Immigrants founded and dominated America’s socialist movement from its first convention.

Evidence

From the very outset, the American Socialist movement was peculiarly indebted to the immigrants for both its progress and its problems. The first convention of the Socialist Labor Party in 1877 was composed of representatives of seventeen German sections, seven English, three Bohemian, one French, and a general women’s Section. Immigrants naturally assumed the role of teachers and organizers, but they were mainly concerned with teaching and organizing themselves. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 990