The interwar origins of the white ethnic: Race, residence, and German Philadelphia, 1917-1939

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 23, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 78-131

  Kazal, Russell A ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 24644476869     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (125)

1. For an overview, see Elliott Robert Barkan, And Still They Come: Immigrants and American Society, 1920 to the 1990s (Wheeling, Ill., 1996), 146-151
2. Michael Novak, The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies (New York, 1971), was the revival's most influential manifesto
3. Barry Goldberg and Colin Greer, "American Visions, Ethnic Dreams: Public Ethnicity and the Sociological Imagination," Sage Race Relations Abstracts 15 (1990): 30-31
4. Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 204-205 (quotation)
5. and Rudolph J. Vecoli, "Return to the Melting Pot: Ethnicity in the United States in the Eighties," Journal of American Ethnic History 5 (Fall 1985): 7-20
6. Skeptics include Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America (New York, 1981)
7. Herbert J. Gans, "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America," Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (January 1979): 1-20
8. and Richard D. Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven, Conn., 1990)
9. See Barkan, And Still They Come, 239-242, for an overview of this debate
10. Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J., 2001), 329-339
11. David R. Colburn and George E. Pozzetta, "Race, Ethnicity, and the Evolution of Political Legitimacy," in The Sixties: From Memory to History, ed. David Farber (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1994)
12. David R. Roediger, "Whiteness and Ethnicity in the History of 'White Ethnics' in the United States," in Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History (London and New York, 1994), 183 (quotation)
13. Ronald P. Formisano, Boston against Busing: Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991)
14. Rieder, Canarsie; Stefano Luconi, From Paesani to White Ethnics: The Italian Experience in Philadelphia (Albany, N.Y., 2001), chap. 6
15. Examples of this now voluminous literature include Roediger, "Whiteness and Ethnicity"; David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London, 1991)
16. James R. Barrett and David Roediger, "Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and the 'New Immigrant' Working Class," Journal of American Ethnic History 16 (Spring 1997): 3-44
17. Noel Ignatiev, How The Irish Became White (New York, 1995)
18. Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, Calif., 1996)
19. Eric Arnesen, "Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 60 (Fall 2001): 23, 20, 24-25, and passim
20. Eric Arnesen, "Assessing Whiteness Scholarship: A Response to James Barrett, David Brody, Barbara Fields, Eric Foner, Victoria Hattam, and Adolph Reed," ibid., 84
21. Eric Foner, "Response to Eric Arnesen," ibid., 57-58
22. See also Peter Kolchin's probing, though more sympathetic, critique; Kolchin, "Whiteness Studies: The New History of Race in America," Journal of American History 89 (June 2002): 154-173
23. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 39-43 and passim
24. Arnesen, "Historians' Imagination," 25 (quotation), 26
25. Arnesen, "Response," 81
26. David Brody, "Charismatic History: Pros and Cons," International Labor and Working-Class History, no. 60 (Fall 2001): 47
27. Adolph Reed, Jr., "Response to Eric Arnesen," ibid., 79
28. Foner, "Response," 59
29. Kolchin, "Whiteness Studies," 172
30. See W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups, Yankee City Series, vol. 3 (New Haven, Conn., 1945), 68, 93 ("ethnics")
31. cited in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., online, s.v. "ethnic," B.3
32. Werner Sollors, "Foreword: Theories of American Ethnicity," in Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader, ed. Werner Sollors (New York, 1996), x ("ethnicity"), xn ("ethnicity," "ethnic," "ethnic group"); OED online, s.v. "ethnic," A.2.a ("ethnic")
33. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1924), 645-646 ("ethnic groups")
34. Andrew M. Greeley, Why Can't They Be More Like Us? America's White Ethnic Groups (New York, 1971)
35. Arnesen, "Historians' Imagination," 17-18; United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 213-214, 215 (1923)
36. Dominic Pacyga, "Chicago's 1919 Race Riot: Ethnicity, Class, and Urban Violence," in The Making of Urban America, ed. Raymond A. Mohl, 2nd ed. (Wilmington, Del., 1997), 195-201
37. Thomas A. Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (Oxford, 2003), 42, 6
38. Gary Gerstle, "The Working Class Goes to War," Mid-America 75 (October 1993): 313, 318
39. Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1998), 80-81, 186-187
40. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, N.J., 1996), chaps. 8-9
41. John T. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North (Chicago, 1996), chaps. 2-4
42. I offered a version of this formulation in Russell A. Kazal, "Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History," American Historical Review 100 (April 1995): 469-470
43. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 41, 53-59, 78-85, 187
44. Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 241, 211
45. Luconi, From Paesani to White Ethnics, 156, 127-128, 133-142
46. John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia, 1987), 160-169
47. Kenneth Baer, "Whitman: A Study of Race, Class, and Postwar Public Housing Opposition" (Senior honors thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1994)
48. McGreevy, Parish Boundaries, 92
49. Gerstle, American Crucible, 3-5 and passim
50. On "Americanism" as a multivalent language, see Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (Cambridge, 1989), 5-15
51. For Philadelphia's German-born population from 1850 to 1920, see Alan Nathan Burstein, "Residential Distribution and Mobility of Irish and German Immigrants in Philadelphia, 1850-1880," (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1975), 38
52. U.S. Census Bureau, Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington, 1864), xxxii
53. On the overall decline of urban German America and German immigration, see James M. Bergquist, "German Communities in American Cities: An Interpretation of the Nineteenth-Century Experience," Journal of American Ethnic History 4 (Fall 1984): 17-23
54. Kathleen Neils Conzen, "Germans," in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Stephan Thernstrom (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), 413 (Table 4), 410 (Table 2), 406 (Table 1)
55. Karl J.R. Arndt and May E. Olson, The German Language Press of the Americas, vol. 1, History and Bibliography 1732-1968: United States of America, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1976), 558, 576
56. Francis Xavier Roth, O.S.A., History of St. Vincent's Orphan Asylum of Tacony, Philadelphia: A Memoir of its Diamond Jubilee, 1855-1933. (Philadelphia, 1934), 49-50
57. Arndt and Olson, German Language Press, 553, 558, 575, 548
58. On the general crisis of German Philadelphia's associational life, see Kazal, "Becoming 'Old Stock,'" chap. 3
59. Conzen, "Germans," 422
60. and Higham, Strangers in the Land, 198-199
61. Germantown Independent-Gazette, 11 April 1918, p. 6 (quotation)
62. Clifton James Child, The German-Americans in Politics, 1914-1917 (Madison, Wisc., 1939), 173
63. Lloyd M. Abernethy, "Progressivism, 1905-1919," in Philadelphia: A 300-Year History, ed. Russell F. Weigley, Nicholas B. Wainwright, and Edwin Wolf 2nd (New York, 1982), 560
64. Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States (New York, 1979), 236
65. Richard Polenberg, Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (New York, 1987), 197
66. and David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (Oxford, 1980), chap. 1
67. Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 282
68. Harry W. Pfund, A History of the German Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1944), 19
69. Gary Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans," Journal of American History 84 (September 1997): 557
70. Robert Gregg, Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression: Philadelphia's African Methodists and Southern Migrants, 1890-1940 (Philadelphia, 1993), 13-14, 24
71. Abernethy, "Progressivism, 1905-1919," 532; George Morgan, The City of Firsts: Being a Complete History of the City of Philadelphia from Its Founding, in 1682, to the Present Time (Philadelphia, 1926), 305
72. The sampling methodology is described in greater detail in Kazal, "Becoming 'Old Stock,'" 605-617
73. German-stock residents made up 15.1 percent of the city's population in 1900; Theodore Hershberg, Alan N. Burstein, Eugene P. Ericksen, Stephanie W. Greenberg and William L. Yancey, "A Tale of Three Cities: Blacks, Immigrants, and Opportunity in Philadelphia, 1850-1880, 1930, 1970," in Philadelphia: Work, Space, Family, and Group Experience in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Theodore Hershberg (New York, 1981), 465, Table 1
74. William B. Richter, North of Society Hill, And Other Stories (North Quincy, Mass, 1970), 119-120, 30
75. On Marshall Street, see Elaine Krasnow Ellison and Elaine Mark Jaffe, eds., Voices from Marshall Street: Jewish Life in a Philadelphia Neighborhood, 1920-1960 (Philadelphia, 1994)
76. Inner Missionary 9 (January-February 1926): 4
77. Robert Michael Zecker, "'All Our Own Kind Here': The Creation of a Slovak-American Community in Philadelphia, 1890-1945" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1998), 132, 137-138, 141, 141n, 135-136, 182; personal communication with Robert Zecker, 21 January 2004
78. On Slovak Hall, see Zecker, "'All Our Own Kind Here,'" 354. I am grateful to Robert Zecker for making available to me transcribed excerpts from interviews he conducted for "'All Our Own Kind Here.'" Following Zecker's agreement with his interviewees, I identify subjects by their first name and the initial letter of their last name
79. Ellison and Jaffe, eds., Voices from Marshall Street, 43, 98, 133, 71, 132
80. Gruninger interview. On the history and boundaries of these parishes, see Joseph L. J. Kirlin, Catholicity in Philadelphia: From the Earliest Missionaries Down to the Present Time (Philadelphia, 1909), 283-284, 320-321, 398
81. 1869-1919: Golden Jubilee, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Front and Allen Streets, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1919)
82. These figures represent my surname analysis of the collection lists, which appear in St. Michael's Kalendar 4 (December 1901): 25-38
83. and The Parish Monthly Calendar, Church of St. Michael 8 (February 1933): 12-21
84. Edward MacLysaght, The Surnames of Ireland, 3d ed. (Dublin, 1978)
85. P.H. Reaney and R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames, 3d ed. (London, 1991)
86. George F. Jones, German-American Names (Baltimore, 1990)
87. Horst Naumann, ed., Das große Buch der Familien Namen. Alter-Herkunft-Bedeutung (Niedernhausen, Ts., 1994)
88. Hans Bahlow, Deutsches Namenlexikon (Munich, 1967)
89. Kazal, "Becoming 'Old Stock,'" 502, 481-482; Eichman interview; Beichl interview
90. Gregg, Sparks from the Anvil, 25-28
91. Charles Ashley Hardy III, "Race and Opportunity: Black Philadelphia During the Era of the Great Migration, 1916-1930" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1989), 169-170
92. Werner Conze and Antje Sommer, "Rasse," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck, vol. 5, Pro-Soz (Stuttgart, 1984), 142-150
93. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 47
94. Philadelphia Sonntags-Journal, 6 October 1901, p. 5 (in GSP)
95. Lutherisches Kirchenblatt, 3 February 1900, p. 37
96. Nord Amerika, 14 July 1900, p. 6 (in PAHRC)
97. Philip Scranton, Figured Tapestry: Production, Markets, and Power in Philadelphia Textiles, 1885-1941 (Cambridge, 1989), 268-269
98. Vincent P. Franklin, "The Philadelphia Race Riot of 1918," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 99 (July 1975): 339, 343
99. C.J. Hexamer, "German Achievement in America," German American Annals, n.s. vol. 1 (January 1903): 46
100. Luconi, From Paesani to White Ethnics, 76
101. Hardy, "Race and Opportunity," 177-181
102. Figures calculated from Census Bureau, Fourteenth Census, vol. 3, Population, 1920, 896-897
103. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930: Population, vol. 3, part 2, Montana-Wyoming (Washington, 1932), 750
104. Polk's (Boyd's) Philadelphia Directory 1927 (Philadelphia, 1927)
105. Polk's (Boyd's) Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) City Directory 1929 (Philadelphia, 1929)
106. Polk's Philadelphia City Directory 1930 (Philadelphia, 1930)
107. cited in Robert M. Zecker," 'Negrov Lyncovanie' and the Unbearable Whiteness of Slovaks: The Immigrant Press Covers Race," American Studies 43 (Summer 2002): 64, 64n
108. Sadie Tanner Mossell, "The Standard of Living Among One Hundred Negro Migrant Families in Philadelphia," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 98 (November 1921): 178; Beichl interview. The census tracts referred to are Tracts 29-C and 29-D. These figures represent my calculations from an unpublished compilation of Census Bureau work sheets tabulating statistics for Philadelphia census tracts in 1930, and from the worksheets themselves; Box 1: "1930 Census. Census Tracts. Table 1," and Box 2: "1930 Census. Census Tracts. Table 2-," both in possession of the Government Publications Department, Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia
109. Slackway appeared at the same address in the 1930 manuscript census as Andrew Slackway, a painter born in Pennsylvania with a German-born father. He shared the household with his wife, father-in-law (the then-household head), and sister-in-law, Lavinia Olden or Alden; U.S. Census Schedules (1930), E.D. 51-714, p. 21b
110. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003), 167-168
111. These figures represent my analysis of the list provided in "Block Collection 1921," St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar 2 (November 1921): unpaginated. I checked every name on the list that appeared either questionably German or non-German in at least one and usually two or more of the six surname dictionaries cited in note 53
112. Standard and Times, 19 April 1924, p. 1
113. For examples of relief work, see St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar (May 1921): unpaginated [3]
114. St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar 3 (November 1922): 3
115. St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar (March 1921): unpaginated [8]
116. For examples of the bulletin's generic nature after Regnery's arrival, see St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar 5 (May 1924)
117. St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar 1 (November 1926)
118. The Parish Calendar, St. Ignatius Church 4 (March 1923): 3; St. Ignatius Church 5 (August 1924): 7
119. St. Ignatius' Monthly Calendar 2 (September 1927): 3-4
120. St. Ignatius Church 5 (November 1924): unpaginated
121. St. Ignatius Church 3 (August 1922): unpaginated [1]
122. St. Ignatius Church 6 (April 1925): 7
123. The Parish Monthly Calendar, St. Ignatius Church 3 (May 1928): 11
124. The judge may have equated Nordic with white as used more broadly. The Philadelphia Tribune could use "white" and "Nordic" interchangeably in the late 1920s; see Tribune, 8 November 1928, p. 2
125. Federal Writers' Project, Works Progress Administration, WPA Guide to Philadelphia (reprint, Philadelphia, 1988