“In the huge gathering . . . there were, according to the official estimate . . . 1,250,000 persons. So far as available records indicated last night, this was the largest crowd that has ever assembled at a single point anywhere in the world.” This New York Times report from May 1942 refers not to a military parade in Nazi Germany but to a celebration in New York City. “The magnet that drew this astonishing turnout to Central Park, where it filled out not only the five acres of the Mall but the thirteen acres of the sheepfold, was the local observance of ‘I am an American Day,’ which, by proclamation of President Roosevelt, was marked yesterday in hundreds of other American communities, great and small.” “I am an American Day” was a freshly instituted national holiday. It had started as a grassroots initiative before it was adopted by Congress and signed into law by President Roosevelt in 1940, and it was honored in small, local celebrations in cities and towns across the country, in schools and community centers, following special guidelines and utilizing educational materials that were put together by the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Department of Justice. “Many desirable values result from such public ceremonies,” the government’s handbook from 1944 states. It continues, “The community ceremony lends dignity to the new citizenship status. Through the public ritual of oath or pledge, loyalty is cemented and the individual’s feelings are stirred by group honors paid to the flag.” “I Am an American Day” existed until 1952, when it was renamed “Citizenship Day,” moved to September, and merged with “Constitution Day.” But it was in its early days, the 1940s, that the occasion was freighted with public meaning and celebrated on a national scale. This was true also of the centerpiece of the celebration — large public naturalization ceremonies. In May 1942 in Central Park, forty-six thousand men and women became new American citizens and made this country their home. And the country welcomed them. This little-known episode in the country’s long relationship to immigration is full of contradictions. Jewish and political refugees fleeing death and persecution in Europe unavailingly tried to secure visas to the United States. At Ellis Island, just a few miles away from Central Park, people awaited deportation back to the European horror. America did not adjust its closed-door policy and its quota system in the face of mass statelessness and murderous oppression. And yet the naturalization numbers increased sharply. Fewer immigrants came in, but more people than ever before became new citizens. Those new Americans, many of them former refugees, became messengers of a new patriotism. As Americans by choice, they embodied the ideal of citizenship and loyalty. Naturalization procedures were restructured to publicly express these messages. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, naturalization was not a standardized process in the United States. It was performed in five thousand federal, state, county, and municipal courts across the country. Every court determined its own procedure, requirements, fees, and naturalization papers. In 1906, however, the Basic Naturalization Act established the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization under the Department of Labor and provided a “uniform rule for the naturalization of aliens throughout the United States.” This put in place a standard procedural framework that governed naturalization for most of the twentieth century. The authority to grant or to deny naturalization continued to be vested in the courts, but duplicates of every naturalization form had to be filed with the newly founded Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization in Washington, and standardized forms and fees were instituted. In 1940, the Nationality Act transferred the Immigration and Naturalization Service from the Department of Labor to the Department of Justice. The act established requirement standards such as periods of residence, proof of good character, and special provisions for spouses of American citizens. It revised and detailed standardized guidelines for citizenship and its acquisition through birthright or naturalization, and it outlined the procedural framework for the process of naturalization. It also continued the United States’ Asian exclusion policy in terms of naturalization rights, clearly stating that the right to become a naturalized citizen extends only to white persons, persons of African descent, and to races indigenous to the Western Hemisphere. The only exception to these exclusions were Filipinos who served in the United States Army. Naturalization consisted of two steps, colloquially referred to as filing “first papers” and “second papers.” Both were now made to take part in “open court.” And, for the first time, the ceremonial and performative elements of naturalization were coded into legislation. Interestingly, the Nationality Act of 1940 also included a series of recommendations regarding the “education” — a euphemism for indoctrination — of prospective citizens and the public on the meaning of American citizenship. Henceforth the presiding judge was required to deliver a “patriotic address to new citizens.” The larger celebratory occasions used their patriotic addresses to encourage enlistment and raise support in America’s participation in the war. An “I Am an America Day” address by Judge Learned Hand in 1944 touched many and was printed in newspapers in following days under the title “The Spirit of Liberty”: What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. . . . in the spirit of that America for which our young men are at this moment fighting and dying; in that spirit of liberty and of America I ask you to rise and with me pledge our faith in the glorious destiny of our beloved country. Between 1795 and 1952, a “Declaration of Intention” was the first step in attaining American citizenship. The language in
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