This week on the Lectures and History podcast, University of Southern California lecture,

Nora Lesserson, examines how racial classifications have shaped the naturalization process throughout American history.

From the nation's earliest citizenship laws to shifting legal definitions of who could be considered white,

Professor Leicerson explores how race became embedded in immigration policy

and how courts, lawmakers, and applicants themselves navigated those boundaries.

This lecture recorded at the University of Southern California's campus in Washington, D.C.,

also looks at the real-life stories of immigrants who challenged and sometimes redefined the limits of American citizenship.

C-SPAN and lectures in history are made possible with support from DirecTV.

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Welcome, everybody.

Today we're going to talk about a topic that we've really been circling around, I feel like, for most of the course thus far,

whiteness and citizenship.

And we've been circling around this topic because in the very first naturalization act in 1790, it says explicitly that an alien being a free white person who shall

have resided within the limits under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years

may be admitted to become a citizen thereof. So we know from very early on in our conversations

that you have to be white to become a U.S. citizen. So already that has us thinking about,

okay, what does that mean?

This is extended in 1870 after the Civil War.

We have a new naturalization act, and it's extended to include people of African nativity or dissent.

So now you have a situation where to become a citizen, you have to be either white

or of African nativity or descent. So essentially we're starting to think about citizenship

in terms of white and black. So what are some of the consequences of this? One consequence is that after 1870

...