The United States, one people from many countries (1940)

This map was drawn by Emma Cartwright Bourne in 1940 for The Council Against Intolerance in America (The Council Against Intolerance in the United States).

This map, with the original title America – A Nation of One People from Many Countries (The United States, a nation of one people from many countries) is a great piece of propaganda promoting tolerance in a country of immigrants.

In 1940, the United States was still neutral in World War II, but there was growing fear among the population about the possible destabilisation that could be caused by the arrival of immigrants from the countries at war. With this map, the Council Against Intolerance sought to raise awareness of the importance of immigrants in the history of the United States. To do so, it uses the word 'nation' in a very different way from its use in any European country at that time, referring to a single people from many countries, rather than a single tradition.

Emma Bourne depicts immigration on the map using a red ribbon that runs across the entire country, including the countries of origin of the majority of the inhabitants of each area. The map addresses immigration in the American sense, as it focuses not only on new arrivals, but also on the ancestry of the country's inhabitants, regardless of how many generations they have been in the United States.

At the bottom left, there is a table showing different personalities in the fields of literature, science, industry, and the arts, all of whom have your country of origin. Once again, the country of origin is somewhat vague, as the vast majority of all the characters were born in the United States, and many of the statements are incorrect, as in the case of John Dos Passos, whose ancestry is not Spanish but Portuguese.

Sources

• America – A Nation of One People From Many Countries