For earlier generations, to see why just look at the New Deal housing maps where the federal govt redlined just about any neighborhood of with a concentration of immigrants -- even German, Poles, etc -- or significant use of languages other than English in public.
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1394004657630978048
A bit earlier, my grandparents on one side were kids in recently-arrived German speaking households during World War 1, when the country became actively hostile to the use of the German language (more so in WW1 than WW2, actually)
They and their generational cohort could flip into German at home (e.g., argue w/o the kids following it), but I don't think they made a major effort to teach it to my parent's generation
To be fair my view may be colored by my own dad who, bless his heart, is not an especially curious or culturally adventurous guy. Maybe his peers in the community were more interested in learning the old language, but in general I think not a lot.
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