A Nation of Immigrants ( ISBN 978-0-06-144754-9) is a 1958 book on American immigration by then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The name of the book is a reference to the fact that the United States is a country whose population is predominantly made up of immigrants and their recent descendants, who settled the country following the European colonization of the Americas and the establishment of the Thirteen Colonies.
The book was written by Kennedy in 1958, while he was still a senator. It was written as part of the Anti-Defamation League's series entitled the One Nation Library. [1] In the 1950s, former ADL National Director Ben Epstein was concerned by rising xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric, so he reached out to then-Senator Kennedy to write a manuscript on immigration reform. [2] [3]
Subsequently, after gaining the presidency, Kennedy called on Congress to undertake a full reevaluation of immigration law; and he began to revise the book for further publication. In August 1963, excerpts of the 1958 pamphlet were published in The New York Times Magazine . [4] The assassination of John F. Kennedy took place before completing the revision, but the book was posthumously published in 1964 with an introduction by his brother, then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. [5]
The book was re-issued by the Anti-Defamation League in 2008. [6] The 2018 edition was endorsed by Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. [7]
The book contains a short history of immigration from Colonial America onwards, an analysis of the importance of immigration in US history, and proposals to liberalize immigration law.
There have been Jewish communities in the United States since colonial times, with individuals living in various cities before the American Revolution. Early Jewish communities were primarily Sephardi composed of immigrants from Brazil, Amsterdam, or England.
This section of the Timeline of United States history concerns events from 1950 to 1969.
Profiles in Courage is a 1956 volume of short biographies describing acts of bravery and integrity by eight United States senators. The book profiles senators who defied the opinions of their party and constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity as a result. It begins with a quote from Edmund Burke on the courage of the English statesman Charles James Fox, in his 1783 attack upon the tyranny of the East India Company in the House of Commons, and focuses on mid-19th-century antebellum America and the efforts of senators to delay the American Civil War. Profiles in Courage was widely celebrated and became a bestseller. It includes a foreword by Allan Nevins.
VDARE is an American far-right website promoting opposition to immigration to the United States. It is associated with white supremacy, white nationalism, and the alt-right. Anti-Immigration in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia describes VDARE as "one of the most prolific anti-immigration media outlets in the United States" and states that it is "broadly concerned with race issues in the United States". Established in 1999, the website's editor is Peter Brimelow, who once stated that "whites built American culture" and that "it is at risk from non-whites who would seek to change it".
Peter Brimelow is an American white nationalist and white supremacist writer. He is the founder of the website VDARE, an anti-immigration site associated with white supremacy, white nationalism, and the alt-right. He believes that "whites built American culture" and that "it is at risk from non-whites who would seek to change it".
Abraham Henry Foxman is an American lawyer and activist. He served as the national director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015, and is currently the League's national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served as vice chair of the board of trustees at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City in order to lead its efforts on antisemitism.
Theodore Chaikin Sorensen was an American lawyer, writer, and presidential adviser. He was a speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, as well as one of his closest advisers. President Kennedy once called him his "intellectual blood bank". Notably, though it was a collaborative effort with Kennedy, Sorensen was generally regarded as the author of the majority of the final text of Profiles in Courage, and stated in his memoir that he helped write the book. Profiles in Courage won Kennedy the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Sorensen helped draft Kennedy's inaugural address and was also the primary author of Kennedy's 1962 "We choose to go to the Moon" speech.
The Occidental Quarterly is an American white nationalist magazine published by the Charles Martel Society. Its stated purpose is to defend "the cultural, ethnic, and racial interests of Western European peoples" and examine "contemporary political, social, and demographic trends that impact the posterity of Western Civilization".
Dennis James Kennedy was an American pastor, evangelist, Christian broadcaster, and author. He was the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 1960 until his death in 2007. Kennedy also founded Evangelism Explosion International, Coral Ridge Ministries, the Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, the Knox Theological Seminary, radio station WAFG-FM, and the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, a socially conservative political group.
Michael Collins Piper was an American political writer, conspiracy theorist and talk radio host.
Robert A. Dallek is an American historian specializing in the presidents of the United States, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon. He retired as a history professor at Boston University in 2004 and previously taught at Columbia University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Oxford University. He won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 book Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
Ronald Keeva Unz is an American technology entrepreneur, political activist, writer, and publisher. A former businessman, Unz became a multi-millionaire in Silicon Valley before entering politics. He unsuccessfully ran for governor as a Republican in the 1994 California gubernatorial election and for U.S. Senator in 2016. He has sponsored multiple propositions promoting structured English immersion education as well as campaign finance reform and minimum wage increases.
Sigmund G. Livingston was a German-born American Jewish attorney working in Chicago, Illinois. Livingston was the founder and first president of the Anti-Defamation League, and the author of the book Must Men Hate. The League's annual Sigmund Livingston Award, which recognizes individuals for outstanding contributions to furthering civil rights and fighting injustice, is named after him, as is its Sigmund Livingston Fellowship.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK and by the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to his presidency.
Oscar Handlin was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history, virtually inventing the field of immigration history in the 1950s. Handlin won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Uprooted (1951). Handlin's 1965 testimony before Congress was said to "have played an important role" in passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the discriminatory immigration quota system in the US.
Antisemitism has existed for centuries in the United States. Most Jewish community relations agencies in the United States draw distinctions between antisemitism, which is measured in terms of attitudes and behaviors, and the security and status of American Jews, which are both measured by the occurrence of specific incidents. FBI data shows that in every year since 1991, Jews were the most frequent victims of religiously motivated hate crimes, according to a report which was published by the Anti-Defamation League in 2019. Evidence suggests that the true number of hate crimes against Jews is underreported, as is the case for many other targeted groups. In an attempt to combat anti-Semitism, the Biden administration launched the United States’ first-ever comprehensive U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25, 2023.
Irwin Suall was an American socialist, union organizer, civil rights activist, investigator and researcher. He was national director of fact-finding for the Anti-Defamation League from 1967 to 1997 in which capacity he directed that organization's undercover intelligence gathering on extremist groups.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is a Jewish international non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late September 1913 by the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish service organization, in the wake of the contentious murder conviction of Leo Frank. ADL subsequently split from B'nai B'rith and continued as an independent US section 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Its CEO is Jonathan Greenblatt, who succeeded Abraham Foxman in July 2015. Foxman had served in the role since 1987.
Dr. Sharon Nazarian is an Iranian-born American social activist, academic and philanthropist. She is currently the Senior Vice President, International Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League.
This bibliography of John F. Kennedy is a list of published works about John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
 | This article about a non-fiction book on U.S. history is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
