- Melting Pot Roald Tweet 2:45
This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island. One of the first things we learn about America in grade school is that we are a melting pot. “Here,” a French observer of the new America wrote just after the Revolution, “individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.” The pot in “melting pot” came from a 19th century play in which immigrants in their native costumes came on stage, passed behind a huge foundry cauldron for melting iron, and emerged on the other side dressed in blue coveralls carrying lunch buckets, and, of course, all speaking English.
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