
A Nation of Immigrants (Episode 1)
The United States has always had a complicated relationship with its immigrants. Americans All, Immigrants All, a CBS show produced in 1938, is no exception.
Times were tense. America was coming off the Great Depression, and the world was heading into a war. Americans All was an effort to inspire unity and patriotism in the face of all these issues.
The show tried to acknowledge the contributions that various immigrant groups had made to the United States. It wanted to make immigrants a part of the official narrative of U.S. history.
Which is all well and good, except that Americans All also struggled with stereotypes, with overly-positive messaging, and with questions about assimilation. Also, the various writers and researchers wanted to push different agendas, which led to contradictory messages.
The result is a complicated show about a difficult subject. In this episode of Backtrack, we’ve tried to highlight some of the main issues that come up in Americans All, and to give you a feel for what the 26 episode long series sounded like.
This piece is the second episode of Backtrack, a summer mini-series from the WNYC Archives.The rest of the episodes can be found here.
We drew on a number of sources for this episode, but especially Barbara Savage’s Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938-1948, and Dan Shiffman’s article Standard for the Wise and Honest: The Americans All Immigrants All Radio Broadcasts (Studies in Popular Culture, Vol. 19, No.1).



