The Shameful History Behind Iowa’s English Only Policy
by Nancy Thieman, LMSW, Sioux City, Iowa
An original Blog for Iowa exclusive in four partsWhen the southern states succeeded from the Union at the start of the Civil War in 1860, there was one little-acknowledged consequence that had far-reaching effects on the growth and expansion of the nation. Because the U.S. Congress no longer had to face the opposition from the south, they were able to pass through a bill called the Homestead Act of 1862.
The Homestead Act allowed for immigrants to come to America to receive the allocation of 40 to 160 acres of undeveloped public land. After five years residence on the land, the “homesteader” would pay a nominal fee and receive ownership of the land. The homesteader was also required to have built a house on the land and developed at least 10 acres for farming or timber. The Homestead Act mainly covered the plains states in the great Midwest. Iowa was included in the area proscribed by Congress.
The Homesteaders
In Germany, at that time, farmland was passed from father to son. A second son would, therefore, be without land or income of his own. The appeal of owning one’s own farmland was great amongst these German farmers who were without land and who were in danger of being conscripted by a militaristic government, and the Homestead Act set off several waves of emigration out of Germany. Many of the homesteaders from Germany took up land in Iowa.
In fact, according to U.S. Census data, just over 7,000 German-born people lived in Iowa in 1850. But by 1890, just forty years later, the German-born population of Iowa had reached its peak at over 127,000. What’s more, this figure does not include the families of these immigrants, i.e., their children and grandchildren who were American-born and yet German-speaking. So the German-speaking population of Iowa, by the turn of the 20th century, was substantial.
The Life of the Community
During the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the heart and soul of every German-immigrant community in Iowa was the German-language church. This produced, for the German-born minister and his flock, a kind of isolation and independence whose power came from their own sense of self-worth and their dedication to the will of the Lord. These congregations/communities were rooted strongly in religious, cultural and linguistic tradition, and had developed such a sense of self over the decades that they were almost impervious to outside pressures from the non-German-speaking community.
The Babel Proclamation
Once the Great War in Europe started in 1914, anti-German sentiment became rampant in Iowa. Hatred against Germans was visible everywhere, as English-speaking ministers preached against them and newspapers vilified them. Soon, in Iowa, public schools were forbidden to offer German language classes, and German language teachers were fired en masse. German books were burned, parochial schools forced to close, and German church services outlawed by town councils. Most German-language newspapers in Iowa had been pressured or forced to shut down their businesses, and the average man or woman on the street would be scolded or physically attacked when heard to be speaking German in public. Iowa’s German immigrant community and their offspring had become scapegoats for the war acts of the Kaiser.
This growing hatred and bigotry was given Iowa’s official stamp of approval a year after the U.S. entered the war. In May of 1918, in what came to be known as the infamous “Babel Proclamation,” then Iowa Gov. William Harding issued an edict proclaiming that “English only” would be allowed in Iowa—the first and only state in the Union to have an official policy aimed at persecuting German speakers. The idea was to “homogenize” or “standardize” the population; to make everybody a “real American,” one who looked, acted and spoke “American.” Throwing off one’s “foreignness,” then, was seen as an act of patriotism.
Tomorrow on Blog for Iowa
A System of Coercion, Part 2 of The Shameful History Behind Iowa’s English Only Policy
Derr, N., (1979, July/August). The Babel Proclamation. The Palimpsest, 60(4), 98-115.
Hansen,
Z. K. and Libecap, G. D., (2004). The allocation of property rights to
land: US land policy and farm failure in the northern great plains.
Explorations in Economic History, 41(2). 103-129.
Who came to Iowa?, (1981, November). The Goldfinch 3(2), 14.
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