There
was little Greek emigration in the 19th century but this changed in
the 20th century. By the outbreak of the First World
War there were about 300,000 Greek immigrants in the United States.
The main reason for leaving Greece was unemployment, low wages and
high prices. Most Greeks settled in cities where they tended to find
menial, unskilled work. A Greek community developed around Second
and Third Avenues in New York. In 1894
the Greeks began publishing their own newspaper, Atlantis
in the city. During this period another important Greek colony emerged
around Hull House in Chicago
and the textile town of Lowell, Massachusetts
All large cities in the United States had Greek communities and these
were often self-sufficient with their own churches, coffee house,
mutual benefit societies and political clubs. Greek Orthodox religious
festivals and traditions were strictly observed. By 1910 both New
York and Chicago had Greek-language
newspapers.
The Census of 1930 revealed 303,751 Greeks in the United States. Chicago
had a Greek population of over 50,000 with New
York having 35,000. There were also large communities in Detroit,
Boston and St.
Louis.
An investigation carried out in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over
655,000 people emigrated to the United States from Greece. This amounted
to 1.3 per cent of the total foreign immigration during this period.
Last
updated: 14th August 2002
(1)
Jane
Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House
(1910)
A huge Hellenic meeting held at Hull-House, in which the achievements
of the classic period were set forth both in Greek and English by
scholars of well-known repute, brought us into a new sense of fellowship
with all our Greek neighbors. As the mayor of Chicago was seated upon
the right hand of the dignified senior priest of the Greek Church
and they were greeted alternately in the national hymns of America
and Greece, one felt a curious sense of the possibility of transplanting
to new and crude Chicago some of the traditions of Athens itself,
so deeply cherished in the hearts of this group of citizens.
The Greeks indeed gravely
consider their traditions as their most precious possession and more
than once in meetings of protest held by the Greek colony against
the aggressions of the Bulgarians in Macedonia, I have heard it urged
that the Bulgarians are trying to establish a protectorate, not only
for their immediate advantage, but that they may claim a glorious
history for the "barbarous country." It is said that on
the basis of this protectorate, they are already teaching in their
schools that Alexander the Great was a Bulgarian and that it will
be but a short time before they claim Aristotle himself, an indignity
the Greeks will never suffer!
(2)
Francis Hackett, Hull
House,
Survey Magazine (June, 1925)
Hull
House was American because it was international, and because it perceived
that the nationalism of each immigrant was a treasure, a talent, which
gave him a special value for the United States. We were flooded by
nationalisms. How many nights did I not stay awake while the interminable
whine of Greek folk-music came across Halsted Street to my exasperated
ears? Had not Miss Addams gathered Greeks by the hundred to come to
the theatre during their unemployment so that English words could
be taught to them in chorus and en masse.
(3)
Jane
Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House
(1910)
A Greek was much surprised to see a photograph of the Acropolis at
Hull House because he had lived in Chicago for thirteen years and
had never before met any Americans who knew about this foremost glory
of the world. Before he left Greece he had imagined the Americans
would be most eager to see pictures of Athens, and as he was a graduate
of a school of technology, he had prepared a book of colored drawings
and had made a collection of photographs which he was sure Americans
would enjoy. But although from his fruit stand near one of the large
railroad stations he had conversed with many Americans and had often
tried to lead the conversation back to ancient Greece, no one had
responded, and he had at last concluded that "the people of Chicago
knew nothing of ancient times".
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