Furthermore, the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 restricted immigration from non-western Europeans. According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity." The immigration of southern and eastern Europeans (especially Jews) was highly restricted and the immigration of Middle Easterners, East Asians, and Indians was prohibited.
Why do you think that many Americans were so eager to support restricted immigration?
Frances and fellow nurses tending to a patient, Boston City Hospital, ca 1940.
Frances is first on the right.
Courtesy of the Frances Slanger Collection in The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research
Center at Boston University.
Although Frances dutifully served in France, she and her female colleagues were paid half their male counterparts’ salary.
What do you think it says about our society that equal pay for women is still a hot-button issue?
To learn how Frances’s story ends, come view the exhibit Fighting for Democracy at Levine Museum of the New South from January 19th through July 14th, 2013.