Coming to America, Explained

La serie

Una serie illustrata a due voci sulla grande migrazione verso l'America, dagli anni Quaranta dell'Ottocento agli anni Venti del Novecento. In cinque brevi episodi di circa sei minuti, i due conduttori, Alex (americano) e Sam (una britannica), dialogano alla pari e ciascuno porta il punto di vista del proprio paese: perché milioni di persone lasciarono l'Europa, come attraversarono l'oceano, le due porte di Ellis Island e Angel Island, se l'America era accogliente, e chi restò e chi arrivò dopo. Ogni episodio risponde a una domanda e finisce con una sorpresa.

Gli episodi (5)

1. 1

   Why Did Millions Leave Europe?

   Between the 1840s and the 1910s, more than thirty million Europeans went to the United States, one of the biggest movements of people in history. Hunger, poverty, no land, no work and persecution pushed them out (the Irish famine, when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom; landless farmers in the south of Italy; Jewish families in the Russian Empire); jobs, land and freedom pulled them to America. The surprise is how the poorest paid for the crossing: very often, family already in America sent the money or a ticket.

   6:12
2. 2

   How Did They Get There?

   Between the 1840s and the 1910s, millions of emigrants crossed the Atlantic, most from Liverpool (about nine million between 1830 and 1930), the Irish also from Cobh (Queenstown) and the Germans from Hamburg and Bremen. Most travelled in steerage, the cheapest ticket, below deck, with simple food, and laws slowly set rules for space and air. Steam replaced sail: the crossing fell from five or six weeks to less than two weeks by the 1870s and about eight days by 1910. The surprise: the ticket did not get cheaper. What fell was the time, and, against wages, the cost.

   5:49
3. 3

   Two Doors: Ellis Island and Angel Island

   America had two main doors for newcomers. Ellis Island, in New York harbour (1892-1954), checked more than twelve million people: steerage passengers climbed the stairs under a doctor's eye, got a chalk letter if something looked wrong, had their eyelids turned up, and answered the questions on the ship's list; most were through in three to five hours and about two in a hundred were sent back. Angel Island, in San Francisco Bay (1910-1940), received about half a million people, mostly from Asia; Chinese newcomers faced detailed questions about home and many waited weeks, some months, because of the 1882 law explained in ep-04. In 1970 a ranger found about two hundred poems carved in its walls.

   5:54
4. 4

   Was America Welcoming?

   Life for many newcomers was hard: crowded tenements (Riis, 1890: about three in four New Yorkers). Where they came from changed (northern and western Europe in 1882, southern and eastern Europe by 1907, about four million Italians). Some Americans did not want them: 'No Irish need apply' in newspaper job ads (real; the window signs are argued over). Then the laws: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Chinese workers barred, no citizenship; permanent 1902; ended 1943, 105 a year), the 1917 reading test, the 1924 quotas (Italy from over 200,000 a year to under 4,000; almost no one from Asia; no limit for the Americas). Twist: Emma Lazarus's poem (1883) went up on a plaque in the pedestal only in 1903.

   6:17
5. 5

   Did They Stay, and Who Came Next?

   Many newcomers went home: Italian 'birds of passage' (from about one in four to more than half by different estimates; 73 in 100 in 1907-1911 by one count); Jewish families from the Russian Empire mostly stayed. About a third of Americans or more have an Ellis Island ancestor. What stayed: pizza (Lombardi's, often called the first, 1905), words (bagel, kindergarten, chutzpah), the St Patrick's Day parade (1760s, older than the country). Who came next: in 1848 a treaty moved the border (about half of Mexico's land; about 80,000 Mexicans had a year to choose); from the 1910s, and above all in the 1920s, Mexicans went north to farms and railways (as many as 600,000 legal arrivals in the 1920s); the 1924 law set no quota for the Americas.

   5:55