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Article Title: Czech-American Immigration: Some Historiographical Observations

Full Citation: Frederick C Luebke, “Czech-American Immigration: Some Historiographical Observations,” Nebraska History 74 (1993): 218-222

URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1993CAObservations.pdf Date: 3/19/2015

Article Summary: Luebke’s essay lists major works of Czech-American history and outlines topics still available for scholarly exploration. He provides examples of works on other ethnic groups that use new concepts and methods.

Cataloging Information:

Scholarly Works on Czech- Cited:

Tomáš Čapek, in America, 1920 Kenneth Miller, Czecho- in America, 1922 Rose Rosicky, A History of the Czechs (Bohemians) in Nebraska, 1929 M Mark Stolarik, Growing Up on the South Side: Three Generations of Slovaks in Bethlehem, , 1880-1976, 1985 Josef J Barton, Peasants and Strangers: Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an American City, 1890-1950, 1975 June G Alexander, The Immigant Church and Community: Pittsburgh’s Slovak Catholics and Lutherans, 1880-1915, 1987

Photographs / Images: fig 94: Vladislavský sál in the Hradčany, ; fig 95: Rose Rosicky; fig 96: US map showing the principal Czech communities in 1910; fig 97: Czechs protesting the 1968 takeover in the Václavské námĕstí, Prague; fig 98: Sena Herman and Olie Duras in Wilber, 1910

Czech-American Immigration: Some Historiographical Observations

Czech migration to the United States Professor Josef Opatmy explains else­ World War, there was a considerable is a field that offers rich opportunities where in this issue. He identifies interest in Czech immigration history, for productive research to professional legacies of the Habsburg regime: the both on the national and state or local scholars and amateurs alike. During complex of languages, the competition levels. Tomas Capek published his the waning decades of the authoritar­ of ethnic and national identities, and pioneering study, Cechs in America, in ian, multi-national Habsburg Monar­ how these variables have complicated 1920 (fig. 67). Two years later a sur­ chy, the Czechs sent approximately a archival research. Furthermore, in the vey, Czecho-Slovaks in America, by third of a million emigrants to the several decades following World War Kenneth Miller, a sociologist, treated United States (figs. 69,94, 96). De- II, the Communist regime in Czecho­ the background of Czech and Slovak immigrants in Europe and their experi­ ences in the United States. In Nebraska Rose Rosicky produced her state-based study of Czech settlement (fig. 95).2 A variety of other books and articles, most of them treating limited aspects of Czech immigration, were published during the interwar period, but gradu­

Fig.94. The Vladislavskj sal in the Hradcany, Prague, where Ferdinand ofAustria,first Habsburg King ofBohemia, began his consolidation ofpower over the Czech estates during the St. Bartholomew Diet of 1547. (D. Murphy, NSHS) spite this impressive number, neither slovakia effectively discouraged com­ their emigration from Europe nor their munication among Czechoslovak and settlement in the United States has American scholars, historians, and received scholarly attention comparable social scientists. This was not merely to that given many other ethnic groups the consequence of the siege mentality Fig.95. Rose Rosicky, historian of Czech­ either in Austria-Hungary or elsewhere that gripped the government: Commu­ Nebraska. (NSHS C998-138) in Europe. I nist dogma teaches that common There are several explanations for people are united by their opposition to ally, as the first generation of immi­ this lack of research, both in the Czech . capitalist oppression, not by the devel­ grants aged and as economic depres­ Republic and in the United States, as opment of any sense of ethnicity and sion stimulated the consideration of patriotism, which would be counterpro­ socioeconomic rather than ethno­ Dr. Frederick C. Luebke is Charles 1. ductive to Communist goals (fig. 97). cultural questions, interest in Czech Mach Professor of History at the Univer­ When emerged from immigration flagged. sity ofNebraska-Lincoln. the wreckage wrought by the First The tone of books and articles pub­

218 lished in the 1920s and 1930s (as one should expect of work produced in that time) tended to be strongly filiopietistic. Their authors emphasized both the many contributions of individual immi­ grants to American economic, social, and cultural development, and the maintenance of immigrant language and culture. Factual in character and descriptive of separate ethnic group experience, these studies usually stressed the role of ethnic leaders and institutions, but they rarely explored the relationship between the elite and Fig.96. Map o/the United States showing the principal Czech communities in 1910. ordinary people. The intricacies of Adapted/rom Tomas Capek, The Cechs (Bohemians) in America, (1920). internal ethnic group structures or the relationships of ethnic societies to other Americans to reassess the place of all and methodological advances made in immigrant groups or to American racial and ethnic minority groups in our immigration studies by American, society generally were not explored. 3 society and to use the political process Canadian, Swedish, Danish, German, During the 1940s and 1950s, historians to achieve goals that hitherto had been Dutch, Italian, and other historians. At generally ignored the immigrant expe­ denied them. At the same time, there the same time, few American historians rience, although there were several was a resurgence of vitality in immi­ with training in the historiography of important books published on Ameri­ gration history that paralleled in some immigration could read Czech, much can immigrant history then-the works respects the new interest in African­ less train themselves to make use of of Oscar Handlin immediately spring to American history.6 Czech sources, many of which were not mind.4 The emphasis in those years, Since then the majority of American available to them. the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, historians interested in immigration The result is that to this day Ameri­ was on the ways in which Americans studies have shifted their conceptual can historians of immigration know were alike, not on how they differed. foundations from an assimilationist to a little about the detailed pattern of Scholarly work that focused on immi­ pluralist point of view, arguing that the emigration from , , grant experiences was usually concep­ genius of American society rests in its and Slovakia, compared to other west­ tualized in terms of assimilation: the multicultural diversity, not in its unity.? ern and northern European countries.8 process by which the differences that This is not to suggest that the assimila­ The large pattern is clear, of course, but mark an immigrant culture are gradu­ tionist interpretation has disappeared, to my knowledge no one has studied ally attenuated over time until the but rather that the emphasis on plural­ Czech emigration in the way historians ethnic group is virtually indistinguish­ ism has stimulated an enormous num­ have studied the phenomenon in vari­ able from the rest of society (fig. 81). ber of scholarly books and articles in ous western and northern European Sociologists especially were inter­ the field of immigration history. More­ countries. ested in assimilation. Among the many over, this body of scholarly literature An outstanding example of such books and articles they produced, none has employed a remarkable array of work is Robert Ostergren's study of was more influential than Milton new concepts and methods useful for Swedish migration.9 His book, A Gordon's Assimilation in American the study of ethnic groups in American Community Transplanted, is a model Life (1964). Although this book was in history. for historians who wish to integrate some respects the climax of a scholarly This, I believe, is an important point systematic comparisons in time, space, trend and was studied by many immi­ for the study of Czech-American his­ and culture into their studies. By gration historians, it appeared just as tory. It seems apparent that, because delving into the rich resources of local the Black Revolution of the 1960s scholarly discourse between Eastern history, Ostergren (a cultural geogra­ introduced a new emphasis on plural­ bloc countries and the West was inhib­ pher) has described in wonderful detail ism in American society.5 The anxiety ited by ideological hostilities for sev­ what life was like, socially and eco­ and sense of urgency produced by the eral decades, Czech scholars found it nomically, in one Swedish province at race riots of that decade stimulated difficult to keep up with the conceptual the time of the nineteenth-century

219 emigration. He connects religious variables to social discontent; he ex­ plores attitudes toward land ownership, inheritance patterns, marriage, family, and fertility; and then he shows how these variables were related to emigration. The list of other works published in the last two decades that probe the history of European emigration is truly impressive. I recommend Jon Gjerde's analysis of Norwegian emigration from Balestrand, Kristian Hvidt's history of emigration from Denmark, Walter Kamphoefner's study of German exo­ dus from Westfalia, Robert Swierenga on the Dutch, Bernard Bailyn and David Hackett Fischer on the English, Dino Cinel and Donna Gabaccia on the Italians, and Kerby Miller on the Irish. These and other historians have im­ mersed themselves in European sources and have discovered a variety of new ways to solve the kinds of research problems that have heretofore inhibited the study of Czech migration. '0 Is it possible to apply the concepts and methods used by Professor Oster­ gren to the history of Czech emigra­ tion? Do the sources permit such research? I encourage students of Czech emigration to find out, to adapt new conceptual schemes to the unique character of Czech sources, and to test the methods used by these historians. Bohemia and Moravia, of course, are not Sweden. The sources for the study of Czech emigration are vastly compli­ cated by the interplay of language and ethnicity in Austrian governance. But by taking advantage of the exemplary scholarship of Ostergren, Gjerde, and other scholars, historians of Czech Fig.97. Czechs protest the 1968 Soviet takeover in the Vaclavske namesti in Prague. emigration may ask new questions of (Courtesy Czech Heritage Collection, University ofNebraska-Lincoln, Archives & the past and that may lead to the dis­ Special Collections; NSHS C998 .1-569) covery of new sources that can be used in new ways appropriate to the pecu­ their communities in the United study of immigrants in Milwaukee, and liarities of Czech history. New ques­ States." I offer just a few examples of Stanley Nadel's history of in tions and new sources will in turn lead recent scholarship: In the field of City (fig. 75).'2 Students of to a richer understanding of the past. urban history, I recommend John the Czech immigrant experience will be The same approach may be used for Bodnar's general history of immigrants attracted to Mark Stolarik's study of the study of Czech immigrants and in urban America, Kathleen Conzen's three generations of Slovaks in Bethle­

220 Luebke • Some Historiographical Observations hem, Pennsylvania. 13 Josef Barton's 2 Toma~ Capek, The Cechs (Bohemians) in study of Italians, Rumanians, and America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920); Kenneth D. Miller, Czecho-Slovaks in Slovaks in is an excellent America (New York: George H. Doran Co., example of a multi-ethnic, comparative 1922); Rose Rosicky, A History of the Czechs approach.14 In the history of immigrant (Bohemians) in Nebraska (Omaha: Czech agriculture, Aidan McQuillan's com­ Historical Society of Nebraska, 1929). parative study of Swedes, French­ 3 Some dissertations produced during this Canadians, and German-Russian period belie this generalization. Robert I. Kutak's The Story ofa Bohemian-American Mennonites in Kansas is an example of Village (Louisville, Ky.: The Standard superb scholarship, and Terry Jordan's Printing Co., 1933, reprinted New York: older study of German farmers in Arno Press, 1970), written as a dissertation in continues to be useful. I5 Several sociology at Columbia University, treats Milligan, Nebraska. Another illuminating outstanding books have been produced example, also done at Columbia University, in the history of immigrant women, but is by a geographer, Russell W. Lynch, in my estimation Hasia Diner's history "Czech Farmers in ," Department of Irish-American women in the nine­ of Geography Bulletin (Oklahoma A & M University) 39 (June 1942): 1-119. teenth century is a revelation (fig. 98).16 The study of the ethnic family 4 Of Oscar Handlin's many books, the most important in this field are his Boston's Immi­ received classic treatment by grants: A Study in Acculturation (Cambridge: Yans-McLaughlin, whose analysis of Harvard University Press, 1941) and The Italian immigrant families in Buffalo Fig.98. Sena Herman (right) and Olie Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951). documents the relative ease with which Duras in Wilber, Nebraska, about 1910. 5 Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in they made the transition from the Old Herman owned a millinery shop there American Life: The Role ofRace, Religion, from 1906 to 1940. (NSHS K90-6) World to the NewP In church history, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). Jay Dolan's comparative study of of working-class Germans in .22 German and Irish Catholic parishes in This list of model studies could be 6 This interest was manifested in the formation of the Immigration History Society remains a model of extended well beyond the few books in 1965. The publications of this organiza­ scholarship after twenty years, but cited here. Suffice it to note that schol­ tion, Immigration History Newsletter (1969 to Czech historians will be especially ars working in the field of Czech­ the present)'and Journal ofAmerican Ethnic interested in June Alexander's com­ American history need to acquaint History (1981 to the present), have greatly stimulated scholarship in immigration studies. parative study of Slovak Catholic and themselves with the concepts and Another important product of this period is the Lutheran parishes in Pittsburgh. IS methods that have been developed in exceptionally useful Harvard Encyclopedia of Many books have been published in the migration studies in recent decades in American Ethnic Groups, cited above. field of ethnic politics, most of them in the United States and elsewhere, dis­ 7 This important topic is introduced by the 1970s, but none to my knowledge cover what is useful in them for the John Higham, "Current Trends in the Study have explored the parameters of Czech­ study of Czech immigrants, and then to of Ethnicity in the United States," Journal of 19 American Ethnic History 2 (Fall 1982): 5-15; American political behavior. Still expand our collective knowledge of but see also Olivier Zunz, "American History other studies explore the role of immi­ this most fascinating field of history. and the Changing Meaning of Assimilation," grants in education, labor, literature, Journal of American Ethnic History 4 (Spring and other fields. 2o 1985): 53-72. I have discussed the large Notes pattern of American immigration historiography Much needs to be done also in the I See the excellent essay on the Czechs in at greater length in my essay, "Tumerism, publication of primary documents: the United States by Karen Freeze in Stephan Social History, and the Historiography of There is no systematic study of Czech­ Thernstrom, ed., Harvard Encyclopedia of European Ethnic Groups in the United States," American letters comparable to what American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, Mass. in Frederick C. Luebke, Germans in the New and London: Belknap Press of Harvard World (Urbana: University of Press, Wolfgang Helbich and Walter Kamp­ University Press, 1980),261-72. See also 1990), 138-56. hoefner have done for the Germans or Vera Laska, The Czechs in America, 1633­ 21 8 One of the most illuminating studies to Frederick Hale for the Danes. Czech­ 1977: A Chronology and Fact Book (Dobbs appear in English on this topic is an extended American history would also be ad­ Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1978), and article by Johann Chmelar, "The Austrian Esther Jerabek, Czechs and Slovaks in North Emigration, 1900-1914," Perspectives in vanced if someone could assemble America: A Bibliography (New York: materials comparable to Hartmut Keil American History 7 (1973): 275-380, which Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in places Czech emigration in context with that and John Jentz's documentary history America; Chicago: Czechoslovak National from other parts of the Habsburg Empire. Council of America: 1976).

221 Nebraska History . FalllWinter 1993

9 Robert C. Ostergren, A Community 13 M. Mark Stolarik, Growing Up on the Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Transplanted: The Trans-Atlantic Experience South Side: Three Generations ofSlovaks in Analysis of Midwestern Politics, /850-/900 ofa Swedish Immigrant Selliement in the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1880-1976 (Lewis­ (New York: Free Press, 1970); Ronald P. Upper Middle West, 1835-1915 (Madison: burg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1985). Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political University of Press, 1988). See also his Immigration and Urbanization: Parties: Michigan, /827-/86/ (Princeton, The Slovak Experience (New York: AMS N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971); and 10 Jon Gjerde, From Peasants to Farmers: Press, 1989). Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest : The Immigration from Balestrand, Norway, to Social and Political Conflict, /888-1896 the Upper Middle West (New York: Cam­ 14 Josef J. Barton, Peasants and Strangers: (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, bridge University Press, 1985); Kristian Italians, Rumanians, and Slovaks in an 1971). My own Immigrants and Politics: The Hvidt, Flight to America: The Social Back­ American City, /890-/950 (Cambridge, Germans ofNebraska, /880-1900 (Lincoln: ground of300,000 Danish Emigrants (New Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975); see University of Nebraska Press, 1969) is a York: Academic Press, 1975); Walter D. also John Bodnar, Roger Simon, and Michael modest contribution to this field ; parts of its Kamphoefner, The Westfalians: From Ger­ P. Weber, Lives ofTheir Own: Blacks, methodology are now outdated. many to Missouri (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Italians, and in Pillsburgh, 1900-1960 University Press, 1987); Robert Swierenga, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). 20 Czech historians will be interested in ed., The Dutch in America: Immigration, A spate of books on ethnicity and mobility in John Bodnar' s essay, "Materialism and Selliement, and Cultural Change (New American cities have been produced. Among Morality: anl1 Education," Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, them are Dean Esslinger, Immigrants and the Journal of Ethnic Studies (1976), and his 1985); Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West : City: Ethnicity and Mobility in a Nineteenth­ "Schooling and the Slavic American Family," A Passage in the Peopling ofAmerica on the Century Midwestern Community (Port Wash­ in Bernard Weiss, ed., American Education Eve of the Revolution (New York: Alfred A. ington, N.Y. : Kennikat, 1975), which treats and the European Immigrant: /840-1940 Knopf, 1986); David Hackett Fischer, South Bend, Indiana, and Howard Chudacoff, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in Mobile Americans: Residential and Social Bodnar's Immigration and Industrialization : America (New York: Oxford University Mobility in Omaha, 1880-/920 (New York: Ethnicity in an American Milltown (Pitts­ Press, 1989); Dino Cinel, From Italy to San Oxford University Press, 1972), which 'burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), Francisco: The Immigrant Experience includes the ethnic dimension. Perhaps the features Slovak immigrants and is an impor­ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); most sophisticated study of immigrants in an tant study in immigrant labor history. As an Donna Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth urban setting is Olivier Zunz, The Changing example of comparative methodology in the Street: Housing and Social Change among Face of Inequality: Urbanization , lndustrial history of immigrant education, see Joel Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany: State Development, and Immigrants in Detroit, Perlmann, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and University of New York Press, 1984); and 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Social Structure among Irish, Italians, Jews, Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland Press, 1982). and Blacks in an American City, /880-/935 and the Irish Exodus to North America (New (1988). An outstanding example of the use of 15 D. Aidan McQuillan, Prevailing over York: Oxford University Press, 1985). immigrant literature as a source for ethnic Time: Ethnic Adjustment on the Kansas history in· America, see Dorothy Skardal, The II One of the most useful recent books on Prairies, /875-/925 (Lincoln : University of Divided Heart: Scandinavian Immigrant Czech-American history is Clinton Machann Nebraska Press, 1990); Terry G. Jordan, Experience through Literary Sources (Lin­ and James W. Mendl, Krasna Amerika: A German Seed in Texas Soil: Immigrant coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974). Study of the Texas Czechs, /851-1939 (Aus­ Farmers in 19th Century Texas (Austin: tin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1983). Robert L. University of Texas Press, 1969). 21 Walter D. Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Skrabanek, We ' re Czechs (College Station: Helbich, and Ulrike Sommer, eds., News from 16 Hasia R. Diner, Erin's Daughters in Texas A & M University Press, 1988) is the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer­ essentially a memoir of family life, but it Write Home (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University sity Press, 1983). offers many insights into the Czech-American Press, 1991); Frederick Hale, ed., Danes in community and its relationships to the rest of 17 Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and North America (Seattle: University of Wash­ society. Two excellent contributions on Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, ington Press, 1984). Czech-Americans appear in Frederick C. /880-1930 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University 22 Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz, eds., Luebke, ed., Ethnicity on the Great Plains Press, 1977). German Workers in Chicago: A Documentary (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 18 Jay P. Dolan, The Immigrant Church: History of Working-Class Culture from /850 1980): Bruce Garver, "Czech-American New York' s Irish and German Catholics, to World War I (Urbana: University of Freethinkers on the Great Plains," 147-69, /8/5-1865 (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame Illinois Press, 1988). and Josef 1. Barton, "Land, Labor, and Commu­ University Press, 1975); June G. Alexander, nity in Nueces: Czech Farmers and Mexican The Immigrant Church and Community: Laborers in South Texas, 1880-1930," 190-209. Pittsburgh's Slovak Catholics and Lutherans, 12 John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A /880-/9/5 (Pittsburgh: University of Pitts­ History of Immigrants in Urban America burgh Press, 1987). (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19 The role Of Czechs and Slovaks in 1985); Kathleen N. Conzen, Immigrant American political history has been surveyed Milwaukee, 1836-1860: Accommodation and by Vera Laska in Joseph S. Roucek and Community in a Frontier City (Cambridge, Bemard Eisenberg, eds., America's Ethnic Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); Politics (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnicity, 1982), 133-54. For more sophisticated Religion, and Class in New York City, /845-80 analyses of ethnic political behavior see Paul (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).

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