The Men and Women We Want: Gender, Race, and the Progressive Era Literacy Test Debate

Examines the gendered dimension of Progressive-Era debates about literacy and immigration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.

Should immigrants have to pass a literacy test in order to enter the United States? Progressive-Era Americans debated this question for more than twenty years, and by the time the literacy test became law in 1917, the debate had transformed the way Americans understood immigration, and created the logic that shaped immigration restriction policies...