The Melting Pot – U.S. Origin Stories

Illustration featuring the Statue of Liberty and dozens of immigrants being fed into a large "melting pot." — Cover of Theater Program for Israel Zangwill’s play “The Melting Pot,” 1916.

“. . . America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming! Here you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries. But you won’t be long like that, brothers, for these are the fires of God you’ve come to – these are the fires of God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American.”
Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, 1908

“Of course, from the beginning, the melting pot has been seen as an ambiguous symbol of American unity; it has been looked upon as a myth providing cohesion and a sense of evolving Americanness on the one hand, and as an instrument of forced acculturation and violent assimilation on the other. Several questions suggest themselves when assessing this myth: Who is in the ‘pot’ and who is doing the ‘melting’? What exactly is melted down? Which elements would prove to be resilient or dominant in the process, and with what result?”
Heike Paul, The Myths that made america, 2014

Various groups have used the melting pot to bolster their claims to cultural and political authority, including immigration restrictionists, nativists, multiculturalists and pro-immigration advocates. As David Michael Smith writes, “This universality is what helps to make the melting pot a central theme of American identity.” (Smith, 400). In this section of the course, we will explore different versions of the melting pot myth as expressed in narrative, ritual, and iconography. Because the melting pot was an especially influential concept in the early 20th century, we will begin our study there. We will then consider the persistence of the melting pot narrative throughout recent U.S. history, always asking Heike Paul’s questions: “Who is in the ‘pot’ and who is doing the ‘melting’? What exactly is melted down?” And we will ask of every version of the melting pot story: Who is and who is not counted as a citizen?

Week 8

Day 1 (3/30): The Melting Pot Narrative and America’s “Golden Door”

Adam Goodman, “Nation of Migrants, Historians of Migration,” Journal of American Ethnic History 34, no. 4 (2015): 7–16.

Schoolhouse Rock, “The Great American Melting Pot,” 1977.

Gordon C. Thomasson, “Melting Pot,” in Encyclopedia of American Studies, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018).

Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883; installed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903).

Mary Antin, “The Lie,” The Atlantic, August 1913.

Anzia Yezierska, “How I Found America,” Hungry Hearts (1920) If you prefer, you can read this pdf version.

“The Melting Pot Myth” (Story Map).

Recommended (not required): Woodrow Wilson, “Americanism and the Foreign-Born, May 10, 1915.

Discussion Question [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Day 2 (4/1): The Melting Pot and America’s “Guarded Gate”