P&P Live!: Jia Lynn Yang - One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 — in conversation with Robert Tsai

In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, from the indefatigable congressman Emanuel Celler and senator Herbert Lehman to the bull-headed Nevada senator Pat McCarran, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law. Through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and a McCarthyist fever, a coalition of lawmakers and activists descended from Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants fought to establish a new principle of equality in the American immigration system. Their crowning achievement, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, proved to be one of the most transformative laws in the country's history, opening the door to nonwhite migration at levels never seen before--and changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined. 

Yang will be joined in conversation by Robert Tsai,  Professor of Law at American University and an expert in constitutional law, American politics, and history. He is the author of Practical Equality: Forging Justice in a Divided Nation.