Forging New Freedoms: Nativism, Education, and the Constitution, 1917-1927 by William G. Ross (review)

322 BOOK REVIEWS Forging New Freedoms: Nativism, Education, and the Constitution, 19171927 . ByWilliam G. Ross. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1994. Pp. x, 277. $40.00.) William G. Ross has written an illuminating book on a fascinating historical topic. His focus is on the famous trilogy of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1920's involving education and liberty: (1) Meyer v. Nebraska (1923); (2) Pierce v. Society ofSisters (1925), and (3) Farrington v. Tokushige (1927). With these landmark rulings, the Court thwarted a nativistic assault on private schools, especially the religious variety. In the first installment of this legal trilogy, the Court overturned a Nebraska law—defied by Lutheran parochial school teacher Robert T. Meyer—prohibiting the teaching of modern foreign languages in the instruction of elementary school children. Pierce derailed an Oregon statute requiring all elementary school children to attend public schools. Finally, in Farrington, the Court invalidated over-reaching Hawaiian statutory restrictions on Asian language schools. "Together," Ross observes, "these decisions spelled the death of what had been a growing movement to destroy parochial and private elementary education ." Meyer, Pierce, and Farrington are important precedents in the history of American Constitutional law. Ross studies these cases for their jurisprudential value, but, his book is noteworthy for its broader analysis. A dutiful historian, Ross brings these cases to life by uncovering their social and political origins in the cultural conditions of post-World War I America. As he states in his introduction ,his intended task is to explore how "a complicated melange ofwar hysteria , fear of anarchy and Bolshevism, postwar anomie, nativism, pietism, populism, and progressivism contributed to the enactment of the laws" challenged in these cases. His effort is successful, making his book a perceptive contribution to the history ofAmerican education. What is impressive about Ross's work is his expert use of primary sources. His book relies on numerous archival collections across the nation, such as the papers and the correspondence of the National Catholic Welfare Conference at the Catholic University ofAmerica. This collection was indispensable to Ross's informed discussion of the Pierce case. He advises other historians of the treasures he found there: "Future students of the Pierce will ignore the Catholic University collections at their peril." The identical advice might be offered on the Reverend Thomas Shelley's seminal essay,"The Oregon School Case and the National Catholic Welfare Conference," Catholic Historical Review, LXXV QuIy, 1989), 439-457. It is encouraging to read Ross's fresh examination of the role Catholics have played in the development of American legal history. However, much remains to be written on that score. For example, Catholic involvement in the churchstate cases since the end of World War II is ripe for extended discussion. This BOOK REVIEWS 323 is an important story and deserving of serious treatment by historians. A portrait ofAmerican Catholics would be incomplete without it. Joseph Richard Preville Boston, Massachusetts Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies. By Gregory D. Black [Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communications.] (NewYork: Cambridge University Press. 1994. Pp. x, 336. $27.95.) In this history of Hollywood censorship, primarily of the 1920's and 1930's, Gregory Black argues that the movie studios, the Production Code Administration (PCA), and the Catholic Church colluded in a system that prevented the "direct and honest" treatment of serious social, political, economic, and moral issues on the movie screen. Black laments that, as he sees it, the Code and its enforcement required all movies to be "morality plays." In his analysis, however, he runs the risk of devising his own morality play in which the champions of honesty and freedom are stymied again and again by the agents of prudishness and mediocrity. Black first chronicles (Chapters 1 and 2) the earliest struggles over motion picture content, those leading up to the establishment of official industry censorship . In order to quiet public protest, as well as to avoid federal anti-trust action or censorship, motion picture producers agreed to the self-regulation represented by the Hays Office. Black goes on (Chapters 3, 4, and 5) to detail the trials Hays faced in policing three different sorts of movie content: sex, especially...