Maine Memory Network

In the early years of Americanization, the Portland Sunday Telegram published photographs of foreign-born students and praised student effort and achievement.

These photographs are not objective records of what was happening in the classroom, but instead tell us what the newspaper wanted readers to think about education for immigrants.

Although the text and images may now seem patronizing, at the time there was no national consensus that immigrants from Asia or Eastern and Southern Europe were fit for American citizenship.

These photographs sent a message that public education was an effective tool of assimilation. At the North School, the paper reported, there were students of "twenty nationalities, but all Americans."