[Reverb Effect’s theme music, lively and interrogative, plays behind the voice of a narrator, interspersed with historical clips of other voices]
Narrator [a woman’s voice]: How do past voices resonate in the present moment?
Man A: …hear the stories of your parent’s…
Woman A: yeah
Man A: …and your grandparents’ and stuff, so I’m living through them or the stories they told.
Narrator: And how do we make sense of those voices?
Woman B: No, and that’s the story of my life [echo]
Man B: And a case has been made!
Woman B: No I am not trying to void the question, I am trying to clarify the position…
Narrator: What were they trying to say? And whose job is it to find out? This is Reverb Effect.
[Intro theme slowly fades out]
[Old-time radio sound]
[New York Times, Lucas Chalhoub]: “Washington, April 18, 1924: By a final vote of 62 to 6, the Senate tonight passed the new immigration exclusion bill, which would permit the entrance of about 161,000 immigrants a year for the next three years, this being a 2 per cent quota of the foreign-born population of this country in 1890, according to the census of that year.
This and all other sections of the bill except the one excluding Asiatics go into effect July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year.
But the proposed ban on Asiatics, with the usual professional exemptions, would be operative the minute the measure became law, as a result of the express vote of the Senate today.”
Paige: Many Americans imagine the United States as a country of immigrants. However, decisions like the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924 show us that access to this country has never been equal across different immigrant groups. Time and time again, US immigration policy has systematized exclusion based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Starting in 1882, the United States refused Chinese nationals entrance to the country. This had a violent impact on Chinese already in the country. In Rock Springs, Wyoming, for example, white minors committed a massacre against their Chinese coworkers. For much of the twentieth century, American immigration policy denied Asians access.
James Wolfe is a historian of late antiquity, but his research led him to a missionary named EW McDowell. McDowell became involved in immigration reform in 1924, problematizing the category “Asiatic” by opening up dialectics about the nature of it. Syriac Christians, a community that McDowell had studied, did not neatly into ideas about race that Americans had. James introduces how McDowell helped determine whether Syriac Christians could emigrate to this country.
Syriac Christians lived in southeastern Turkey, Northern Syria, and northwestern Iraq and Iran. Historically, this region had overlapped the borders of several realms, including the Roman and Persian empires in the first centuries of the common era. Despite the occasional change in power and of borders, Syriac Christians always remained. Those in power always struggled to categorize them, calling them Assyrians, Syrians, and Mountain Nestorians, among other names. In 1924, while debating new immigration laws, US Congress took up the same question.
Welcome to Season 5 of Reverb Effect, a podcast brought to you by the History Department at the University of Michigan. I’m Paige Newhouse, this year’s season producer. In this episode, Hannah Roussel interviews James Wolfe. Hannah, last season’s producer, graduated from the University of Michigan with her PhD in history in 2023. James is a Manoogian Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. He previously held a postdoctoral research fellowship in Hellenic Studies at Princeton University and is a 2020 Graduate in Greek and Latin from the Department of Classics at The Ohio State University.
[Ragtime music]
Paige: While a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, James found a collection of manuscripts written by Syriac Christians. Curious, he wondered how the university had acquired these manuscripts in the first place.
James: In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Presbyterian church, both in Great Britain and in the United States, spearheaded these missionary projects in what was at that time the southeastern Ottoman Empire, now—
Hannah: Yeah.
James: —southeastern Turkey, northwestern Syria. I found out that all of the manuscripts in the Princeton Theological Seminaries Library were donated by this missionary named EW McDowell. And not much is known about him, even though he has a very extensive archive that is housed at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia.
Hannah: So he was a missionary. And what time period was he living in?
James: He was born in 1857 and died in 1939.
Hannah: So late 1800s, early 1900s, sometime within that lifespan, he’s going over to the Middle East. And he’s doing ministry work with the Christian populations there. In that time, he somehow comes across these manuscripts.
James: He has a very extensive collection of letters that are at the historical society. And he’s mentioned in these very important collections of letters, not just between him and his family, and him and his friends, but also between other members of the Board of Foreign Missions. And so in some of them, he mentions, he says, “Oh, wow, these Christians living in this area have kept their own manuscripts and have been copying them.” So you can see that he’s very interested in them.
Hannah: These are manuscripts dating back to late antiquity, which is your time period.
James: Yeah, some of them do. Most of the ones in the collection are a lot more recent. So they were copied in like the seventeenth through the nineteenth century.
Hannah: Right. We don’t have the originals, we just have copies.
James: Exactly.
Hannah: Yeah.
James: But there are some that date back well into like the seventh and eighth centuries of the common era. And so for me, this was an interesting kind of entanglement with my own research, because I work on Syriac and Armenian speaking communities in the late ancient world, and it’s those same communities, the Assyrian Christians, who speak a dialect of Neo Aramaic that’s closely related to Syriac, they still live in that area. And the Armenians who, both of whom were experiencing genocide at this time when McDowell was living and working there.
Hannah: Right. So you were coming to it, you were like, I’m gonna look at these manuscripts to help me do my studies of late antiquity. And then you were like, wait, but who is this person McDowell who brought the manuscripts?
James: So besides kind of his interest in manuscripts and investigating the provenance of those at the theological seminaries library, I realized that in 1924, when he was on furlough, he was actually asked to testify before Congress before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization that was convening to discuss the passing of a new immigration reform act, which they ended up passing in May of 1924. And he was asked to testify on behalf of the Assyrians, these, Neo Aramaic speaking, people who lived in this region and who were experiencing genocide.
[Serious, solemn music]
Paige: At the archives, James continued his exploration into McDowell and quickly realized that the missionary never held a constant opinion towards the Syriac Christian community.
James: One of the documents in McDowell’s archive at the Presbyterian Historical Society is this unpublished memorandum that was written in 1912. And it was addressed to the leaders of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. So this is before the outbreak of the First World War, during a period of violence and, and massacres between the Assyrians and the Armenians and their neighbors. But technically before, what most scholars would say is the actual outbreak of the genocide. He says that the, the mountain Nestorians, as he calls them, are perfect to evangelize the Kurds and the Arabs for two reasons. One, they exhibit the necessary, like physical, hardihood because they grew up in the same region. And so he describes this area as like hot miasmatic valleys and rugged mountain tops. So it’s a very Orientalizing narrative about what this area is like.
Hannah: Right and like the idea that these people are a thicker stock for having lived there—
James: Yes. It’s like—
Hannah: which then feeds into these ideas that certain races have different qualities.
James: Yes, absolutely.
Hannah: Right.
James: Yeah. This like environmental determinism—
Hannah: Yeah.
James: —in like human society. And, and we still ascribe to that today, even if it’s kind of in passing. You know, the idea that it’s like people who live in the north are more attuned to the cold. That’s the first reason physically, they’re like perfectly suited for this job. And then the second reason is he says racial. So he says they are of the same race practically as those among whom they are to labor all children of the East. And as such, they understand them socially, intellectually and spiritually.
EW McDowell (Keanu Heydari): “Physically, their own hard and active life in deep, hot, miasmatic valleys and on rugged mountain tops has adapted them to perform the labors and to undergo the hardships incident to evangelistic work among both Kurds and Arabs. […] They are of the same race, practically, as those among whom they are to labor; all children of the East, and as such they understand them, socially, intellectually and spiritually.”
Paige: Whereas McDowell had proposed in his memo in 1912 that Syriac Christians were “of the same race, practically” as Kurds and Arabs, McDowell argued in front of the House Committee in 1924 that Syriac Christians should never be classified alongside their non-Christian neighbors, providing them a pathway into the country.
[Serious, solemn music]
[Old time radio sounds]
Paige: Senator David Reed, one of the architects of the Johnson-Reed Act, wrote in an April 1924 op-ed.
Senator David A. Reed (New York Times, 1924) [Leopoldo Solis Martinez] “Beginning about 1885, new types of people began to come. For the first time in our history men began to come in large numbers from Italy, Greece, Poland, Turkey in Europe, the Balkan States, and from Russia. As these new sources of immigration began to pour out their masses of humanity upon our shores the old sources in Northwestern Europe seemed to dry up, and whereas in 1880 the natives of Southern and Eastern Europe constituted about 8 percent of our foreign-born population, in 1910 they constituted 30 percent.”
James: So the 1924 Immigration Reform Act was infamous for creating the system of national quotas. So it barred immigration completely from Asia, or what the text of the law states, “Asiatic races,” and so essentializing basically an entire continent. In doing so, they chose to use definitions of nationality from the US census of 1890. Now obviously the census occurs every ten years, so they could have chosen the census from 1900, from 1910, which had already been used in immigration acts prior to the one in, in 1924. Unfortunately the ones in 1920 weren’t ready yet, but they had other options. So I kind of did some digging as to why they chose 1890. And the reason was stated explicitly. So they’re not hiding this fact. They said it’s because the spate of immigration that happened at the turn of the century—so basically between 1890 and 1924—raised the number of what they saw as non-natural born citizens in the United States to what they saw as undesirable levels. And so the 1890 census, which just so happened to be the first one to gather data based on race or nationality predated this rise of immigration. And so it captured a much lower population of immigrant families in the United States. And so they could make even more restrictive policies by using that data.
Hannah: Wow. So what’s the US government that’s choosing to use this data.
James: Exactly.
Hannah: Yeah.
James: So the House committee were toying with the idea of which census data to use, and in their resolution, they say, we choose the 1890 because of X, Y, and Z reasons, which is kind of a very problematic act of time travel.
For obvious reasons, this act has been seen as racist, problematic in very many ways. It was supported by the KKK. One of the people who really worked to get this immigration reform act off the ground was a devout eugenicist. He ascribed to the pseudoscience. He saw this as a way, as did many people in Congress at the time, to kind of push for the homogenization of American society.
Religion is interesting on multiple levels—
Hannah: Yeah.
James: —because it’s a way that McDowell can claim that they have stayed, literally, he says, he says racially pure from the other Asia races around them. But also he says that being a Christian would make them good American citizens, because all Americans are Christians.
Hannah: Which is not true. Which was not true. Do you think there he also was buying into some of these ideas? Or do you think he’s playing to his audience?
James: That’s a great question. I think it’s both. He makes this very impassioned testimony on behalf of these people saying they’re suffering from the genocide. The British haven’t helped them. We could help them, please let them immigrate to the United States. They’re Christians just like us, which is a problematic thing to say, right, but he’s building up an argument on their behalf. But in no way is he ever challenging these categories of race identity, what it means to be a good citizen, who could be a good citizen. He’s not ever challenging those categories.
[Serious, solemn music]
James: So his argument has to kind of push back against this knee-jerk definition by the US government saying that if you are from Asia, you are Asiatic. And what’s interesting is the way that he does that doesn’t really push back against these categories that the United States defined—
Hannah: Right.
James: —in terms of race in identity, but uses them and fudges the way that he describes them in a way that would benefit them. So it, it’s not, he’s not out of malice that he’s kind of playing with these discourses, but it’s interesting to see what he is and is not questioning.
Hannah: What categories is he holding as kind of like true categories? And what are the ones that he’s breaking down and acknowledging that these are categories constructed by humans.
James: Absolutely. Yes.
Hannah: They’re all categories constructed by humans.
James: Right. His main argument is that they are Christians and so unlike other Asiatics, using these terms that the census gives us, he says, unlike them, or unlike Muslims, they are like us, i.e., like Americans who live in the West, and at this time, it’s very clear that all Americans are believed to be, or it is desirable, that all Americans are Christians.
Hannah: Right. That’s a premise that they’re working off of.
James: Absolutely.
Hannah: That they’re not even questioning.
[Crowded courtroom, gavel, moving chairs, shuffling papers]
Paige: McDowell showed up to Capitol Hill to testify before the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization on January 11, 1924.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: What vocation do they follow?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: They are farmers and sheep raisers.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: Are they nomadic people?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydaru]: They are a people, the oldest Christian people in the world. In the first few centuries, these people carried the gospel across Asia from Jerusalem establishing schools and churches. And they have been building churches in which I have preached. And some of these churches are over a thousand years old.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: How much does the religion of those people resemble our Christian religion?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: It resembles it. Absolutely. They are not much nearer God than we Americans are. We are all short, but they hold the same perceptions and doctrines that we do regarding Christianity.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: They pray on Sunday and steal on Monday,
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: Some of them, just as some Americans do.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: Let me put this to you. Do you not agree that people coming to this country should be people that could be assimilated, that our children could marry.
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: They could be assimilated.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: Would you want a child of yours to marry one of them?
James: I’ll interject here. What’s interesting is the chairman of the committee, Representative Johnson actually steps in and says strike that. And so you can tell that other members of the committee even saw this as kind of an unfair question. But what’s interesting is McDowell says, I’ll answer that. I can imagine something, a great deal worse than one of my children marrying one of them.
Paige: Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: I do not get it through my head. But the situation that they are in politically, England has a mandate over them.
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: England has a mandate over them.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: And who was directly their superiors?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: The Arab government of Mesopotamia in part and in part the Persian government across the border.
Rep. Free [David Mori]: Who oppresses?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: Them? The Kurds, the Turks, and the Arabs.
Rep. Dickstein [Sam Winikow]: Are they Armenian?
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: They are a separate people nationally. They are Assyrians.
Rep. Box [Shane Niesen]: They’re not Turks.
EW McDowell [Keanu Heydari]: No, they’re not Turks.
[Crowded courtroom, gavel, moving chairs, shuffling papers end]
James: So the questions go back and forth like, are they Turks, are they Arabs? Are they Persians? And he says, no, they are a separate people. They are Assyrians. And then another representative asks, do they assimilate with the people living around them? And McDowell says No. And his argument is really interesting and struck a chord with me because of how I became familiar with McDowell. So this is in his testimony, he says:
James paraphrasing McDowell: “because of prejudice, these are a Christian people proud of their past. They live in the heart of the inaccessible Kurdish mountains and have retained their traditions of their fathers. They were illiterate, but they have kept on hand their old manuscripts, written by their forefathers. They would allow the courage to carry off their sheep, their cattle and women, and have preserved their old books until the present war. They are proud of their past and will not assimilate with the Muslim people.”
So when I read this, I was like immediately floored. He’s using the fact that they preserved and copied manuscripts. Perhaps some that I was like looking at the seminaries library, like, or had in my hands. He’s using those to make an argument that they are not again, big air quotes Asiatics. They are Christians and, and evidence for their kind of pride in their past and their distinctness from the people around them are these manuscripts.
[Serious, solemn music]
Paige: For James, McDowell’s collections at the Princeton Theological Seminaries Library are more than just an illustration of McDowell’s political power and influence. They expose how some recent scholars in the West have not challenged long standing categories surrounding race and identity.
James: One of the things that McDowell says in a written testimony that he provides to Congress after their oral testimony clearly didn’t clear anything up. He writes a written testimony and he outlines very clearly kind of his main points. And one of his points in favor of the Assyrians is that they speak the same language, basically, that Christ spoke. But what’s fascinating, and what’s kind of shocking to me, is that that’s the same rhetoric we see in Syriac scholarship, like published even in the last decade. This is seen as a way like, well, why study Syriac literature? And people will say, well, it’s the language that Christ spoke. Now it’s not used in arguments for proving that they’re not, again, air quotes Asiatics. That’s not the argument that they’re making. But it’s interesting that that same argument that we see McDowell using to make a very pointed argument about their race and identity is a similar argument that is still being kind of paraded about in academia.
For me, as someone who is interested in the saying, “how the sausage is made,” I think this is a peak behind the curtain. Seeing that at the beginning of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and especially at the turn of the century when McDowell was living there, this was when Syriac studies was starting to become more popular. The great biblical scholar Baumstark wrote a history of Syriac literature that is very much informed by Orientalism. So for very many reasons and very many subconscious regions, the field has kind of retained these.
[Serious, solemn music]
Paige: The story of EW McDowell and Syriac Christians doesn’t stop in 1924 with the Immigration Act. It’s a story that speaks to broader issues that historians are grappling with this very day.
James: Well, and, and the question is how do you be a responsible historian? And to be transparent I’m a cis white man who studies and who grew up, not grew up, but grew up academically in classics departments. And so now I’m studying another people group and thinking about how I can better position myself and signal my positionality, as someone who is privileged enough to study and learn from these groups of people in the cushy ivory tower. The way that I like to describe it is not just being aware of these issues, but it is important, I think for any scholar to know how you position yourself in regards to previous scholarship, but also how the field got where it is.
[Ragtime music]
Paige Newhouse: Thank you for listening. Thank you to James Wolfe and Hannah Roussel for producing this episode. Thank you to all who made this episode possible, including the Center for Armenian Studies at the University of Michigan, the Alex and Marie Manoogian Foundation, and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University.
Thank you to our voice actors Lucas Chalhoub, Keanu Heydari, David Mori, Shane Niesen, Leopoldo Solis-Martinez, and Sam Winikow. Our editorial board is Ennrieth Martinez Palacios, Talitha Pam, Cheyenne Pettit, and Sophie Wunderlich. Gregory Parker is our executive producer, and I’m your host and season producer, Paige Newhouse. Please join us for our next episode for more stories about how the past reverberates into the present. This is Reverb Effect.
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