Of many native-born Americans. The association between foreign-born radicals and anarchism was cemented by the Haymarket Riot in 1886. Anarchists in Chicago had called a meeting in Haymarket Square to protest police attacks on workers striking for the eight-hour day. When the police attempted to break up the meeting, an unknown person threw a bomb, resulting in the death of several officers and protesters. The association between anarchism and political violence was so strong that eight anarchists were convicted of murder, despite the lack of evidence linking them to the crime. One of the anarchists committed suicide, and four were executed.
In the aftermath of Haymarket, Congress debated passing a ban on the immigration of anarchists, but all proposals failed to pass or died in committee. In the 1890s, following a wave of anarchist assassinations of European leaders, Congress again considered such a ban, but it did not pass. Finally, the assassination of President William McKinley (see Volume VI) in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, a self-professed anarchist, resulted in Congress’s taking action. Ignoring the fact that Czolgosz was a native-born American, McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, pushed Congress to pass laws to prevent the entry of anarchists into the country, arguing that “when compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance.”
On March 3, 1903, Congress responded with the Anarchist Immigration Act, excluding “anarchists, or persons who believe in or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States, or of all government, or of all forms of law, or the assassination of public officials.” The first to be deported under this act was John Turner, a British anarchist on a lecture tour of the United States. However, relatively few people would be deported under this law until the tensions of World War I once again raised people’s fears of subversion against the government. Two new laws, the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, broadened the 1903 law to include individuals who sought to undermine the American war effort, attacked the U. S. Constitution, or spoke in favor of the destruction of property. The laws remained in force after the war ended as fear of radicals, partly due to the Russian Revolution, continued under the Red Scare.
See also immigration; radicalism.
Further reading: William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933, 2d ed. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
—Kristen Anderson
World History
