World War I had a devastating effect on German-Americans and their cultural heritage. Up until that point, German-Americans, as a group, had been spared much of the discrimination, abuse, rejection, and collective mistrust experienced by so many different racial and ethnic groups in the history of the United States. Indeed, over the years, they had been viewed as a well-integrated and esteemed part of American society. All of this changed with the outbreak of war. At once, German ancestry became a liability. As a result, German-Americans attempted to shed the vestiges of their heritage and become fully “American.” Among other outcomes, this process hastened their assimilation into American society and put an end to many German-language and cultural institutions in the United States.
Although German immigrants had begun settling in America during the colonial period, the vast majority of them (more than five million) arrived in the nineteenth century. In fact, as late as 1910, about nine percent of the American population had been born in Germany or was of German parentage – the highest percentage of any ethnic group.[1] Moreover, as most German-Americans lived on the East Coast or in the Midwest, there were numerous regions in which they made up as much as 35 percent of the populace. Most of the earlier German immigrants had been farmers or craftsmen and had usually settled near fellow countrymen in towns or on the countryside; most of those who arrived in the 1880s and thereafter moved to the ever growing cities in search of work. Soon enough there was hardly any large U.S. city without an ethnic German neighborhood. German-Americans wielded strong economic and cultural influence in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, with the latter three forming the so-called German triangle.
White people and established African Americans in cites often discriminated against freedmen. We still see racial discrimination even to this day, and it was even more plentiful when African Americans(freedmen) just got their freedom after years of slavery. Hope this helps, and have a nice day :D
The French Revolution beginning in 1789 was a __political___ revolution inspired by __enlightenment__ ideas. French people began to _question___, or challenge the social _hierarchy___. During the French Revolution, the lower and middle classes in France were frustrated about political, social and economic problems in the country such as _taxes___. They wanted to _overthrow____ King Louis XVI’s monarchy and to institute a more democratic form of government.
