SOC 308 Racial & Ethnic Groups week 2 assignment

gloiac1

soc308_chapter_4_1.pdf

Home >Social Science homework help >SOC 308 Racial & Ethnic Groups week 2 assignment

Outside the Anglo Establishment: Non-Anglo European Ethnic

Groups in America

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

• Explain how push and pull factors worked for certain European immi- grant groups.

• Describe ways in which different European immigrant groups experi- enced racial discrimination.

• Describe the pattern of assimilation by which members of European groups lost their original ethnic identities.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration

Introduction Though erected in 1886 as a gift from France, the Statue of Liberty came to represent the meanings of America itself, with its emphasis on freedom and the torch of liberty held aloft for the world to see. Embedded in the statue is a poem by Emma Lazarus, whose words seemed to speak directly to the immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island, just 1,300 feet away from the statue:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Lazarus’s poem has echoed throughout the world as a call of hope to people who believed that they could find prosperity on America’s shores.

Sometimes though, dreams confront the harshness of reality. As historian Nancy Foner wrote, “Emma Lazarus was wrong” (Foner, 2000, p. 9). With Anglo Americans positioned as the U.S. establishment by the end of the colonial period, the other European groups that joined them would face significant challenges in their attempts to assimilate into an Anglo-dominant culture. While the United States did promise and deliver a better way of life to many, for many new Americans, the path to prosperity was riddled with hardship, prejudice, and even starvation. We begin this chapter with an overview of more than two centuries of European group immigration to the United States as they came in “waves”— a flood of non-Anglos whom many Anglo Americans often met with fear and animos- ity. A secondary chapter theme is that these immigrants to American did not immedi- ately assimilate into a great “melting pot.” Instead, cultural transmission was a two-way street, with immigrants becoming shaped by American culture while they simultaneously grafted beliefs and ways of the old world onto the new. We now know that these early European immigrants would assimilate successfully over time, forming a large part of the white racial majority in the United States and thus creating the context for contemporary race relations. This process exemplifies how ideas of race are social constructions that change over time.

4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration

It is necessary to keep two new concepts in mind as we examine the histories of differ-ent European ethnic groups in the United States. First, it is essential to understand that immigrants did not necessarily pack their ethnic cultures away when they arrived in America. Instead, many chose to practice and preserve their cultures in the new world— not in isolation, but in groups. New cultural and ethnic patterns emerged once these indi- viduals arrived and began building communities (Sollors, 1986). Anthropologists refer to this process as ethnogenesis—the formation of an ethnic group and ethnic identity after arrival in a new country. Irish Catholic, Italian, German, and Jewish Americans, among

CHAPTER 4Section 4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration

others, preserved relatively strong ethnic identities for the first, second, and sometimes third generations, in part due to a combination of ethnic enclaves, neighborhoods, or com- munities and outside prejudice and discrimination. There is sometimes a tension between ethnogenesis and a term we discussed earlier, Anglo conformity—compliance with the existing lifestyle, goals, public values, and private customs of the larger American com- munities in which the immigrants settled. One of this chapter’s key themes is how the tension between Anglo conformity and ethnogenesis has formed, dissolved, and endured within a number of major European-American ethnic groups.

Second, many members of dominant Anglo groups responded with mass outbreaks of fear and hostility to increasing numbers of immigrants from certain groups, particularly Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and Jewish Americans. This fear of an entire minority group by the members of a dominant group is called perceived group threat (Quillian, 1995). During these early waves of immigration, some feared that immigrants would dis- place existing workers by accepting lower wages. However, this concern that an influx of immigrants will dislodge the dominant group is not merely relegated to history. We still see this concern today as Americans debate the effect of immigration on America’s lan- guage, health care system, education, and wider culture.

How and Why European Immigrants Came to the United States

For European immigrants who arrived after 1886, their first view of America from their vantage point on a ship was the Statue of Liberty and the lower Manhattan skyline of New York City. These immigrants were all processed through the U.S. port of entry at Ellis Island, where their sex, age, marital status, and names were recorded. They moved on to a six-second medical exam, conducted by doctors from the U.S. Public Health Services and Marine Hospital Number 43, which was supposed to screen for pregnancy, serious illness or disability, and insanity, and especially for contagious dis- eases (McLaughlin, 1903). Offi- cials spent a few minutes deter- mining whether the immigrants could support themselves until they found work and whether they had money for a railway ticket. The screeners rejected people who failed these tests to prevent them from becom- ing “public charges.” Typi- cally, immigrants spent three or four hours on Ellis Island, with about 1 to 2 percent being

This 1907 group of immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island was typical in carrying their worldly possessions with them. Many came with only a few dollars and what they could carry by hand.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration

refused entry (Davis, 2003). For them Ellis Island became the “Island of Tears” (Boyer & Dubofsky, 2001, p. 222). But many more immigrants poured through the gates—12 million in all—and with them arose massive overcrowding and public health problems. From 1820 to 1930, about 75 per- cent of immigrants were between the ages of 15 and 44, and about 60 percent of immigrants were male. Most were classified as “unskilled,” with occupations listed as servants, laborers, and farm- ers. The entire Ellis Island facility shut down in 1954, although immigration to the United States would continue (Cohn, 2010).

Why did they come? Some were “pushed” to leave their home countries for such reasons as a high birth rate that made food and jobs scarce. Industrialization and urbanization drove farm- ers off their land, and they faced significant hard- ships when they attempted to find jobs in the cities of their home countries. In contrast, some immigrants were “pulled” by real and perceived opportunities in the United States. These included higher U.S. wages, open farmland, and family members and friends who had already made the journey and now resided in America.

When European Immigrants Came to the United States

The strength of the push and pull factors varied, depending on economic and political conditions

in the United States, because people tended to emigrate during U.S. boom times or when U.S. public sentiment favored immigration. Other compelling events contributed to high immigration rates. For example, the potato famine that struck Northern Europe in the 1840s had direct consequences for Ireland because potatoes were the chief crop of the Irish poor. Also, changes in transatlantic transportation made it easier to immigrate to the United States toward the end of the 19th century. Before the 1840s, sailing ships carried immigrants to the United States, with an average time of five or six weeks per voyage. Steamships were being used for these voyages by 1850, and by 1900 they reduced the voy- age time to two or three weeks (Cohn, 2010; Hatton & Williamson, 1998).

Levels of immigration varied over time. On average, 434,000 immigrants entered the United States each year between 1847 and 1930; the vast majority were from Europe. This influx peaked between 1900 and 1914 when almost 900,000 immigrants arrived yearly; 92 percent of these immigrants were from Europe (Cohn, 2010). The immigration numbers

New immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, like the early-20th-century women shown here, would stand in line with their outer clothing removed, waiting for their six- second medical exam. The medical exam was superficial and screened for only the most highly visible ailments and disabilities, because immigrants were desperately needed to fill jobs in an expanding nation and a growing economy.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.1 Overview of European Group Immigration

changed from year to year due to exclusion factors in the United States, as well as the numerous push and pull factors described earlier (see Figure 4.1). Periods of war affected all immigration, however—usually bringing it to a standstill. Thus, the history of Euro- pean immigration does not follow a straight line, but instead reflects a dynamic series of interacting events that caused broad fluctuations.

Figure 4.1: European immigration, 1820–1930

To ta

l E ur

op ea

n Im

m ig

ra nt

18 20

–1 83

1 18

32 –1

84 6

18 47

–1 85

4 18

55 –1

86 4

18 65

–1 87

3 18

75 –1

88 0

18 81

–1 89

3 18

94 –1

89 9

19 00

–1 91

4 19

15 –1

91 9

19 20

–1 93

Years

900,000 800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000

Based on Cohn, R. L. (2010). Data retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/cohn.immigration.us

The influx of immigrants made the U.S. population increasingly diverse (see Figure 4.2). In 1744, a physician and Scottish immigrant expressed his astonishment at the diverse collection of peoples in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, writing in his journal, “I dined at a tavern with a very mixed company of different nations and religions. There were Scots, English, Dutch, Germans, and Irish” (Taylor, 2005, p. 98).

These people came from different nations, and they brought with them a mixture of reli- gious beliefs. The same physician noted that there were “Roman Catholicks, Church men, Presbyterians, Quakers, Newlightmen, Methodists, Seventh day men, Moravians, Ana- baptists, and one Jew” (Taylor, 2005, p. 98). One of the main reasons for this mélange of religious beliefs was the intense search for religious freedom and the lure that the Ameri- can colonies, especially Pennsylvania, offered. German immigrants were one group that took advantage of this freedom.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

4.2 German Americans

Americans with German ancestry are now the most populous of any U.S. ethnic group. At over 42 million, they comprise over 15 percent of the total population. However, almost all of the 42 million Americans claiming German descent are third- or later-generation immigrants, and most consider themselves simply American (rather than hyphenated Americans, or members of a group for whom foreign ethnicity or minority racial identity makes them distinctive). Some scholars call this the paradox of German-American identity. Although German Americans make up the largest ethnic group in the United States today, there are now few signs that remain of the “once formi- dable political clout, organizational life, and ethnic consciousness of German Americans” (Kazal, 2004b, p. 1). There are a number of reasons for this submergence—most signifi- cantly, the United States’s having fought two world wars against Germany, the enormity of Nazi Germany’s Holocaust, and the systematic unraveling of some German institu- tions like the National German-American Alliance (NGAA). This de-emphasis of a Ger- man ethnicity is at the heart of the paradox that America’s largest ethnic group faced in the 20th-century “destruction of this ethnic world” (Kazal, 2004b, p. 4).

Figure 4.2: European immigration by geographic area, 1820–1930

Based on Cohn, R. L. (2010). Data retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/cohn.immigration.us

18 20

–1 83

1 18

32 –1

84 6

18 47

–1 85

4 18

55 –1

86 4

18 65

–1 87

3 18

75 –1

88 0

18 81

–1 89

3 18

94 –1

89 9

19 00

–1 91

4 19

15 –1

91 9

19 20

–1 93

Years

P er

ce nt

o f E

ur op

ea n

Im m

ig ra

nt s 100%

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Great Britain

Germany

Ireland

Southern Europe

Scandinavia and Other NW Europe

Central and Eastern Europe

I G

I G B

C S

S SE

SE S

Map of the Balkan peninsula with Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Greece, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, and Turkey highlighted.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/cohn.immigration.us

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

Early Colonial Settlement: The Search for Religious Freedom

Historians have traditionally emphasized the religious motives of early German immi- grants: Most came to the colonies seeking freedom from restrictions on what they consid- ered true Christian faith. Thus, early German settlers were naturally drawn to the English

GERMANY

RUSSIA

UNITED KINGDOM

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

Figure 4.3: Germany

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

colony of Pennsylvania, which had been founded as a refuge for religious dissenters and offered free settlement land. In 1683, a group of 13 Quaker and Mennonite German families known as Krefelders founded the neighborhood that would become known as Germantown. Mennonites, like Quakers, are a Protestant sect whose members live very simply, according to their own interpretations of the Bible (Bittinger, 1901).

The Pennsylvania Germans, as they came to be known, are often referred to as “Penn- sylvania Dutch.” (Although the Amish, discussed later in the chapter, were sometimes called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” they remain distinct from other members of this group.) The Pennsylvania Germans’ folk arts included the fraktur style of manuscript decoration, and they shared a canon of many folk songs, which grew with new immigration over the 19th century. Other contributions to American culture include the Conestoga wagon that would be essential for Western migration, the Pennsylvania rifle, and the Pennsylvania barn. These Germans’ everyday dialect was a mixture of Palatine German and Swiss Ger- man, with High German reserved for formal occasions and church. As they intermarried with other groups, German urban residents began using English in business, in church records, and in public (Yodor, 1980).

In addition to Pennsylvania, German immigrants settled in the South and in New York. In 1709, 13,000 Germans traveled to England from the Palatinate—part of modern-day southwestern Germany—and from England to America, where they settled in Newburgh, New York. In 1721, Germans began settling north of New Orleans in an area that became known as the German Coast. Germans also settled in Baltimore and Charlestown, South Carolina. However, Philadelphia was the main port of arrival for them, and hundreds of ships carrying Germans from the Palatinate docked there throughout the 18th century. Later immigration would come from all over Germany and not just the Palatinate.

For the first two hundred years, many German Americans maintained immigrant enclaves. Although these enclaves provided social stability within the German-American community, the enclaves also led to a stereotyping of German immigrants as inherently different from Anglo Americans and resistant to assimilation. Many Americans from tra- ditional English backgrounds formed negative stereotypes of German Americans based on cultural and physical differences, such as distinctive, southern-German dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. Benjamin Franklin published the first German-language newspaper, Philadelphische Zeitung, in 1732 (Solsten, n.d.), but it failed within a year because Franklin did not have the correct type to print in German. In 1751, Franklin expressed a very bitter sentiment against German Americans:

Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. (Franklin, 1751)

By 1776, about 100,000 Germans had arrived in the colonies, and many who settled in the cities worked in pre-industrial crafts. Immigrants in the rural areas were farmers; while they did not always prosper, they tended to take good care of their livestock and be highly self-disciplined. Some Germans could not afford the voyage to America and therefore became indentured servants. The majority of German Americans supported the Ameri- can side in the Revolutionary War, although many pacifist Mennonites left for Ontario,

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

Canada, before hostilities broke out. Approximately 5,000 of the Hessian soldiers (from the Ger- man state of Hesse) the king of England enlisted to fight in the Revolution would also remain in the United States. By the end of the 18th century, nearly 1 out of every 10 Americans was of German descent (Conzen, 1980; Harzig, 2008).

Later Immigration: The Search for Pluralism

During the 1830s, a new wave of Germans arrived in the United States through a variety of ports and vessels. They landed in New Orleans on cotton ships, in Baltimore on tobacco ships, and in New York on special immigrant vessels belonging to the North German Lloyd and Hamburg-America shipping lines. From these ports of entry, most German immigrants settled where agricultural opportunities were most promising: New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and later on in New Jersey and California. The prospective emigrants in Germany learned about the United States in several ways in the mid-19th century. One of the most important was that dozens of guidebooks discussed American opportunities and enticed Germans to leave home. Better internal rail transportation in Germany and lower fares on larger ships made emigrating easier.

Most 19th-century German immigrants came for economic, political, social, and reli- gious reasons. During the 1850s, over 200,000 Germans came to the United States each year. There were three main groups. The Old Lutherans protested the unification of the Lutheran and reformed churches during the 1830s and 1840s and came to the United States in search of religious freedom. Likewise, German Jews also fled religious persecu- tion. Finally, the “forty-eighters” left Germany in 1848 for political reasons, seeking a new beginning in America after failed democratic revolutions. On a more individual basis, industrialization and rural overpopulation in Germany threatened traditional lifestyles for farmers, craftsmen, and shopkeepers, and America seemed to present an opportunity to transplant their existing culture across the Atlantic. In 1847, travel guide author Franz Löher described the vision of a future German state between the Missouri River and the Great Lakes:

They will become Americans, good republicans and good businessmen. They will mix with the non-Germans and will intermarry and will assume many of their manners. But the general tenor will remain German through and through. Our people will be able to produce wine on the riverbanks and drink it, accompanied by cheerful songs and dances. They will be able

German emigrants waiting to board a steamer to New York in 1875. German immigration to the United States reached its peak years during the 1850s. Immigrants were pushed by poverty and war and pulled by dreams of prosperity and freedom.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

to have German schools and universities, German literature and art, Ger- man science and philosophy, German regiments, courts and state assem- blies, in short, they will be able to build a German state in which their language will be the official language, just as English is now, and in which the German way of life will live, thrive and predominate exactly as the English way does everywhere now. (Adams, 1993)

After the Civil War in 1865, some German immigrants set their sights to the expanding American West and the unsettled prairie lands. However, most settled in cities, espe- cially New York, the major port of entry, as well as Milwaukee and St. Louis. Occupations besides farming included skilled crafts such as baking, carpentry, and brewing. However, industrial labor increasingly became the main occupation for these immigrants. By the late 19th century, nearly half of all German immigrants were either laborers or servants. Over time, many dissociated themselves from their isolated and homogenous ethnic enclaves while still maintaining distinctive German traditions. These immigrants still often chose to live in close vicinity to each other in urban neighborhoods, and some published Ger- man newspapers; in fact, there were 900 of these newspapers by 1893. After work, these

Americans associated with one another through German political organizations, in cultural and historical preservation societies, and in singing societies, of which there were 30 in San Fran- cisco alone by 1890. Over time though, second- and third-generation Germans felt less need to associate with German cultural institutions and began the process of becoming simply “Ameri- cans” (Bergquist, 2005).

The Effects of the World Wars on Germans in America

World War I (1914–1918) led to strong anti- German prejudice in the United States and fur- ther encouraged German-American assimilation. During these years, many nations divided them- selves into two camps: the Allies (France, Rus- sia, England, and eventually the United States) battled against the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary). As Germans in Europe fought against the American military over- seas, Germans in the United States (even if they were loyal to the American cause) faced intense hatred. The 2-million-member National German- American Alliance (NGAA) also faced problems. Formed in 1901 as an institution to “promote and preserve German culture in America,” it attempted to counteract the forces of assimila- tion in part by promoting school instruction in the German language and German history. The

This poster urging Americans to buy war bonds during World War I depicts the “Hun,” or German, as a dark-skinned menace. Such anti-German sentiment prompted many German Americans to attempt to assimilate more rapidly.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

organization’s leaders wanted future generations to maintain their German cultural dis- tinctiveness. One of its leaders wrote,

[I]f, however, through the unification of all Germans in the country, we succeed in becoming respected and honored, yes, even politically feared, then our children will one day be proud that German blood flows in their veins, then associations will show an increase in younger members and flourish instead of dying out. (Kazal, 2004b, p. 134)

During the unsure time of World War I, many Americans felt threatened by some of the NGAA’s policies as it raised money for German war relief and protested the American entry into the war. Many Germans were brewers, and the NGAA fought against Pro- hibition—the period when it was illegal to manufacture and sell alcohol and alcoholic beverages in the United States. As a result, the U.S. government revoked the NGAA’s charter in 1918, and the organization was forced to disband. At the same time, the number of Ger- man organizations, including newspapers, rapidly decreased. Many German Americans had assimilated so successfully that they no longer felt the need for distinctive cultural protection, and anti-German sentiment made a noticeable German iden- tity a vulnerability.

Distrust of Germans continued through the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II, which lasted from 1939 to 1945. The main Allied nations in this war were Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States (after December 1941), and they fought against the Axis powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Over 11,000 German Americans were interned, or removed from the West and East Coasts and relocated to over 50 closed “camps” throughout the United States and Hawaii. Nevertheless, many German Americans fought in the U.S. military (Carlson, 2003; Kazal, 2004b; Schaefer, 2011), and the country elected two 20th- century U.S. presidents with German ancestry: Herbert Hoover, who served after World War I, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served after World War II (Bergquist, 2005). By the end of World War II, German Americans of different social classes, religions, and occupa- tions had weathered other Americans’ resentment of their attachment to ethnic traditions. Many German Americans shared with many mainstream Anglo Americans the values of social stability, family relations, education, hard work, and self-discipline.

Anti-German sentiment did not endure. President Dwight Eisenhower, who was German American, and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower were a popular pair in the White House soon after World War II.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.2 German Americans

Germans in Contemporary America: Loss of Ethnic Identity?

After 1950, German immigrants usually arrived speaking English, with the ability to blend in fairly easily with American culture. By 1972, German-American household income was higher than the national median, but lower than the incomes of immigrants of Russian, Polish, Italian, British, and Irish descent. German Americans with strong technical skills tended to excel in the United States (Conzen, 1980; Köllman & Marschalck, 1973). Dur- ing the last quarter of the 20th century, German immigration decreased. From 1991 to

2001, only 7,000 Germans immigrated yearly to the United States, with no significant formation of new enclaves and no increase in the population of existing German enclaves (Homeland Security, 2011; Harzig, 2008). Indeed, as noted earlier, some scholars of ethnic- ity find it puzzling that so many Ger- man Americans now seem to have lost their ethnic identities.

Germans from Russia

Germans living in Russia who came to the United States represent an important instance of indirect immigration, which occurs when an individual or group has first immigrated somewhere else before immigrating to the United States. There had been Germans in Rus- sia since the early 1500s, but their numbers increased when German-born Empress Cath- erine II (Catherine the Great; 1729–1796) welcomed them to settle southern Russia and the Ukraine. German Protestants, Catholics, and Mennonites settled along the Volga River and near the Black Sea, keeping to themselves in separate enclaves. They enjoyed certain privileges, including religious and cultural freedom and exemption from military service, but these privileges eroded after the Russian serfs were freed in 1862. The serfs were peas- ants bound to specific lands in service to the landowners; their freedom in 1862 created dislocations throughout Russian society and a need for more military conscripts. Russian Germans, especially Mennonites, objected to fighting, and many of them immigrated to the United States from 1870 to 1920.

Germans from Russia formed a distinct immigrant group when they first arrived in the United States. They settled in enclaves containing immigrants from specific areas in Rus- sia, who had settled into tight communities in North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, Oregon, and California. Most continued their occupation of farming. Large patriarchal families, with a male head, were prevalent. These Russian Germans (often called Volga Germans, after the River Volga) did not mingle with the broader population, including other German-American communities, until about 1920. Unlike other German groups, they did not establish many secular societies, except for mutual-aid insurance organizations and fire departments. The weekly German-language newspaper, the Dakota Freie Presse, or Dakota Free Press, was also aimed at Russian Germans. The Germans from Russia Heritage Society is based in North Dakota and seeks to preserve and share the com- mon heritage of this group (Germans from Russia Heritage Society, 2011; Rippley, 1980).

Think About It

How does war affect ethnic identity and assimila- tion? What other ethnic American groups, Euro- pean or otherwise, have been affected by U.S. wars, and by the nations that the United States has engaged as enemies in those wars?

CHAPTER 4Section 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans have often been confused with German Amer-icans because of similarities in language and cultural practices. Still, their histo-ries and political and economic status in the United States have been markedly different, and it is important to disentangle their unique ethnic stories.

Dutch Americans

Dutch people are from the Netherlands; they have been present in America from colonial times through the present day. The Dutch were the second European group to arrive in

Figure 4.4: The Netherlands and Switzerland

SWITZERLAND

NETHERLANDS

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

CHAPTER 4Section 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

America—after the Spanish—with the Dutch East India Company landing in the New England area in 1609 under the leadership of English explorer Henry Hudson. Five years later, Dutch explorers established the fur trading post of Fort Nassau near what became Albany, New York. In 1626, the Dutch East India Company founded the colonial province of New Netherland, comprising parts of what later became New York, New Jersey, Con- necticut, and Delaware.

Dutch immigration to the United States was interrupted until the 19th century after the English defeated the Dutch in 1664 in a prelude to the Anglo-Dutch War of 1665–1667. Dutch culture became marginalized in America. According to one recent scholar, the loss to the British resulted in Dutch Americans’ being “disparaged and dismissed as irrele- vant, their temperament caricatured, and even their building style derided” (Goodfriend, Schmidt, & Stott, 2008, p. 2). The 1790 Census counted 100,000 Dutch Americans, of whom 80,000 were clustered around New York City; yet in many respects the Dutch contribu- tion was written out of the traditional narrative of American history (Shorto, 2005; Klein, 2008b).

Dutch immigration was steady throughout the 19th century, mainly from the pull of eco- nomic betterment and the push of religious disagreements. In the mid-19th century, there were mass migrations of hundreds and thousands led by Seceder pastors, who objected to the growing liberalism of the Dutch Reformed Church. According to the Landverhuizers, immigration lists kept by the Dutch government, most people who left the Netherlands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were very poor farmers and day laborers. They settled in cluster communities in Wisconsin; in Iowa; near Chicago, Illinois; in Paterson, New Jersey; and in Grand Rapids, Michigan. These Dutch Americans sought farmland and religious freedom. Many Dutch women used the opportunity to explore new oppor- tunities that might have been unavailable to them at home (Sinke, 2002). The new arrivals were warmly welcomed and assisted by many of the “Old Dutch” Americans, who were already well established in the United States (Brinks, 1995). These new waves of Dutch immigrants faced a dramatically different reception than their predecessors had (Good- friend et al., 2008). Mainstream America now saw them as hard-working people who sup- ported democratic policies and were committed to success in life and in business. Many prominent Dutch Americans rose in politics, while the wider Dutch- American community cohesiveness remained strong and centered on church and family. These gains declined somewhat during World War I, as many of the American public erroneously thought that the Dutch were German. As German Americans did, Dutch Americans yielded to political pressure and abolished their newspapers.

After World War II, floods in the Netherlands, devastation from bombing, and the Nazi murder of Dutch Jews prompted the Netherlands government to encourage emigration. Americans celebrated some of the well-known Dutch heroes of the war, such as Anne Frank (1929–1945), a Jewish Holocaust victim whose diary became one of the most widely read books of all time. For Dutch people who survived the horrors of war, the United States was the favored destination, but in 1952 the Dutch immigration quota was 3,136, resulting in a waiting list of 40,000. Congress relaxed immigration quotas in the Refu- gee Relief Act of 1953 and granted visas to 17,000 Dutch citizens. Altogether, between 1945 and 1965, 80,000 Dutch nationals immigrated to the United States, many of whom were skilled industrial workers and professionals. They settled mainly in New York and

CHAPTER 4Section 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

Los Angeles, and they added to a long-standing Dutch presence in Chicago. Along with other European groups, these immigrants then moved to the suburbs as American cities absorbed more African Americans and Hispanics. (This phenomenon is called white flight; see Chapter 9 for more information.) Along with these new post–World War II waves of Dutch immigration came new cultural meanings of “Dutchness.” Gone were the quaint notions of the windmill and tulips as cultural symbols, and in their place came artists and architects, like Piet Mondrian and Rem Koolhaas, with distinctive Dutch approaches to design (Goodfriend et al., 2008). Today, approximately one out of every one hundred peo- ple claim Dutch descent in the United States, and roughly 1,400 new Dutch immigrants arrive each year (U.S. Census, 2000, 2008).

Swiss Americans

Like the Dutch, the Swiss were also among the “old immigrants” to America; the first Swiss arrived on the East Coast in the 16th century. Hired as mercenaries by King Fer- dinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, several Swiss were at the first English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Later in the 17th century, the leaders of South Carolina gave Jean Francois Gignilliat 3,000 acres of land to entice other Swiss to emigrate. Likewise, Christoph von Graddenreid established a Swiss settlement of 700 people in North Caro- lina, and in 1710 founded New Bern in the southeast of that state (Henderson & Olasiji, 1995).

Like Dutch Americans, Swiss Americans have been confused with Germans; indeed, over 70 percent of the inhabitants of Switzerland speak High German. But, Swiss Americans have not encountered the same immigrant problems as the Dutch because they tended to arrive with education, skills, and money. Some have been very prominent in economic and public affairs. Swiss Americans were patriotic during the Revolutionary War. In 1775, John J. Zubly (1724–1781), a Swiss-born delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote The Law of Liberty, in which he com- pared the American struggle for freedom with the Swiss resis- tance to the Austrian empire (Schelbert, 1995).

About 250,000 Swiss arrived in the United States between 1850 and 1921; 70,000 arrived from 1920 to 1975. Some, such as Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) and Felix Bloch, became prominent in fields of science and technol- ogy. Agassiz was a professor of natural history at Harvard Uni- versity, while Bloch, a theoreti- cal physicist, became a profes- sor at Stanford University and won a Nobel Prize for physics in

A 1961 Chevrolet Corvette. U.S. automobile industry icon Louis Chevrolet was a Swiss immigrant.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

1952. As seen from these two examples, the Swiss settled throughout the United States, but they mainly concentrated in New York City, Wisconsin, Ohio, California, and Oregon, working at both skilled jobs and farming. Each region had organizations and community networks, supported after 1865 by their Cincinnati-based North American Alliance. Dur- ing World Wars I and II, they avoided anti-German persecution, perhaps because Swit- zerland itself took a neutral stance during both wars, though some Swiss Americans did war work for the United States. Physicist Hans Staub, for example, worked on the atomic bomb for the United States at Los Alamos (Henderson, 1995). Many Swiss Americans were also prominent in engineering in the 20th century. Louis Chevrolet (1879–1941) helped develop the combustion engine and the car that was named after him, Othmar Amman (1879–1964) was chief engineer of the Port Authority of New York and designed some of its major bridges, and William Lescaze (1866–1950) was known for an early American skyscraper design.

It is perhaps not surprising that Swiss emigrants had success in the American science and technology sectors: Switzerland itself became a highly technological country with extensive ties to global wealth. After World War II, most Swiss immigrants to the United States have been professionals and businesspeople. In the late 20th century, there were four main Swiss-American groups:

• Descendants of 18th-century secular immigrants • Members of the Mennonite denomination known as the Swiss Brethren, which com-

prised two-thirds of American Mennonites • Fully assimilated descendants of 19th- and 20th-century immigrants, some of whom

were active in the Swiss-American Historical Society, which was founded in 1927 and is still active

• Professionals who were active in strengthening U.S.-Switzerland bonds and could perhaps be considered global travelers rather than immigrants (Schelbert, 1980)

According to the U.S. Census, there were over 900,000 Americans of Swiss descent in 2000, just 0.3 percent of the total population (U.S. Census, 2008).

Amish Americans

The Amish, originally called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” are a thriving and enduring network of ethnic enclaves. Unlike other Germanic groups, such as the Germans, Dutch, and Swiss, the Amish have no desire to assimilate into mainstream society. The Amish are pacifists— people who do not fight in wars for reasons of conscience—and they avoid politics, so they were not subject to anti-German pressures during World War I and World War II. The Amish are unique for many reasons, one of which is their “struggle with modernity” (Kraybill, 1994, p. vii). While many other ethnic groups attempt to incorporate the latest technologies into their lives, the Amish stand resolutely against new technical and scien- tific advances. It is as if, despite their pacifist nature, “the Amish struggle with modernity has been a war against progress, or at least the spirit of progress” (Kraybill, 1994, p. vii). This fact does not mean that they reject all aspects of modernization. They live in houses, have running water, and use tools for farming. But they reject automobile ownership, higher education (including high school), and the use of power-line electricity in their homes.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.3 Dutch, Swiss, and Amish Americans

The Amish movement origi- nated in the 1690s from the Ana- baptists, a radical Swiss move- ment that did not believe in baptism at birth. Amish founder and leader Jacob Ammann (ca. 1656–ca.1730) thought that other Anabaptists were too lax and provided Ordnung, or a set of rules for daily living, for his followers. Various local Amish communities interpret these rules differently, but all include simple, traditional dress; selec- tive and sparing use of technol- ogy (telephones, for example, are available in places of work but not in homes); and selfless devotion to others (Hostetler, 1980). Today, there are about two dozen Amish subgroups, mostly in extended-family farming communities in Penn- sylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Over the 20th century, some developed small furniture-mak- ing and other craft businesses (Kraybill, 2003).

The 5,000 Amish in the United States in 1900 dramatically increased their numbers over the 20th century. Over a quarter-million Amish now live in 28 states (Encyclopedia of Immi- gration, 2011). Given their separation from mainstream society, it is ironic that the Amish have attracted attention from mainstream tourists. The Amish welcome tourists into their communities to buy their products and to watch them ride horse-drawn buggies (even offering buggy rides as a tourist attraction) and plow their fields without modern equip- ment. At the same time, the Amish continue to romanticize an older bucolic lifestyle (Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, 2008). Ohio’s Amish Country, located 90 miles southwest of Cleveland, remains the largest in the world. Over one million tourists visit each year, making it the second- largest Ohio attraction after the Cedar Point amusement park (Umble, 2008).

It is perhaps because of Amish isolation in an ever-more con- nected world that many outsid- ers are fascinated by the Amish. Though many of their religious

An Amish farmer stacking bales of hay. The Amish do not feel the need to assimilate into modern American culture.

Some Amish offer rides in horse-drawn buggies as a tourist attraction.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

beliefs are controversial, such as shunning those who decide to live in mainstream Ameri- can society, their ability to forgive in the wake of tragedy inspires some and confounds others. An example was the tragic morning of October 2, 2006, when Charles Roberts, a deranged man with a gun, entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He demanded that the boys and the teacher leave, and then he bound the legs of the remaining ten girls, intending to execute them. His reason, according to the surviving girls, was, “I’m angry at God for taking my little daughter and I need to pun- ish some Christian girls to get even with Him” (Kraybill, Nolt, & Weaver-Zercher, 2007, p. 25). Nine years earlier, Roberts’s daughter had died 20 minutes after her birth. The old- est girl in the schoolhouse, a 13-year-old named Marian, pleaded that he kill her and let the others go. Instead he began shooting at all the girls, killing five before he turned the gun on himself as the police stormed the building. The story quickly grabbed the national headlines, as much for a quality that one author called “Amish Grace” as for the tragedy. In the moments after the shooting, the grieving Amish families put aside their pain and specifically spoke of forgiveness to the family of the murderer. Forgiveness came to define the event and reinforce the uniqueness of Amish culture.

4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Many identify Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans by their religious affiliation as opposed to their ethnic identities, although the two are deeply inter- twined. Indeed, many of the struggles these groups faced when they immigrated to America were due to religious persecution. In the 19th century, the United States was primarily Protes- tant, and Catholics and Jews often encountered discrimination. One common response was to establish their own cultural institutions, such as Catholic and Jewish schools and hospitals, which enabled them to circumvent prejudice and strengthen their core beliefs.

Irish Catholic Americans

Many Irish immigrants arrived in the United States between 1840 and 1860, seeking to escape famine and the potato disease that was ravaging crops across Northern Europe. Over one million died in Europe from famine because the Irish diet depended heavily on potatoes. In the 50 years after 1840, over 3 million Irish decided to take whatever possessions they could carry and find a boat to transport themselves and their fami- lies to America (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a).

This statue at Ellis Island commemorates Irish immigrant Annie Moore and her brothers. Fifteen-year-old Moore was the first person to be processed at Ellis Island on January 2, 1892.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Irish Catholics were also from the British Isles, but they differed from the Protestant or Ulster Irish discussed in Chapter 3 because of their religion as well as their poverty as immigrants. Unlike English, German, and Scandinavian immigrants, most Irish Catholics could not afford to travel inland, so they settled on the East Coast. About 40 percent of the early immigrants died during their voyage to the United States—confined in the ship’s steerage, the unventilated, disease-ridden quarters of the “coffin ships” that provided the cheapest passage (Schaefer, 2008a). The majority who came were unmarried adults under age 35; more women than men emigrated. Irish immigration peaked during the 1850s; ties to relatives in Ireland remained strong, and immigrants often sent money home.

IRELAND

Rome

ITALY

Sicily

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

Figure 4.5: Ireland and Italy

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Anti-Irish Response

Many Americans harbored bitter anti-Catholic prejudice in the 19th century because they saw Catholic immigrants as posing a threat to the “Yankee social order” (Foner, 1990, p. 255). Nativists believed that only those born in the United States should have full rights. Telegraph inventor Samuel F. B. Morse in 1834 published A Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, in which he vilified the Irish as illiterate and asserted that the pope was planning to move the Vatican to the Mississippi River Valley. In Awful Disclosures, an 1836 bestseller by Maria Monk, paranoia combined with pornography in a bizarre account of intercourse between Catholic nuns and priests and infanticide in a Montreal convent. Anti-Catholic violence resulted in deaths and the destruction of a con- vent and a church. Scots-Irish Protestants were active in anti-Catholic movements after the Civil War, establishing the Loyal Orange Institution in 1867, which had 364 lodges and 30,000 members by 1914 (Kenny, 2000; MacDonald, 2010).

The Irish story in Hartford, Connecticut, was typical. As one historian noted, “Perhaps no subsequent immigrant group was less welcome in Hartford than were the Irish” (Weaver, 1982, p. 77). At the heart of this prejudice was a fear that the new Hartford immigrants would take all unskilled-labor positions and leave many more established residents with- out jobs. Anti-Irish prejudice tinged both the press and local politics. In 1855, Connecticut elected the anti-Catholic “Know-Nothing” William T. Minor as governor of the state. This unofficial name of his political party originated because it began as a secret society in the 1840s: if anyone inquired about it, members responded, “I know nothing.” Members nursed bitter hatred toward Catholics. The party sought to limit immigration, restrict citi- zenship only to those who lived in the country for more than 21 years, and prohibit Cath- olics from holding public office. Governor Minor dissolved several companies owned by Irish Catholic Americans.

On Their Own: Health Care and Labor

By the end of the 19th century, Hartford Catholics were facing an even more significant problem than prejudice from journalists, politicians, and religious leaders. In 1896, Catho- lic Bishop Michael Tierney lamented that his parishioners were suffering because there was no place for them to receive health care that honored the Catholic faith. For example, some parishioners were concerned that they might not receive last rites if they died while in the Hartford Hospital. Others feared coerced conversion to Protestantism. Hartford’s Irish population also had likely heard stories about places such as Massachusetts Gen- eral Hospital, which initially refused to admit the Irish because “respectable” Protestant patients might then be reluctant to seek treatment there (Starr, 1982, p. 173). Catholic phy- sicians in the city also encountered prejudice from the Protestant medical establishment and had difficulty gaining privileges at Hartford Hospital. Tierney quickly began to make plans to rectify the situation by establishing a Catholic-owned and -operated hospital in the city—Saint Francis Hospital.

Irish Americans greatly needed hospitals because early employment opportunities were limited to the most difficult, dangerous, lowest-paying jobs for men in casual labor, iron work, mining, and construction. Historian Dennis Clark writes,

Structural iron work was extremely hazardous. Workers in 1890 were expected to climb narrow beams six, and at times seven, days a week in all

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

kinds of weather for $2.10 a day. Accident and mortality rates were higher than in most other trades at the time, and ten years of work life in the trade was about the maximum. (Clark, 1992, pp. 85–86)

Although these were undesirable jobs, they were all the employment available to Irish men, and competition for these jobs eventually brought the Irish into conflict with Afri- can Americans. Before the Civil War, some Irish immigrant activists supported the anti- slavery cause: Many Irish sympathized with the black slaves because they, too, were stigmatized by mainstream America as an inferior race. By the Civil War, however, atti- tudes had changed as the Irish living in the North were forced to compete with free blacks for low-wage jobs. Irish gangs or private groups known as “fire companies” began to attack African Americans, beating, lynching, and killing them and burning black homes, churches, and businesses.

Although first-generation Irish immigrant women were likely to enter domestic service, their daugh- ters were more likely to be employed in textile fac- tories and education. By 1900, 10 percent of Amer- ican female teachers with immigrant parents were Irish—more than those with English and German parents combined.

Irish workers built on a tradition of organized peasant groups known as “combinations” to establish labor organizations in the United States during the 1860s and 1870s, such as the Ameri- can Miners Association, the Shoemakers Union, The International Labor Union, and the Cali- fornia Workingman’s Party. By 1900, first- and second-generation Irish immigrants were presi- dents of more than 50 of the American Federation of Labor’s 110 unions. St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City opened in 1879 as the result of donations from the poor and from 103 wealthy patrons who gave $1,000 each. In the early 20th century, Irish labor and community organizer Mary Harris Jones, more informally known as “Mother Jones,” helped organize the trade union Industrial Workers of the World, while activist Leonora O’Reilly helped found the Women’s Trade Union League. As a legacy of earlier political activism and the patronage system (election winners’ distributing the spoils of office to supporters who organized their victories), Irish Americans still have a strong presence in police and fire departments in New York City, Boston, Chicago, and other places.

In the ensuing decades, mainstream America accepted the Irish as racially white. Irish contributions to American theater, literature, and politics are now seamlessly part of mainstream U.S. culture and history (Ignatiev, 1995; Schaefer, 2008a). Saint Patrick’s Day is now celebrated throughout the United States without much regard for the real “Irish- ness” of participants (Blessing, 1980).

Located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, St. Patrick’s Cathedral was built with the aid of both rich and poor members of the Irish community.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Italian Americans

Centuries before the warring states on the Italian peninsula became a united Italy in 1860, Italians explored the New World. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo), John Cabot (Giovanni Cabotto), Americo Vespucci (Amerigo Ves- pucci), and John Verrazano (Giovanni de Verrazano) all explored and charted parts of what would become the United States. In fact, America itself got its name on April 25, 1507, when a little-known print shop in Europe published the first book to suggest that the entire hemisphere should take the name of explorer Amerigo Vespucci (Fernández- Armesto, 2007).

Italians also settled in the American colonies. There were Italian glass bead makers in Jamestown, silk producers in Georgia, and landowners in Maryland. Philippo Mazzei, a Tuscan physician, shared his interest in agricultural science with his neighbor, Thomas Jefferson. Fifty Italians fought in the Revolutionary War. Many of the 14,000 Italians in the United States before the Civil War were artisans, artists, teachers, musicians, and politi- cal refugees. Constantino Brumidi painted frescoes in the U.S. Capitol rotunda from 1852 to 1877, and Antonio Meucci from Florence invented a version of the telephone 26 years ahead of Alexander Graham Bell. Despite such cultural contributions, skin-color discrim- ination against Italians was virulent in the South throughout the 19th century, includ- ing segregation, attempts to substitute Italian laborers for slaves, and lynching—in 1892, eleven Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans (Belliotti, 1995; Candeloro, 1992; Parrillo, 2008).

Nearly 5 million Italians arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1920; they were from different areas of the impoverished Mezzogiorno, east and south of Rome. They came for pane e lavoro, or bread and work. Many were single male sojourners who eventually returned to Italy. Italian immigration to the United States slowed during the Great Depres- sion in the 1930s. It slowed again during the World War II reign of Benito Mussolini in Italy because Italy and the United States were at war with each other, but this immigra- tion picked up again after the hostilities ended. Italians emigrated in groups and often settled with their clans and neighbors from Italy in the same enclaves in Philadelphia, New Orleans, New York, and Boston—places where other Italians already lived and work was available. Their culture revolved around famiglia—the family—and the Church. Like the Irish, the Italians were primarily Catholic, and they shared their culture in frequent festivals throughout the year.

There had been no strong tradition of education in the Mezzogiorno, and upward mobil- ity through the American public educational system did not occur immediately. It was not until the third or fourth generation that Italians more persistently pursued educa- tional opportunities, in part as a way to escape the hard work at unskilled jobs and long hours that their fathers and grandfathers endured. Other alternatives were family-owned restaurants, shoe-repair shops, barbershops, and grocery stores. Job security followed once Italians began successfully organizing unions, including the International Laborers’ Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the Garment Workers Union, and the Teamsters Union. Italian organizations included The Order of the Sons of Italy of America and many newspapers, of which Il Progresso Italo-Americano endured the longest (Parrillo, 2008; Klein, 2008c; Candeloro, 1992).

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

One other aspect of the Italian immigrant expe- rience in America was organized crime, though much of this topic was sensationalized in the U.S. media and popular entertainment throughout the 20th century. For example, the Godfather mov- ies depicted a stereotypical Italian family whose lives centered on crime and the violence required to sustain it. These stereotypes first emerged dur- ing the Prohibition era, from 1920 to 1933. Orga- nized crime was one way that Americans illegally produced and distributed alcohol. However, the 1920–1927 Sacco-Vanzetti case went beyond somewhat minor concerns about alcohol con- sumption to draw on political fears about radicals from Southern and Eastern Europe. Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian-American anarchists who were eventually executed on trumped-up charges of robbery and murder (D’Attilio & Man- thorn, 1979).

Third- and fourth-generation Italian Americans are now well represented in the professions. However, upward mobility has accompanied the demise of many urban ethnic enclaves known as “Little Italies.” Though some still thrive in cit- ies throughout the nation, as in New York City (http://www.littleitalynyc.com/), Cleveland (http://www.littleitalycleveland.com/), and San Diego (http://www.littleitalysd.com/), these enclaves are no longer primary places of residence as assimilated generations have moved to the suburbs and generally assumed a white racial identity. At the turn of the 21st century, 40 percent of Italian Americans mar- ried outside their ethnic group; this rate is about the average for white European immi- grant groups in the United States (Guglielmo & Salerno, 2003; U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a; Klein, 2008c; Candeloro, 1992). According to the 2000 Census, 15.6 million Ameri- cans claim Italian descent, or 5.6 percent of the population (U.S. Census, 2008).

Jewish Americans

Although this section groups together Irish-, Italian-, and Jewish-American immigrants, in many ways Jewish Americans have a unique story. This distinctiveness stems from this ethnic group’s having endured millennia of persecution and centuries of dislocations from their European and other homes. For Jews, in many ways, America has represented a land of new hope in which they could practice their culture and religion in the open, without fear of attacks. Today, 40 percent of all the Jews in the world live in the United States—twice as many Jews as live in Israel. Within the United States, Jewish Americans are a small, religiously identified ethnic minority, and they represent between 1 percent and 2 percent of the population.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, shown here in handcuffs, were executed in 1927 after a lengthy trial that displayed prejudice against Italian Americans and panic about anarchists.

http://www.littleitalynyc.com

http://www.littleitalycleveland.com

http://www.littleitalysd.com

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Immigration and Settlement

The diversity of American Jews began in colonial times. In 1654, 23 Jews first arrived in New Amsterdam (which later became New York City) from Brazil. These Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Jewish immigrants, known as “Sep- hardim,” were descendants of Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries—part of a diaspora, or the scattering of a group from its common home- land or origins. Calling on “kin- dred congregations” in Central and South America and Europe, they received funds that made

it possible to build synagogues in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island—places with sizable Jewish populations. The colonial Sephardim were joined by Ashkenazim, German-speaking Jews from central Europe and Poland who also spoke German-derived Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic, and varied European languages. During the colonial period, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews intermarried and interacted in business and the profes- sions with non-Jews, without experiencing full acceptance or assimilation (Goren, 1980). Many Ashkenazi Jews arriving in the United States between 1830 and 1880 disapproved of the religious laxity of established congregations and the alliance between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.

Jews who arrived before the Civil War settled throughout the United States, often working as artisans and merchants in a growing economy. Some followed the westward- moving demand for manufactured goods, working as distributors, retailers, and peddlers sup- plied by Jewish wholesale firms. In 1859, there were 141 of these firms in New York City alone. The German-Jewish mercantile group of 100,000 to 200,000 quickly became part of the middle class. By the Civil War, 160 places in the United States had forms of Jew- ish community life, including Cincinnati, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Ordained rabbis had begun to arrive in the 1840s, but efforts failed to establish a synod, or all- encompassing organization of clergy, with a standard prayer book and uniform guiding principles of a religion for American Jews. Still, the Reform denomination emerged in America. It became the most liberal Jewish denomination compared to the Conservative, Hasidic, and Orthodox denominations of Judaism.

From 1884 to 1924, one-third of the Jews in Eastern Europe emigrated; 90 percent, or about 2 million, came to the United States. They came because of religious persecution, political oppression, expulsion, and economic displacement. Most were young skilled workers, often in the clothing trades. They settled in major East Coast cities and formed crowded enclaves. They thrived culturally and established a vibrant Yiddish theater and literary tradition; they also founded the modern motion picture industry. Many Eastern European Jews became successful entrepreneurs, labor leaders, and socialist political activists.

Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, was built by Portuguese Sephardic Jews during the 18th century.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Reactions and Assimilation

The first generation of the Eastern-European wave of immigrants did not assimilate as readily as colonial or 19th-century Jewish immigrants, mainly because they were initially poorer and less educated. But they valued education, and the second and later genera- tions made money in business and entered the professions. Some mainstream Americans reacted to Jewish financial success and political radicalism with virulent anti-Semitism— anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination. Anti-Semites did not distinguish between poor Eastern European Jews and German-Jewish Americans who had established themselves during the 19th century. Anti-Semites stereotyped all Jews as clannish, vulgar, greedy, and physically inferior.

Like the Catholics in America, Jewish hospital patients frequently encountered prejudice when they entered hospitals. Dr. Richard Cabot, a Protestant physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor at Harvard, revealed his own prejudice when he had to treat Jewish patients. In 1909, he wrote,

[T]he chances are ten to one that I shall look out of my eyes and see, not Abraham Cohen, but a Jew. . . . I do not see this man at all. I merge him in the hazy background of the average Jew. . . . Yet he was no more real than the thousands of others whom I had seen and forgotten—because I never saw them, but only their ghostly outline, their generic type, the racial back- ground out of which they emerged. (Cabot, 1909, pp. 4–8)

Jewish physicians needed more opportunities to shape medical care for their patients and shed the shackles of prejudice. They knew that Jew- ish patients were unable to maintain their dietary restrictions while they were patients at Protestant or Catholic hospitals because the hospitals did not offer kosher food, nor did they recognize Jews’ Sabbath restrictions. Like Catholics, the Jewish population achieved new standards of respect- ful medical care through their own network of hospitals.

American Jews supported the Jews who remained in Eastern Europe during World War I and expe- rienced famine, anti-Semitic expulsion, and vio- lent attacks on Jewish communities—especially in Russia and Poland. Between 1914 and 1922, the American-Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) raised $60 million for such aid, which they sent to Eastern Europe. However, by the early 1930s, anti-Semitism was increasing in Germany as Adolf Hitler began his rise to power on the populist myth of a pure, “Aryan” German race. The Nazis demonized non-Aryans, especially European Jews, and an American Nazi group known as the German-American Bund mirrored

Albert Einstein was one of the 150,000 refugee German Jews who sought safety in the United States after Adolf Hitler rose to power.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.4 Irish Catholic, Italian, and Jewish Americans

Hitler’s bigotry. During the 1930s, 150,000 German Jews sought refuge in the United States, including renowned physicist Albert Einstein. Between 1939 and 1945, the JDC sent $80 million to Europe, but it could not prevent the Holocaust of World War II, dur- ing which the Nazis deliberately killed 6 million Jews and forced more into concentration camps (Friedman, 2011).

The Question of Jewish Identity

Jews and others disagree as to what constitutes Jewish identity. Until the end of World War II, many saw Jews as a distinct race, although there are no uniform physical traits shared by all Jews. Most Jews in the United States have Northern and Eastern European ancestry, but there are also Jews from the Mediterranean region and North Africa. One- third of all Jewish Americans have no religious affiliation and do not observe Jewish religious practices. The secular nature of contemporary Judaism is reflected in the emer- gence of Judaization, whereby one can become a Jew by acquiring Jewish culture and values rather than inheriting “Jewishness” from one’s mother (the traditional Jewish line of inheritance). Judaization is also a way to preserve inherited Jewishness without strict adherence to religious rules and practices. Those who practice Judaization believe that Jewish culture is itself in a continual condition of growth and transition, along with the rest of the world (Porter, 2008; Shapiro, 1992).

In the 19th century, philanthropy became a way for affluent Jews to express Jewish eth- nic identity, first for the poor in a congregation and then for the Jewish poor of a whole city. Felix Adler (1851–1933), a professor of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at Cornell University, founded the Society of Ethical Culture in 1876 as part of an effort to focus on good works and moral action to overcome religious division. Jewish Americans also founded orphan asylums, lodges, and fraternal orders in the 19th century, and Jewish leaders established the national community service organization B’nai B’rith for “uniting Israelites in the work of promoting their highest interests and those of humanity” (Goren, 1980, pp. 576–78).

After World War II, many Jewish Americans continued to prosper and experienced less open anti-Semitism (Goren, 1980, pp. 586–97). Researchers agree that Jewish Americans tend to be prominent throughout the professions, business, the arts, academia, and the

media. Since 1996, 47 percent of Jews have married non-Jews, and two-thirds of the children of these marriages are not raised as Jews (Porter, 2008). Almost all American Jews of European descent now identify as white Americans (Brodkin, 1998).

Think About It

Recall the Chapter 1 discussion of ethnicity. How do Jewish Americans illustrate the elusive nature of defining the term ethnicity?

Fictional Interlude: Rules of Religion

Fifteen-year-old Emily’s parents were Reformed Jews, meaning they saw Jewish law as a general guideline rather than rules that they needed to observe strictly. Her father, for example, owned and ran a French restaurant and did not follow Jewish dietary laws, especially the prohibition against

CHAPTER 4Section 4.5 Scandinavian Americans

4.5 Scandinavian Americans

Scandinavian Americans have diverse national origins from Sweden, Iceland, Den-mark, Norway, and Finland. All five groups have Lutheran religious backgrounds that most immigrants preserved after coming to the United States. But their expe- riences as immigrants were not uniform. Most Swedish, Icelandic, and Danish Ameri- cans had a fairly easy time assimilating in the United States, while Norwegians and Finns struggled to be seen as truly patriotic.

Swedish Americans

The United States was the preferred destination for Swedes during the second half of the 19th century as the Nordic countries saw tremendous population growth. Accord- ing to Swedish poet Esaias Tegnér, the causes of this growth were “peace, vaccines, and potatoes.” One historian described this list as a “glib answer to an enormously complex question,” although it is quite correct (Nordstrom, 2000, p. 229). Peace meant that no Scandinavian men died in war and that young men were free to marry and have chil- dren. New vaccines protected Scandinavians against smallpox, improved medical care, and lengthened life spans in the region. Despite potato famines, for the most part the diets in Scandinavian countries were vastly enriched during the mid-19th century, further contributing to population growth. This increased population faced overcrowding and

eating pork. Emily thought that her parents were kind, sophisticated, and even hip. So she was not prepared for their reaction when she asked for a tattoo for her 16th birthday.

“Absolutely not!” her mother said.

“Over my dead body,” her father agreed.

“Give me one good reason,” Emily countered.

“Because at the end of the day, we’re Jewish, and Jews are not allowed to mutilate their bodies,” said her mother.

“Because?” Emily pressed.

“Because when we’re buried, we have to be in one piece, unmutilated.”

“What about surgery? You’ve both had surgery.”

“That’s different,” explained Emily’s father. “Surgery is a necessity, not something you do willfully.”

“I think you’re a hypocrite!” Emily shouted. Emily’s father raised his eyebrows.

“Jews aren’t supposed to eat pork, and we do,” Emily continued. “If I can eat bacon, then I can get a tattoo!”

What Do You Think?

How closely do you follow the “rules” of your own belief system? How important do you think it is to do so? How often did you question your parents’ beliefs growing up? How important is religion to your ethnic identity?

CHAPTER 4Section 4.5 Scandinavian Americans

a lack of job opportunities, prompting many to consider emigration. Swedish-American immigrants settled in farming communities in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. However, over 60 percent worked in industry, factories, domestic service, and civil service in cities—especially in Chicago, where the Swedish population tripled dur- ing the 1880s. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish Americans are known for their Amerik- abrev, or letters sent home by immigrants. This correspondence encouraged chain migra- tions of relatives, neighbors, and friends from the same towns and villages.

ICELAND

DENMARK

NORWAY

FINLAND

SWEDEN

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

Figure 4.6: Scandinavia

CHAPTER 4Section 4.5 Scandinavian Americans

Overall, Swedish Americans have been successful at both assimilating and retaining their own cultural identity. They were able to overcome 20th-century accusations of being “unpatriotic” because, unlike the Finns, few were political activists or visible as political radicals. The Swedish community of Linsborg, Kansas, was established in 1869; it con- tinues to hold a yearly parade with traditional costumes from the municipality of Rätvik and foods such as smörgasbord, meatballs, and potatiskorv. Swedish exports from furni- ture company IKEA, vodka producer Absolut, and automobile manufacturer Volvo have influenced the broader American culture, as have the Swedish-language films of director, writer, and producer Ingmar Bergman (Attebery, 2007; Martin, 2008c). Almost 4 million Americans claimed Swedish descent in 2000 (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a).

Norwegian Americans

The oldest of all European immigrant groups came to America from Norway. Norse explorer Leif Ericson discov- ered North America in 1000 C.E., after his Viking father Eric the Red settled in Greenland (Munch, 1980). Similar to Welsh lore, there were claims of Norse- men traveling west to Minne- sota and North Dakota in the 1200s and 1300s; some scholars have cited as evidence a stone covered in Scandinavian runes found in Minnesota in 1898 (Blegen, 1968). The modern era of Norwegian immigration began in 1825, when 52 emi- grants from Norway boarded the sloop Restoration and headed for America. Many of them were Quakers, and they did not support the existing Norwegian Lutheran rituals of baptism, marriage, and burial. Initially they settled in Kendall Township, New York, with later generations finding life in LaSalle County, Illinois, more attractive. Afterward, many Norwegian immigrants to the United States were Lutherans who came to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota to find better economic opportunities (Henderson & Olasiji, 1995). Norwegian men worked in factories and industry, while women usually found employment in domestic service. Those with experience in fishing and shipyards settled in New York City and Seattle, Washington (Martin, 2008). Norwegian Americans were committed to preserving their ethnicity through community-based and national organizations. Newspapers such as the Skandanavien and Nordvesten preserved the Norwegian language, as did the Norwegian- American Historical Society after 1925.

Norwegian-American ethnicity became controversial along with the general attacks on “hyphenism”—supposed division of patriotic loyalties ascribed to foreign-born citizens, or “hyphenated Americans”—during World War I. Shortly after WWI, an unsuccessful

An illustration of the Norse explorer Leif Ericson on a traditional Norwegian ship. Ericson sailed to America in 1000 C.E., but it was not until 1835 that a large number of Norwegians settled in New York.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.5 Scandinavian Americans

socialist revolution in Norway fueled anti-Norwegian sentiment in the United States; many Americans feared that similar left-wing revolutionaries might inspire anti- democratic uprisings in the United States (Christianson, 1992). These concerns faded in time; by the 1930s, only a minority of Norwegians in America felt they were “foreign- ers” in the land they called home (Øverland, 2000). In the 2000 Census, about 4.5 million Americans claimed Norwegian descent (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a)—a figure close to the 4.9 million population of Norway in 2011 (Statistics, Norway, 2011).

Finnish Americans

Finnish immigration to the United States began during the early 17th century as Finns joined Swedes to settle the colony of New Sweden along America’s Atlantic coast. The Dutch and then the English subsequently took over New Sweden. In 1669, a Finnish set- tler called “Long Finn” led an unsuccessful revolt against the English. After his defeat, both Swedes and Finns began the process of assimilation and Anglicized their family names.

Some Finns had resettled in Norway by the 19th century, and increasing numbers of them immigrated to the United States during the 1860s. As fishermen, farmers, and copper miners, they settled in the copper-rich area of Keweenaw Peninsula in northern Michigan and Minnesota. By 1900, half of the Finnish-American population lived there. The rest lived in Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Oregon, California, and the Midwest— places where either fishing or farming could provide livelihoods. This broad scattering continued as more Finns arrived; the later arrivals received assistance from more settled Finnish Americans.

By World War I, nearly a quarter of a million Finns had arrived in the United States. Most were young, unmarried adults; only one-third travelled with children, and most were agricultural workers from Finland’s western coastal cities of Vaasa and Oulu. Push factors from Finland included poverty and a desire to evade the military draft. This unmarried work force had the freedom to continuously move from city to city in search of higher wages and safer jobs. The men lived in boarding houses, and single women worked in domestic service.

Finnish Americans created their own religious organizations in the United States, includ- ing the Laestadian Lutheran Church, Apostolic Lutheran Church, and Methodist churches. Like many other religious communities, they became involved in efforts to curtail alcohol sale and consumption (Kero, 2011). Many clashed with mainstream American culture by identifying with the growth of world socialism. In 1902, the Finnish-American workmen’s association, the Imatra Society of Brooklyn, combined over 30 workers’ organizations into a league that later became part of the American Socialist Party (Hoglund, 1980).

Many Americans felt intense suspicion and hostility to radical political organizations among European immigrants. Many Americans suspected Norwegian Americans, Luth eran clergy from Northern European groups, and Finnish Americans of being unpa- triotic—especially workers who had participated in a copper strike in Michigan in 1913 to 1914. The editors of the socialist Finnish-language newspaper Toveri, or “The Comrade,” were arrested (Christianson, 1992). As the general U.S. labor movement weakened and

CHAPTER 4Section 4.5 Scandinavian Americans

the push towards socialist ten- dencies faded, mainstream suspicion of Scandinavian immigrant groups also faded. Younger generations’ desire to retain their Finnish ethnicity also decreased over time. By 1970, this ethnic distinctive- ness had declined completely (Hoglund, 1980). Today, about 623,000 Americans claim Finn- ish descent (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a).

Danish Americans

Danes are from Denmark; like other Scandinavian Americans, Danes had an early and distin- guished presence in America. The Danish sailor Jens Munck (1579–1628) led an expedition to the United States in 1619 in search of a potential Arctic trade route along North America’s northeastern coasts. On a separate voyage, another Danish mariner, Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741), was among the first Europeans to explore Alaska; the Bering Strait was named after him in honor of his success. Revolution- ary War soldier Hans Christian Feibiger, known as “Old Denmark,” was one of George Washington’s most highly regarded officers. Danish pioneer Peter Lassen (1800–1859) blazed the trail from the Rocky Mountains to California and chartered a path that was later used during the Gold Rush (Skärdal, 1980).

Religious factors were both a push and pull for the Danes, with some in the 19th century wishing to avoid the Lutheran State Church. Many others converted to Mormonism and joined the American Mormons in Utah. These Danish immigrants tended to be educated and young; two-thirds were male. They worked in rural occupations but also in industry, with women finding domestic service jobs. Those who did not go to Utah settled in New York and Illinois, as well as in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Michigan, and many other parts of the United States.

Danish immigrants carefully cultivated a sense of Danish identity and nationalism. Con- tinuing an emphasis on education they brought with them from Denmark, N. F. S. Grund- vig introduced the concept of the folk high school. These were institutions that allowed students freedom to choose their courses so that they could either learn trades or prepare for higher education at universities (Martin, 2008a). The folk school tradition’s motto was “Learning for living.” This value continues today as a model for preschool education in Lutheran communities that emphasize practical skills and the individual talents of young children (Lutheran Folk School, 2011; Wee Folk School, 2011). Danish ethnic organiza- tions included churches, lodges, newspapers, fraternal organizations, mutual-aid health insurance societies, and schools. By 1930, nearly all Danish immigrants spoke English.

This group of supposed “reds” and “radicals” wait for deportation on Ellis Island in 1920. Members of recent groups not fully assimilated, such as Germans, Finns, Italians, and Jews, were more likely to be suspected of political agitation than members of established Anglo groups.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

About 1.5 million Americans currently claim Danish descent (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a). Solvang, California, is known as the Danish-American capital of the United States ( Martin, 2008).

Icelandic Americans

Scandinavian immigrants also came to the United States from Iceland; the first group emi- grated as fishermen and farmers between 1870 and 1890. The main push factor was a vol- canic eruption that destroyed their communities. A second wave of immigration arrived between 1960 and 1970. These immigrants settled in farming communities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota; other Icelanders who had originally settled in the Cana- dian colony of New Iceland later joined these U.S. communities.

A NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) military base was established in Keflavik, Iceland, during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Some U.S. Navy men stationed there mar- ried Icelandic women, who then became American citizens. This group preferred to settle in urban areas, particularly in Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Miami, where the wives formed social clubs to preserve their Icelandic identity.

Icelandic Americans have generally assimilated the most easily of all Scandinavians due in part to Iceland’s long-standing commitment to literacy and education (Ward, 2008; Ockerstrom, 2000). Some Icelandic descendants actively celebrate Icelandic Independence Day on June 17—the day Iceland became a sovereign nation. The Icelandic government has supported intercultural programs for Icelandic descendants to learn their ancestral language. Almost 43,000 Americans claimed Icelandic descent in 2000, according to that year’s Census (U.S. Census Fact Finder, 2011a)—a substantial number in light of the fact that the country of Iceland had a population of only 300,000 that year. Some writers have claimed that if fully assimilated descendants could be counted, the number of Icelandic Americans would be over 200,000.

4.6 Other European Groups

No introductory survey of European immigration to the United States can devote space to all groups or do justice to the full range of immigrant experiences. Although many additional European groups deserve mention, we will focus here on Polish, Russian, Baltic, French, Iberian, and Balkan Americans.

Polish Americans

U.S. immigrants have also come from Central European countries such as Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Among these immigrants, the Poles are unique for their efforts to maintain their own ethnic identity.

Polish Americans have a long history that dates back to colonial America, when Poles accompanied Germans to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608 to develop a timber industry. Polish religious dissenters later came to Pennsylvania during the early 1700s. During

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

the Revolutionary War, 100 Poles fought with the Americans. Between 1830 and 1831, about 1,000 political refugees came to the United States after an insurrection in Russian- controlled Poland. Once in America, they remained loyal to their heritage and traditions through the work of Polish nationalist Henryk Kalussowski (1806–1894) and the estab- lishment of The Association of Poles in America and the Democratic Society of Polish Exiles, both of which Kalussowski founded in New York City during the 1880s (Greene, 1980).

Polish peasants came to the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, settling pri- marily in Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and coal-mining areas of Pennsylvania. Many worked at manual labor in Midwestern cities where they

POLAND

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

Figure 4.7: Poland

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

already had relatives. Most Poles who arrived before World War I were Roman Catho- lic, while Jewish Poles came during the first few years of the 20th century and during the 1930s. Later, Polish-American immigrants became the most stereotyped of European groups because they started out in the United States as poor and uneducated peasants who labored at jobs requiring physical strength as opposed to intellect. But as historian Edward R. Kantowicz points out, the other side of being mocked as “big, strong, and stupid” is to be regarded as “tough, no-nonsense, and aggressive” (Kantowicz, 1992, pp. 131–35).

In the face of this prejudice, established Polish immigrants formed tight networks called Polonia to support the new arrivals. This term also described Polish-American communi- ties across the United States. Some Polish Americans ran boardinghouses for single male immigrants who wanted to live cheaply so they could send money back to Poland. In con- trast to the stereotypes, the boarders were disciplined and frugal in their habits, and their ability to save most of their low wages was legendary. Voluntary organizations provided

economic assistance within the Polish-American community as well as news from Poland. Pol- ish Americans were active in the United Mine Workers dur- ing the early days of the union movement, when both organiz- ers and workers were subject to violent reprisals, such as the “Lattimer Massacre” of 1897. This event was a peaceful march by 400 Eastern European coal miners in Pennsylvania, many of whom were Poles. Local sher- iff’s deputies fired their guns at the assembly, killing 19 people (Pula, 1995).

Throughout the 20th century, while later generations of Polish Americans assimilated to U.S. society, many maintained their

cultural traditions and identity, particularly through the Polish National Alliance and the Polish Roman Catholic Union. Politics in their homeland was an important issue for Polish Americans, particularly when Poland was under the control of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Through the 1980s, Polish Americans supported the Solidarity movement in Poland, which sought to democratically preserve the rights of Polish workers against Soviet control (Schaefer, 2008b). The global rise to prominence of Pope John Paul II also brought attention to problems in Poland during this period. Born Karol Józef Wojtyła in 1920 in the Polish town of Wadowice, he practiced Catholicism in secret, away from the persecution of the Soviets. He became pope in 1978 and served until his death in 2005. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523 and the second-longest-serving pope in the papacy’s 2,000-year history (Weigel, 2005). Today there are 9 million Polish Americans, who comprise 3.2 percent of the U.S. population.

A Polish flag flies from a car window in a Polish-American neighborhood in Chicago, mourning the 2010 death of Polish president Lech Kacynski. In the early 21st century, many Polish Americans maintain strong attachments to Poland.

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

Russian Americans

Russians first came to the North American continent via Alaska, which became a col- ony of the Russian Empire during the 18th century. It had only several hundred Russian inhabitants; most were traders and missionaries. Kodiak Island, off the south coast of Alaska, was the first permanent Russian settlement; by 1812, there were Russians in the settlement of Fort Ross, north of San Francisco. When the U.S. government bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, about 12,000 Alaskan indigenous people had been converted to the Russian Orthodox Church.

From the late 19th century on, Russians immigrated to the United States in four main periods. More than 3 million Russian immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1914; half were Jews and the rest were Belarusians and Ukrainians from the countries of Belarus and Ukraine, which would later become part of the Soviet Union (see Figure 4.8). Carpatho- Rusyns, or Ruthenians, also came to the United States as part of this wave from Hungary and Galicia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Many of the Jews fled violent anti- Semitic persecution, while other groups fled overpopulation, starvation, and political upheaval. The second wave of immigration lasted from 1920 to 1939; over 2 million sol- diers, professionals, artists, intellectuals, and peasants arrived in the United States, almost all of them fleeing the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In the third wave from 1945 to 1955, another 14,000 Russian-American immigrants came to the United States after being displaced by the Nazi occupation of Russia, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and other upheavals. The final wave of immigrants came from the Soviet Union from 1970 to 1985. The first of these immigrants were Jews, who came as political or religious refugees. Officially, the Soviet Union permitted a group of about 300,000 Jews to go to Israel, but they eventually found their way to the United States. After 1985, emigration

RUSSIA

ESTONIA LATVIA

LITHUANIA

BELARUS

MOLDOVA

UKRAINE

ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN

GEORGIA

KAZAKHSTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

TAJIKISTAN TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

Black Sea

Caspian Sea

Figure 4.8: Former Soviet Union

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

from the Soviet Union to the United States was essentially unrestricted, but prospective immigrants had to show that they were being persecuted for political or religious beliefs.

Russian-American immigrants mostly settled in the Northeast United States, where they found business, professional, intellectual, and artistic work. Throughout the Cold War, they struggled to overcome fears that they might be Communist sympathizers, particu- larly when anti-Communist paranoia surged in the 1950s (Magocsi, 1995). With the col- lapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, this suspicion evaporated.

There were 2.6 million Russian Americans, or 0.9 percent of the population, in the United States in 2000 (U.S. Census, 2004). However, these figures are complicated by different meanings of “Russian.” Some who now identify as Russian might instead have ancestry in the now-independent countries near present-day Russia that were part of the former Soviet Union. These are the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the Eastern European countries of Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine; the Transcaucasus countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia; and the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyr- gyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan (Abdelal, 2001, pp. 1–24).

Baltic Americans

Immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and two former Soviet states, Belarus and Ukraine, formed an alliance called the Commonwealth of Inde- pendent States. By 1993, this entity included all of the former Soviet republics except for the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. For this reason, we will consider Baltic Americans separately.

Estonian Americans

Much of Estonian immigration to the United States has been influenced by political events involving more powerful nations. There may have been Estonian immigrants to a Swedish colony in Delaware in the 18th century; Estonia was under Swedish rule for a time before the colonial period. In the mid-19th century, most Estonian immigrants were peasants fleeing their German-controlled rural economy. Those who came to America founded farming communities in the Northwest and Midwest, while others settled in major cities such as Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City. In 1897, these immigrants founded an Estonian-language newspaper, the Estonian America Courier, and in 1898, they founded the Estonian Beneficial Society. In 1905, an ultimately unsuccessful revolution swept the Russian Empire and brought more Estonian political refugees to the United States, where they founded an Estonian branch of the Socialist Party of America and another Estonian socialist newspaper. By 1920, there were between 70,000 and 200,000 Estonian Americans.

Germany annexed part of Estonia during World War II. After World War II ended in 1945, 17 boats containing Estonians reached the United States; they were called “Viking boats” as a historical reference to early sailing vessels that brought Scandinavian Americans across the Atlantic. Their entry was not legal according to U.S. immigration laws and pro- cedures, but they were nonetheless welcomed. In 1948, the Displaced Persons Act enabled

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

more than 11,000 Estonians to enter the United States. Forty percent of all new U.S. visas at that time went to Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. Estonia is now an indepen- dent nation; there are nearly 30,000 Estonian Americans, and many of them continue to advocate for Estonia’s rights and recognition within the international community (Maegi, 2008).

LITHUANIA

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

LATVIA

BELARUS

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

ESTONIA

Figure 4.9: Baltic states

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

Latvian Americans

The first Latvians—roughly 3,000 of them—arrived in the United States in the mid-19th century. By 1900, most Latvian Americans were sailors, artisans, laborers, craftsmen, and missionaries. Their numbers swelled during World War II, when a great influx of over 40,000 Latvians came to the United States from 1939 to 1951—mainly as refugees and dis- placed persons due to the German invasion of Latvia. These immigrants hoped to return to Latvia after World War II, although most remained in the United States. In 2005, almost 64,000 Americans identified as of Latvian descent. They lived primarily in California, New York, Michigan, Florida, and New Jersey (Klein, 2008d).

Lithuanian Americans

Lithuanian Americans came in two waves. The first wave began in the late 19th century; most were peasants whom immigration officials counted as Poles, Russians, or Germans. Because many could not speak English and almost no Americans could speak Lithua- nian, little was known about their distinct culture. Between 1900 and 1924, about 250,000 Lithuanians immigrated to the United States, settling in urban industrial centers in New York and Pennsylvania, and especially in Chicago. They maintained weaker ties to their homeland than many other immigrant groups, in part because Lithuania was a war- torn nation—sometimes part of Poland and other times part of Russia. The second wave arrived after 1948, following the Displaced Persons Act. This group placed a higher value on their ethnicity and maintained ties to their homeland, even criticizing some of the earlier immigrants for lacking feelings of Lietuvybe, or Lithuanian identity. By 1990, there were 841,209 Lithuanian Americans in the United States (Kelly, 2008).

French Americans

The French were present on the North American continent before the British established formal colonies. Sixteenth-century French explorers sought to establish a fur trade, and

missionaries worked to convert the Indians to the Christian reli- gion in Canada and what is now the American Midwest. In the process, they claimed land for France near the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi Valley. The French government supported settle- ment only in Quebec, Acadia (now known as the province of New Brunswick), Nova Sco- tia, and Prince Edward Island, which were all areas of Canada that it was able to secure mili- tarily. However, after several wars, the British expelled the French from Acadia in 1755 and

Musicians play in Louisiana’s Liberty Theatre, known as the “The Home of Cajun Music.”

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

the refugees settled in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Louisiana. They formed a French- speaking enclave in Louisiana where they were known as “Cajuns.” White and mixed- race refugees joined the Cajuns in 1804 after the slave revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which later became the Republic of Haiti.

From 1840 to 1930, almost 900,000 French Canadians came to the United States. They were mainly poor farmers who settled in New England to work in textile factories and in the upper Midwest to farm. A small number of French people came to the United States from France during the California Gold Rush in 1848. A larger number of French peo- ple arrived after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to avoid Germany’s annexation of the French region of Alsace and Lorraine. Agricultural immigrants from the Alps and the Basque region arrived from 1881 to 1924 in search of farmland (Daniels, 1990, pp. 90–96).

Protestant French assimilated rapidly, even though there were no immigrant aid associa- tions. In part, this was due to the religious commonalities and shared belief systems with mainstream Protestant America. The Cajuns of Louisiana occupied almost all of southern Louisiana and retained their traditions through food and music. Unlike other European

FRANCE

0 300 Kilometers

300 Miles

Figure 4.10: France

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

countries, France did not produce a great wave of immigrants to the United States in the 19th or 20th centuries; most French people were less affected by the push and pull factors that affected other European nations. Recent French migrants have tended to be middle- class professionals who live on the West Coast, and they are likely to visit France regu- larly and teach their children French (Mann, 2008; Hillstrom, 1995). About 3 percent of the U.S. population, or 8.3 million people, claim French ancestry.

Spanish, Basque, and Portuguese Americans

Spanish, Basque, and Portuguese Americans emigrated from the same area of Southern Europe—the Iberian Peninsula. While they are distinct groups linguistically, their cul- tures are often perceived as having strong similarities.

Spanish Americans

Spanish soldiers and Catholic priests from Jesuit and Franciscan orders came to Florida in the 16th and 17th centuries on missionary expeditions. They founded St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565—half a century before the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Spaniards and Spanish Mexicans settled in New Mexico in 1668; in Texas by 1700; and in Louisiana, before it became French, between 1762 and 1819. During the 1770s and 1780s, Spanish Friar Junipero Serra founded a series of missions throughout California to Chris- tianize Native Americans and acculturate them to Spanish society. The cities of San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco are some of the places that got their start from Serra’s efforts. By the time the United States annexed California in 1848, the state’s Spanish population numbered 13,000.

Since 1820, over a quarter-million Spanish have immigrated to the United States for vari- ous reasons. Refugees fled the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, and a wave of 100,000 immigrated from the early 1960s through the 1990s, mainly for economic reasons. There are presently over 2 million U.S. inhabitants of Spanish descent. They live primarily in California, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and New York, mainly because of available jobs in these areas as well as a long tradition of Spanish settlement. Many U.S. immigrants from South America, Central America, and Mexico are the descendants of Spanish immi- grants who went first to those countries (Klein, 2008e).

Basque Americans

Basques are perhaps the oldest ethnic group in Europe; their region straddles southwest- ern France and north-central Spain. They are another group of indirect immigrants to the United States, with many settling first in Latin America before immigrating to the United States after the Napoleonic wars from ca. 1803 to 1815. Basques refer to themselves as Euskaldunak, or speakers of the Euskera language. Though many were initially attracted by the California Gold Rush, most others remained shepherds—a traditional Basque occu- pation. Few Basques immigrated to the United States after World War II, although their skills as shepherds were in high demand, and many young Basque men fleeing poverty were willing to brave a solitary life on the plains of the western United States. Many Americans enthusiastically attended Basque festivals in the West, and the game of jai

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

alai became popular in Miami and a Basque cultural contribution to U.S. culture. There are approximately 48,000 Basque Americans living in the United States today (Center for Basque Studies, 2011; Douglass, 1980).

Portuguese Americans

The Portuguese also played a role in the early colonization of the Americas. Before the Spanish arrived, Portuguese explorer João Rodrigues Cabrillo reached San Diego Bay in 1542; he was the first European to explore California. Several Portuguese Jews were prominent in the colonies, and others signed on to whaling ships from New England to avoid conscription and poverty in Portugal (Norden, 1995). About 5,200 Portuguese arrived in the United States between 1820 and 1860, and chain migrations of about 63,000 arrived between 1870 and 1890. They were followed by almost 159,000 Portuguese immigrants between 1900 and 1920. Pushed by poverty and pulled by jobs, they settled mainly in California, New England, and Hawaii—going where available agricultural work led them. For example, in Hawaii they served as contract laborers on the sugar

SPAIN

FRANCE

P O

R TU

G A

Basque Region

Figure 4.11: Spain, Basque region, Portugal

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

plantations. Other push factors were environmental: In 1958, 4,800 refugees sought safety in the United States after the devastating Capelinhos volcano eruption on the Portuguese Azorean island of Faial.

Assimilation on all levels was difficult for early Portuguese immigrants. They were not used to nonextended families, compulsory education for children, opportunities for women to work, and the independence of young adults. Many retained their ethnicity through traditional festivals, religious celebrations, and folk customs in herbal healing.

Almost all Portuguese were Roman Catholics, but groups brought different cultural prac- tices and identities based on the parts of Portugal they came from. Eventually, differ- ent groups built their own churches, including churches for Protestants who had been persecuted in Madeira. They founded mutual aid societies on state levels in California,

Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. As the generations passed, Portuguese Ameri- cans entered politics, the professions, business, and academia (Norden, 1995). From 1965 until the 1980s, the immi- gration rate was 11,000 to 12,000 a year, decreasing to about 1,300 a year by 2006. The Portuguese-American population was about one million in 2007 (Klein, 2008f).

Balkan Americans

The Balkans is a region of countries on or near the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. The inhabitants of the Balkans are a very diverse people, including Albanians, Roma- nians, Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, and people from the former Yugoslavia, which now con- sists of the sovereign nations of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo (Finn, 2008). Balkan cultures have been influenced by their proximity to Asia, and there have been many wars in the region based on ethnic divisions. Religious differences also divided the Balkan inhabitants along Muslim, Jew- ish, and Christian lines. It may seem odd to count Turkey as a European Balkan country, because most of Turkey is in Asia, and the European portion has served as a gateway to Asia. But it would be incorrect to separate Turkey’s history and culture from Europe’s because Turkey ruled over other Balkan countries in Europe for centuries. Also, the term Balkans was first used in 1808 to refer to lands under Turkish rule (Goldsworthy, 2006).

Greek Americans are the largest Balkan immigrant group in the United States: There are over one million Greek Americans today. Greece is a series of Mediterranean pen- insulas and islands with coasts facing Asia, Africa, and Western Europe; Greece gained independence from Turkey in 1914. Greek Americans first settled in industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest during the 1890s. Early-20th-century immigrants were from agricultural areas of southern Greece, and they supported themselves by finding low- paying, unskilled jobs until they could start small businesses on their own. By the 1940s,

Think About It

Can you think of other ways that European eth- nic groups have influenced American culture? Are there traditions you once considered solely American but have since learned originated in a European culture?

CHAPTER 4Section 4.6 Other European Groups

Greek Americans began to move into the professions, and they are now, on the whole, a prosperous group in the United States. Greeks fought on the Allied side during World War II and were active in resisting German occupation. Immigrants and refugees between World War II and the 1970s helped establish a Greek-American cultural community in the United States with schools, benevolent organizations, and Greek Orthodox parishes.

Greek-American private life tends to be centered on the family, and social life has tradi- tionally focused on the church. In recent years, Greek Americans have captured their heri- tage in educational programs about Ancient Greece, such as the videos produced by Pai- deia Projects. Some have also remained active in the politics of Greece (Kourvetaris, 1997).

ROMANIA

TURKEY

GREECE

SLOVENIA

SERBIA

BOSNIA AND

HERZEGOVINA

CROATIA

MACEDONIA

KOSOVO MONTENEGRO

Adriatic Sea

Black Sea

Aegean Sea

Sea of

Crete

BULGARIA

ALBANIA

Figure 4.12: Balkan Peninsula

CHAPTER 4Summing Up and Looking Ahead

Summing Up and Looking Ahead

Reflect back to the start of this chapter, where you read the historic words of Emma Lazarus’s poem at the Statue of Liberty. The ideal of welcoming the “huddled masses yearning to be free” is a symbol of what most Americans would like the United States to be, yet the reality has been far more complex. Immigrants’ lives have been riddled with unforeseen hardships. This chapter told the story of European- American groups who came first to the American colonies and then to the United States over the past 450 years. Irish Catholic-, Italian-, and Jewish-American immigrants faced particular prejudice, especially when mainstream Americans believed that immigrants would seize scarce jobs. Immigrants’ different cultural traditions and non-English languages could also seem to threaten traditional Anglo-dominant, English-speaking American culture. These Americans’ political hostility against immigrants often arose if newcomers showed any hint of allegiance to systems or groups that opposed American interests.

Most European immigrants chose assimilation and Anglo conformity as a means toward socioeconomic success. Sometimes such acculturation was coerced—as when the need to appear patriotic led German and Scandinavian Americans to abandon their traditional- language newspapers. Members of earlier generations were often disappointed by many younger generations’ abandonment of national ethnic identities over several generations of assimilation; this Americanization meant that children and grandchildren would be decreasingly interested in their family traditions. But members of later generations who tried to become fully culturally American were following the examples set by their immi- grant parents and grandparents, who had begun the process of assimilation to make lives better for their children.

Controversial Issues in Race and Ethnicity: We Are All Third Generation

The early- and mid-20th-century social scientists who studied American immigration and ethnicity believed that assimilation occurred over three generations. Anthropologist Margaret Mead, in fact, argued that “we are all third generation” in a chapter of her 1942 book And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America. She analyzed the character of the typical American with an immi- grant past, setting out to make his way in the world. This American’s grandfather had first immigrated to the United States, tearing himself away from the traditions of his own old country and his family. This American’s father—the second generation—had become American and, as a result, left his own father behind. The result was a third-generation American with no ties to ancestral past or place; his only sentimental attachments were to places and organizations he had temporarily been part of—the club or professional society he had joined long ago or the college he had attended. Mead’s third- generation American aspired to join a society descended from the United States’ Founding Fathers and other great men, such as Abraham Lincoln—men who were his compatriots but not his own ances- tors. According to Mead, this American of immigrant descent would teach his children to do the same things he had: leave home, take up new professions, and make their own ways in the world.

What Do You Think?

How important is cultural heritage? How important is American identity? Did Mead’s third-generation European American gain more than what he gave up?

CHAPTER 4Key Terms

In their early decades in the United States, the Anglo establishment did not extend racial definitions of whiteness to Germans, Italians, Irish, and Jews. Yet these assimilated groups are now unquestionably part of the racial white majority in the United States. European- American groups are often called white ethnics, but this is a bit of a misnomer: As ethnics in the past, they were not considered white, and as whites today, they are no longer eth- nics. As ordinary white Americans, both they and the Anglo establishment—to the extent that it still exists—have experiences that contrast deeply with nonwhite American racial groups. This contemporary setup of race in the United States will be the subject of Part 3.

Web Links

Manipulate this New York Times interactive immigration map to see how immigration waves played out in settlement patterns between 1880 and 2000.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer .html

Learn more about the immigrant experience at Ellis Island or even search for genealogi- cal information on ancestors who you know (or think) came through Ellis Island prior to 1954.

http://ellisisland.org/

Harvard University offers a web-based collection of digitized historical materials focusing heavily on immigration in the 19th century. Search for photos, diaries, and other printed material to get some insight into the lives of ordinary immigrants.

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/

Photographer Jacob Riis played a critical role in exposing how New York City’s immigrant poor lived in the late 19th century. For some of his story, check out this History Chan- nel video (http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us/videos/jacob-riis# jacob-riis) and this NPR special (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId= 91981589).

Key Terms

anti-Semitism Prejudice and discrimina- tion against Jews.

diaspora A geographically scattered group with a common homeland or origin; also, the scattering of a people.

ethnogenesis The formation of an ethnic group and ethnic identity after arrival in a new country.

hyphenated Americans Members of a group for whom foreign ethnicity or minority racial identity makes them dis- tinctive so that they have double names— e.g., African Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html

http://ellisisland.org

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/

http://www.history.com/shows/america-the-story-of-us/videos/jacob-riis#jacob-riis

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91981589

CHAPTER 4Key Terms

indirect immigration When an individual or group has first immigrated somewhere else before immigrating to a given coun- try—e.g., Germans who immigrated first to Russia and then to the United States or French who immigrated first to Canada and then to the United States.

nativists Individuals who believe that the native culture and native-born should pre- dominate and that the foreign-born should not have full rights.

perceived group threat Fears within the dominant group of an entire minority group, resulting in hostility.

white ethnics A term for European Amer- icans whose ancestors did not emigrate from Great Britain, i.e., non-WASPs.

Button 1:
Button 2:
Button 3:
Button 4:
Button 5:
Button 6:
Button 7:
Button 8:
Button 9:
Button 10:
Button 11:
Button 12:
Button 13:
Button 14:
Button 15:
Button 16:
Button 17:
Button 18:
Button 22:
Button 20:
Button 21:
Button 23:
Button 24:
Button 25:
Button 26:
Button 27:
Button 32:
Button 28:
Button 29:
Button 30:
Button 31: