On May 26, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Act, the first federal law in American history designed to establish permanent, comprehensive restrictions on immigration.  It came at the end of a long, contentious process that debated the nature of American citizenship and identity along with the perceived merits and hazards of mass immigration.  The law is rightly regarded as one of the triumphs of American nativism and a pivotal moment in the history of U.S. immigration policy.

Primary documents give us unexpected perspectives on history, revealing problems we would otherwise overlook. Landen Schmeichel sees this often in his Advanced Placement US History course at Legacy High School in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Applications open soon for our Fall 2024 Multi Day seminars! We are hosting seminars on a variety of topics in American history and politics. The application will be open April 8-April 30. Some of our topics include: The Underground Railroad at The Underground Railroad Heritage Center in Niagara Falls, NY West Coast Immigration at the Angel Island Immigration Station on Angel Island, CA Contested Elections: 1800, 1824, 1874, 1960 & 2000 at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, MA The World Wars and the American State at the Indiana War Memorial Museum in Indianapolis, IN The American Founding at Valley Forge National Historical Park in Valley Forge, PA Reconstruction at Natchez National Historical Park in Natchez, MS From Brown v. Board to Little Rock and Beyond: School Desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement at Little Rock Central High School Historic Site in Little Rock, AR Abraham Lincoln and the New Birth of Freedom at the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, IL Westward Expansion: Conflict, Conservation, and the Environment at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, CA

Thomas Jefferson is most famous for eloquently articulating three natural rights that belong to “all men”—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But Jefferson held that humans had more than just those three rights; in 1803, he was particularly worried about “the natural right we have always insisted on with Spain; to wit that of a nation holding the upper part of streams, having a right of innocent passage thro’ them to the ocean”