Speak English Rant: Recalling Laws Against Teaching German

The rant by a man screaming at restaurant workers to speak English coincides with the 100-year anniversary of anti-German bigotry in the U.S. As the Omaha World Herald reports today, 27 teachers who taught German in Davenport, Iowa were fired. A German immigrant farmer was dragged by a noose around his neck to the town square in Audubon until he agreed to buy war bonds. There was a lynching attempt of a German Lutheran minister in Gray, Nebraska.

The photo shows John Meints, a German-American living in Minnseota who was dragged from his home, driven across state lines to South Dakota, and left there with hot tar and feathers applied to his naked body.

Law students are still taught Meyer v. Nebraska. The state passed a law that criminalized the teaching of German. On May 25, 1920, Robert T. Meyer, while an instructor in Zion Parochial School, a one-room schoolhouse in Hampton, Nebraska, taught the subject of reading in the German language to 10-year-old Raymond Parpart, a fourth-grader. He was convicted for teaching and fined $25.

The Nebraska Supreme Court upheld his conviction on vote of 4 to 2. The majority thought the law a proper response to "the baneful effects" of allowing immigrants to educate their children in their mother tongue, with results "inimical to our own safety." The dissent called the Siman Act the work of "crowd psychology."

The U.S. Supreme Court overruled the conviction and declared the law a violation of due process rights. Justice McReynolds stated that the “right thus to teach and the right of parents to engage him so to instruct their children, we think, are within the liberty of the amendment.” He added: “The protection of the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it would be highly advantageous if all had ready understanding of our ordinary speech, but this cannot be coerced by methods which conflict with the Constitution—a desirable end cannot be promoted by prohibited means.”