Becoming American

Becoming "American"

Newspapers and magazine publishers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were crucial in helping shape public opinions. There was a spectrum of representations of immigrants; a few were hopeful and depicted immigrants in a positive light, however, many newspapers fell on the other side of this. These portrayals show that becoming American is not a legal process. Magazines and newspapers played a huge role in shaping the social acceptability of certain groups, acting as the main barrier to full assimilation, not laws and policies.