask" is for more historical sources. I've done some of my own research online to get quotes (from people, laws, etc. that I remember from high school history classes), and have just finished reading "The History of White People" by Nell Irvin Painter, but I'm not sure what to look into next.
/r/AskHistorians, do you have any recommendations for books, names of relevant US laws and politics, cartoons, speeches or other original sources to look into? I realize this is a broad ask, but recommendations regarding any ethnic, religious, etc. group in the 1700s through early 1900s would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!
I can point you to a couple of sources that I have found useful.
Ignatiev, Noel. How the irish became white. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Kazal, Russell A. Becoming old stock: the paradox of German-American identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
One book you might be interested in is Linda Gordon's "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction." It's an example of the sliding scale of "whiteness" that you're familiar with from Painter: in 1904, a group of Irish Catholic orphans could not get adopted in New York City, where they were not considered white. However, when the Catholic Church arranged for them to be adopted by Mexican Catholic families in Arizona, their Anglo neighbors kidnapped them at gunpoint to prevent these (now) white children from being raised by a different race. It also goes into the different racial and ethnic divisions and tensions in the Arizona mining community where the kidnappings took place. I can't think of any quotes off the top of my head from it, but it ought to offer something for Irish, Catholic, and Mexican immigrants.