After election to the state legislature before In the neighborhood and had close ties to Czech banks. He grew up in Chicago and lived in the heart of the immigrant community, in Lawndale, from 1892 until his death in 1933. Cermak was born in Bohemia and emigrated to the United States as a boy. Czech support for the Democrats continued well into the twentieth century, peaking with the election of Anton Cermak, a Czech immigrant, as the Democratic mayor of Chicago in 1931.Īnton J. However, Chicago Czechs changed their allegiance in local Their energies were devoted more to ethnic and neighborhood organizations than to radical or unionist activity.Įarly Czech immigrants largely voted for theīecause of their opposition to slavery. By the 1910s and 1920s, however, Czechs earned more and worked at a wider range of occupations, including as operatives at Western Electric. Led by socialist-leaning freethinkers, Bohemians turned readily to the Socialist Labor Party at the end of the nineteenth century. Tragedy was a violent clash between heavily Bohemian lumber shovers and the police. Whole neighborhoods joined to keep out strikebreakers, playing a prominent part in street fighting withĪnd other labor conflicts. To better their economic situation, drawing on their dense associational network. Eschewing traditional craft unions, they readily employed the mass Shovers in the “lumber district” adjoining Pilsen, they earned less than nearly all other major ethnic group in the city. In addition to their local concentration, Chicago Czechs lived at the center of a network of Midwestern Czech communities, including significant populations in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Missouri.Ĭhicago's Czech immigrants possessed few locally marketable skills, and in the 1880s, working at unsteady jobs, notably as (Daily Herald, founded 1891) was a “neutral” paper for the larger Midwestern Czech community.īy the turn of the century, Chicago was the third-largest Czech city in the world, after Prague and Vienna. ( Justice, founded 1900) served the socialists, and the (Concord, founded 1875) served the freethinkers, (Nation, founded 1894) served the Catholic community, By the 1920s there were four main Czech-language Burial was equally segregated: the Bohemian National Cemetery, aįor freethinkers, was founded in 1877 and remains in existence today. The immigrant institutions founded as the Czechs became established, includingĪssociations, and gymnastic societies (Sokols), were frequently identified with one group or another within the community. Although most Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire were content to subscribe to the state religion on official documents, with the result that the overwhelming majority identified themselves as Catholics, many emigrants espoused Religious or philosophical differences divided Chicago Czechs and their institutions. By the 1930s many Czechs were moving into such suburbs as As the Czechs continued to move south and west, other immigrant groups moved into the neighborhoods they left, with immigrants fromĪnd other Slavic areas settling in Pilsen around the turn of the century. (popularly known as “Czech California”), where they established several churches,Īnd Sokol halls. ![]() By the 1890s, Czechs were colonizing middle-class neighborhoods like ” which included the Czech congregation of St. Movement south and west in the 1870s and 1880s generated a second working-class Czech community, dubbed “ Wenceslaus at DeKoven and Desplaines Streets and was largely spared by the Chicago The neighborhood, known as “Prague,” centered on the In the 1850s and 1860s many Czech immigrants settled on the This gradual movement followed the economic progress of many Czech immigrants and the influx of other ethnic groups. Chicago's Czech-born population reached its peak in the 1870s, and the Czech immigrant community remained important in the city long after immigration restrictions were imposed in the 1920s.Ĭhicago's Czech community followed a common pattern of migration from inner-city working-class neighborhoods to middle-class areas further out and on to the suburbs. Czech emigration swelled as faster railroads to port cities like Hamburg facilitated that leg of the journey as well. In the following two decades the cost and duration of emigration from Europe decreased markedly, as the transatlantic journey dropped from an average of 44 days in 1850 to an average of 9.7 days in 1875. Czech immigration to Chicago began in the 1850s, after the
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |