Greeks in Michigan

by Stavros K. Frangos

Overview

The influence of Greek culture on Michigan began long before the first Greeks arrived. The American settlers of the Old Northwest Territory had definite notions of Greeks and Greek culture. America and its developing society and culture were to be the "New Athens," a locale where the resurgence in the values and ideals of classical Greece were to be reborn. Stavros K. Frangos describes how such preconceptions and the competing desires to retain heritage and to assimilate have shaped the Greek experience in Michigan. From the padrone system to the church communities, Greek institutions have both exploited and served Greek immigrants, and from scattered communities across the state to enclaves in Detroit, Greek immigrants have retained and celebrated Greek culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870136795
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2004
Series:	Discovering the Peoples of Michigan Series
Pages:	90
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Stavros K. Frangos is a Ph.D. candidate in social cultural anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington. He was the project coordinator for the 1981-82 NEH museum exhibition "The Greek-American Family: Continuity Through Change." This exhibit, which focused on the history of Greeks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the United States for four years and is now on permanent display at the Greek Orthodox National Saint Photios Shrine in St. Augustine, Florida.

Read an Excerpt

Greeks in Michigan

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By Stavros K. Frangos

Michigan State University Press

Copyright © 2004 Stavros K. Frangos
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87013-679-5

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Chapter One

Greece and the American Imagination

The influence of Greek culture on Michigan began long before the first Greek arrived. The American settlers of the Old Northwest Territory had definite notions of Greeks and Greek culture. America and its developing society and culture were to be the New Athens, a locale where the resurgence in the values and ideals of classical Greece were to be reborn.

With these presuppositions in mind, the way Greeks arrived and preserved their culture in Michigan has an added dimension not usually encountered by other immigrants to America. The newly arrived Greek immigrants actively attempted to deal with the existing myths about the Greeks, and contributed to a two-way process that evolved in Michigan.

The Greek War of Independence: The 1821 Detroit Press Coverage

Grecian Fever was the term quickly coined in 1821 for the worldwide excitement caused by the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire. This bid for freedom especially captured the imagination of Americans still proud of their own Revolution. The Greek War of Independence occurred when Michigan was one of the most distant of Western frontier outposts. The region was mostly inhabited by wild animals and roving bands of none-too-friendly Native Americans. The entire territory boasted only one town, Detroit, and it had fewer than two thousand inhabitants. Here in this most unlikely of locations, four names in particular deserve to be added to the still incomplete list of American Philhellenes: Sheldon, Reed, Woodward, and Leib.

John P. Sheldon and Ebenezer Reed, editors and publishers of the weekly Detroit Gazette, spread the gospel of philhellenism to the buck-skin-clad frontiersmen of the Michigan territory. In June 1821 the Gazette ran five separate items on the Greek War of Independence. By 9 January 1824 the dispatches on the Greek War of Independence had so incited the local population that the Detroit Gazette printed an unsigned letter to the editor urging for the formation of a Thespian Society to raise funds to help the Greeks. The anonymous writer asks, [M]any cities and villages are contributing to this great object, and why, should Detroit be backward in casting her mite?

In 1827, James Ronaldson Leib, son of a prominent Detroit family, saw to the distribution of relief goods to Greece aboard the ship Levant. Young Leib, a recent Harvard graduate, traveled to the Mediterranean, where he met with Greek government officials and other American Philhellenes as he distributed an estimated $8,547.18 worth of supplies. Leib was so appalled by the suffering and poverty of the Greeks that he later wrote to his father, saying, the most wretched Indians he had ever seen in America were better off than the people of Greece.

The first chief judge of the Territory of Michigan, Augustus Brevoort Woodward, an ardent classical scholar, left a lasting legacy to the Michigan style of philhellenism. On 14 July 1825 Woodward advertised the sale of his Michigan properties in the Detroit Gazette as follows: I have, for some time, been planning a Town on these tracts, under the name ypsilanti, in honor of the General distinguished for his services in the cause of Grecian Liberty. It is situated in a high and healthy country, with an atmosphere peculiarly pure, aromatic and salubrious.... It contains also elegant positions for mills, with abundance of meadow lands, and that of the very finest quality, is also considerable.

These nineteenth-century American estimates of modern Greeks did not result from extensive personal contact with Greek immigrants. Plays, poems, sermons, speeches, editorials and resolutions in Congress fired up the 'Grecian Fever.' Men such as Sheldon, Reed, Woodward, Leib, and other Grecians of frontier Michigan were either men inspired by classical learning and the ideals expressed by the ancient Greeks or men who understood the meaning of liberty and wished the then struggling

Greeks success in their own wholehearted bid for freedom. The Greek immigrants to Michigan learned to build on these existing notions of Greece, and this myth-making has seen some unusual developments. On 29 August 1928, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, a Greek-American fraternal organization, presented the city of Ypsilanti with a bust of General Demetrius Ypsilanti, the work of the Greek sculptor Christopher Nastos, in pentelic marble. Among the Greeks of Michigan there is a popular legend connected with Demetrius Ypsilanti. It is widely contended that Demetrius Ypsilanti not only traveled to America during the struggle for independence but also participated in the Battle of Monmouth on 8 June 1778. The Reverend Harvey C. Colburn cites this legend in his book titled The Story of Ypsilanti. Aside from the lack of direct historical evidence for Demetrius Ypsilanti's presence in that famous New Jersey battle, however, the main argument against his physically being in North America is that his father Constantine Ypsilanti was born in 1760, eighteen years before the Battle of Monmouth.

This has done nothing to stop this legend from growing. One recent account not only claims Ypsilanti's presence at the Battle of Monmouth Distribution of Michigan's population claiming Greek ancestry (2002). but that he led Greek volunteers into the conflict. While this account goes on to say that there is no record of their origin, the authors are not afraid to postulate that perhaps some of them had come from New Smyrna and St. Augustine. Here the authors are referring to the Greek colonists who in 1768, along with Minorcans and Italians, formed the New Smyrna Colony in eastern Florida. While the existence of these Greek colonists in eastern Florida is an accepted fact of history, however, there is no evidence that they formed a Greek volunteer unit at the Battle of Monmouth.

Only 303 Greek immigrants arrived in America between 1820 and 1880. More may have entered unrecorded or under another ethnic designation. The first Greek is not noted in any Michigan census before 1850, and then only one individual is cited. The number of Greek immigrants to America rose to 183,498 from 1891 to 1910, an increase undeniably attesting to a swift, intentional, and carefully orchestrated migration. Why did these people leave Greece? What role did this massive migration play in establishing Greek communities across Michigan?

Going to the "Ksentia": The Mass Migration, 1891–1921

At the turn of the century Greeks began leaving their homeland in large numbers for the Kseniti, (the foreign lands). The decision to labor in foreign lands was most often motivated by a series of social obligations (such as providing a dowry for sisters and acquiring capital in the countryside), by long-established labor practices (verbal and written agreements to work for employers abroad for fixed periods in exchange for the initial fare), by a desire to avoid the growing class discrimination in the rural countryside, and, in the years just before the Balkan Wars and World War I, to avoid military service.

These motivations were and remain commemorated in the folk song tradition known as tis Ksenitias. A commercial record copied from a Greek-American living in St. Clair Shores is based on this genre's time-honored tradition.

    Afino Yia (I Leave You, Farewell)

    I'm leaving, sweet mama,
    And I'm going to foreign lands.

    So, give me your hand,
    I'll kiss it tenderly and say goodbye.

    I ask your blessing and your wish, little mama,
    That I make my fortune and return home to you.

    So long to my friends, mama,
    And to my comrades who revel all night.

    So long to my neighborhood, mama,
    And to the neighbor-girl that I love.

With that being said, the larger issue of Greek music in Michigan has yet to be fully studied. It is widely recalled that a long-time favorite of many Greek-Americans in Michigan was the rendition of the song Misirlou sung by Maria Karelas Rumell of Detroit. This version was recorded with the Spyros Stamos Orchestra in Chicago on 23 October 1941. Ioannis Halkias, also known as Jack Gregory, was the first musician to record a bouzouki solo anywhere in the world. His Mourmouriko was the introductory theme song of Detroit's Hellenic Hour, a daily radio program which ran from the early 1940s until the 1960s.

This out-migration was not limited to America. While reporting on the existence of traditional Greek musical performance outside of Greece and Asia Minor, noted musicologist Sotirios (Sam) Chianis also provides a quick sketch of Greek communities abroad during the period between 1900 and 1930:

By the 1920s there were many Greek emigrants, from both the mainland and islands, in the Congo and Abyssinia and especially in the Egyptian cities of Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, Zagazig, and Ismailia. The majority, however, settled in such cities as New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Wherever they settled, these immigrants established strong Greek communities, zealously guarding and perpetuating their religion, language, social customs, and especially their regional folk music and dances. By 1920 each Greek community had several coffeehouses and at least one caféaman, where one could hear (and dance to) live Greek music.

The Greek press, popular journals, and later academics attributed this massive movement to the 1898–1906 failure of the worldwide currant market. The currant grown in the Mediterranean was used in wine making and sought after by the French and Russians to supplement their own grape supply, which had been destroyed by phylloxera insects. With the reestablishment of their own vines, the French and Russians abandoned all currant imports. The long-standing explanation for the mass migrations of Greeks during the period between 1880 and 1920 has thus been directly tied to the collapse of the currant market. The exodus of the first Greeks from the Peloponnesus region of mainland Greece began shortly after this destructive downturn in the national economy.

From a historical perspective, however, the currant crisis is not the only explanation for this mass departure. The Tsintzinians, Greeks from the village of Tsintzina in the heart of the Parnon mountain range east of Sparta, were the first large group to arrive in America from Greece between the early 1870s and the late 1880s. Nearly one thousand young men immigrated from Tsintzina following the nineteenth-century pattern of chain migration to foreign lands to seek temporary employment.

Greeks coming to America clearly saw their migration as a temporary sojourn. The Greeks' expression of their intention was backed by a long history of temporary seasonal and periodic migrations abroad. Accounts left by Greek immigrants who came to Michigan during the 1890s attest to this initial position of high mobility, and accounts of their intentions of staying for only a short time have been gathered from virtually every Michigan community. The commuting of men around the country, the chain migration, and even the later trips back to Greece in the 1930s by entire families can be understood as expressions of this initially tentative commitment to America.

America was simply not the land of every Greek youth's dreams. Almost half of all Greeks who arrived in America during this period returned to Greece. As a group, the Greeks, who, according to the 1940 Bureau of the Census, numbered only thirteenth in total population of the United States, ranked fourth in terms of return rate to their country of origin. Unlike other ethnic groups arriving in America in the late 1890s, Greek males outnumbered females two to one, and continued to do so well into the 1950s.

The influx of Greek labor was unacceptable to the average native-born citizen. The establishment in 1922 of the national fraternal organization known as the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA) was in response to the need to struggle against anti-Greek racism. In 1922 and for a considerable time thereafter, to be a member of AHEPA was not equivalent to being a member of the Elks, Moose, Rotary Club or other service organization. It was like being in the NAACP.

Instead of a community-by-community study I will present those Greeks in Michigan largely ignored in existing accounts and look at some of the major themes of the Greek presence in Michigan. As in all the early Greek communities in America, Greeks in Michigan faced three recurring problems: American hostility over remittances sent back to Greece, Greek immigrants' involvement in European politics, and Greek participation in labor disputes.

The temporary migrant labor position taken by most immigrants especially infuriated native-born Americans. This idea of a temporary sojourn coincided with the invention, in the late 1890s, of the international cashier's check. One of the most often cited problems with the new immigrants was the money, in the form of international money orders, that they sent home. Native-born Americans thought that money earned in America should be spent there. In their eyes, sending money back to Europe drained America of much-needed funds.

In 1911, Greeks in America sent 186,000,000 drachmas (at about 5.18 drachmas per dollar) in remittances to their families in Greece. In 1920 that figure reached 1,191,000,000 drachmas. Naturally this overall pattern of the Greek remittances was not lost on the American economists: Records of outgoing postal money-orders destined for Greece usually show, in comparison with other countries, the highest average amount.

For the Greek immigrants it seemed to be an issue of being in the right place at the right time. For the 1913–1920 period, Mears reports:

[M]ost important of all, however, is the fact that the high level of income in the United States and a period of high prices for confectionary, fruit, restaurant diet, flowers, and shoe-shines, afforded huge savings in America, which were transmitted in large measure for the private economy, largely family savings, and the national economy, largely patriotic loans, of the Kingdom of Greece.

A brief quote from one Michigan newspaper article can offer insights not only into how Greek immigrants provided volunteers for both the Balkan Wars and World War I, but also into the manner in which those who stayed in Michigan actively involved themselves in humanitarian relief work:

A few of the Grand Rapids Greeks have returned home to take a hand in the war as volunteers and more would go if they could. In one way, however, they seem all to be helping the cause at home. They are producing the coin and sending it where [sic] will do the most good in giving the Turks a trouncing. The local banks have been selling more foreign exchange for Greece since the war broke out than in many months before. Owning to the disturbed conditions in the Balkan states the exchange is mostly on London instead of on bankers in Greece. At one of the local banks it is estimated the remittances amount to something like $1,000 a day in amounts of a few dollars up to several hundred. In the banks where the Greeks do most of their banking almost any time small groups of dark complexioned, earnest men can be seen in the corner, and this usually means the purchase of another draft either by an individual or with pooled funds.

One point brought up about Greek economic development is of special interest to our study of the Greeks of Michigan:

[A]s they prosper they scatter into the smaller cities and towns in order to pursue the few businesses to which they confine themselves, which in turn gives rise to the characteristic feature of Greek immigration— its scattered nature.

The newspaper headlines in Michigan were filled with the daily dispatches from the trenches of first the Balkan Wars and then the First World War. Banner headlines in Detroit, Grand Rapids, and elsewhere reported upon the general turmoil experienced during the period of those two wars. During the Balkan Wars the popular press charged that the immigrants were more concerned with the politics of their country of birth than with America. A number of articles from around the state reported on Greek immigrants in Michigan and their involvement in the war effort at home and abroad. Two especially noteworthy accounts were "Greek Pastor's Daughter Foiled in Attempt to Become War Nurse: Funds for New Church Go across Ocean to Fight Hated Turks," and the impressive Illustrated Detroit Journal article, "Greeks Who Returned to Their Country Fight the Turks." Similar articles appeared across the state.

Unfortunately, this essay cannot provide a full discussion of the Michigan Greeks' participation in the sending of remittances to Greece, or a detailed account of their documented involvement in the Balkan Wars and then World War I.

The circumstances and individuals involved in the Greek padrone system in Michigan require us to focus on this issue.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Greeks in Michigan by Stavros K. Frangos Copyright © 2004 by Stavros K. Frangos. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Greece and the American Imagination....................1
The Greek War of Independence: The 1821 Detroit Press Coverage....................3
Going to the "Ksentia": The Mass Migration, 1891–1921....................7
Greek Communities in Michigan....................19
Public Presentations of Ethnicity....................33
The Man with the Branded Hand....................49
American-Greek Society in Michigan, 2001 and Beyond....................55
Notes....................61
For Further Reference....................71
Index....................79