• Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Photo Gallery
  • Contact
PRAIRIE PUNCTUATIONS

Where did you come from?

8/5/2017

0 Comments

 
    It is time to dust off a couple of books which made their mark in the mid-20th century but have over time been pushed to the back of the shelf:  President Kennedy’s  essay, A Nation of Immigrants and a book by Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted.  At the time of Handlin’s death in 2011, the New York Times wrote this:
     But his [Handlin] best-known work, “The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People,” which won the 1952 Pulitzer for history, was aimed at an audience of general readers in making his case that immigration — more than the frontier experience, or any other episode in its past — was the continuing, defining event of American history. Dispensing with footnotes and writing in a lyrical style, Dr. Handlin emphasized the common threads in the experiences of the 30 million immigrants who poured into American cities between 1820 and the turn of the century. Regardless of nationality, religion, race or ethnicity, he wrote, the common experience was wrenching hardship, alienation and a gradual Americanization that changed America as much as it changed the newcomers.
   It seems we are about to have a new lesson in immigration and the part it continues to play in our American story. Anti-immigration feeling has always been a part of our history, rearing its ugly head in the mid-1800s when thousands of Germans fleeing war in Europe came to America.  Their culture was new to the white, Anglo-Saxon, protestants who were the principal citizens of America at that time and the WASPs didn’t like them.  The potato famine and poverty brought the Irish to America by the thousands.  In New York, store owners posted signs in their windows NINA which simply meant, No Irish Need Apply.  On the West coast it was anti-Asian feeling, the overwhelming of America by the “yellow hoards”,  although thousands of Chinese laborers were needed in order for the trans-continental railroad to be accomplished.   Building up the dry deserts of the far West created huge vegetable truck farms owned and operated by Asians.  We all know the tragic story of the Japanese-Americans who were forced into camps at the outbreak of World War II.  They played out a tragic chapter in American history.
     All of us wear the mark of the immigrant on our foreheads.  Every American researching their family history will eventually have to ask the question, “Yes, but when did we come to this country and from where?”  Our uniquely American culture is a stew of religious faiths, music, cuisine, literature, fashion and on and on.  To be American is to carry the genes of men and women of desperate courage.  A great uncle who came from Norway said, “There has to be a place where people don’t have to work like horses to survive.”  He came to America and Wisconsin and later brought over his parents and little brother, my grandfather.  My grandfather always liked Theodore Roosevelt’s quotation, “Show me a man who is proud of his fatherland and I will show you a good American.”  My Swedish grandfather lost his father when he was nine years old.  There was nothing for him in Sweden so like a brother and two sisters before him, at 19 he left his mother and other siblings behind and came to America.  My father remembers a group of Swedish homesteaders standing and visiting with each other.  They began to speak Swedish and my grandfather said, “We speak English. We are Americans now.”  We see that statement proved out in the deaths of young men and women of various backgrounds who enter the military  and prove how important democracy is to them and their families.
      In later years our history has seen Vietnamese boat people and Africans, people from Mexico, Central America, and the Middle East fleeing war and poverty.  I remember reading of a Ph.D. college professor from Vietnam who fled that country with his family and worked as a custodian and his wife as a hotel chambermaid so their children could have an education and live in a free country.  True to the unwritten code of the immigrant, education was the key to upward movement.  My grandparents and parents always talked about more education and their children and grandchildren have fulfilled that dream.
    In the upcoming discussions about immigration reform there are two paths which parallel each other —  periodic reform is needed in any process or institution.  There is always a better way to do things and America must be a safe place for those who are afraid. But the parallel path is one which feeds on racism and cultural hatred.  Xenophobia or fear of the stranger is known in every society and America as much as anywhere.  Our greatness as a nation has been the power to bring all people into the great mix.  Every person brings something special.
   President Kennedy wrote: This was the secret of America: a nation of people with the fresh memory of old traditions who dared to explore new frontiers, people eager to build lives for themselves in a spacious society that did not restrict their freedom of choice and action.
       Recently I heard from a second cousin in Sweden.  Her daughter has come to America to marry a man from Brazil and they will make America their home.  I couldn’t say it better. 


    ​
0 Comments

    Avis R. Anderson

    Retired public school librarian, retired ELCA pastor, lover of the prairies, "daughter of the middle border", granddaughter of Scandinavian immigrants.  Always loved to read and write.  P.S.  I don't Facebook or Twitter, but I would enjoy visiting with you at aa66bg77@gmail.com

    Archives

    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All
    1950s Life
    Advent
    Age
    Aging
    All Saints 2020
    Attitude
    Baby Boomers
    Back Roads
    Black Hills
    Blessings
    Bombs Iran
    Books
    Border Wall
    Choices
    Christmas 2017
    Christmas 2017 (2)
    Christmas 2018
    Civic Pride
    Civil Discourse
    Civil War
    Climate Change
    Clothes Lines
    Comey Hearings
    Community
    Covid 19
    Dinosaur Digs
    Diplomacy
    Douglas
    Down-sizing
    Election
    Elections
    Elie Wiesel
    Environment
    Faith Life
    Fall
    Fear
    Flood On Yellowstone
    Forgiveness
    Freedom (in Christ)
    Freedom Of The Press
    Friends
    Friendship
    Ft. Peck Montana
    Ft. Union
    Funerals
    Funeral Sermons
    Genocide
    God's Love
    Grace
    Great Basin
    Green Spaces
    Handwork
    History
    Holocaust
    Holy Spirit
    Home
    Hope 2021
    House
    Hugh Glass
    Human Relations
    Immigration
    Immigration Grandparents
    Indians
    Iowa Caucus
    July 4th 2017
    June 2020
    Justice
    Lamenting
    Library Week
    Life Questions
    Listening
    Living Today
    Living Well
    Love
    Lutefisk Style
    Makoshika 2019
    Makoshika Park
    Meditation
    Memorial Day 2017
    Mother Teresa
    Native Americans
    New
    Pandemic 2020
    Parks
    Peace
    Peace 2021
    Pentecost
    Poetry
    Politics
    Politics 2017
    Prairie Home
    Prairie Journey
    Prairies
    Process
    Prodigal Son
    Public Service
    Rain
    Ranching
    Reading
    Retirement
    River Valley
    Road Trip
    Route 66
    Rural Life
    Seasons
    Self-control
    Service
    Simple Living
    Single Life
    Small Town Life
    Soldiers
    Spirituality
    Spring
    Spring Weather
    Stav Church
    Stories
    Summer 2017
    Summer Adventures
    Summer Living
    Summertime
    Taos NM
    The Mind
    Travel
    Travel Colorado
    Travel Wyoming
    Trinity
    Trump
    Trump Politics
    Truth
    Utah
    Viewpoints
    Voting
    Walking
    Wealth
    Wind
    Winter2019February
    Winter In Baker
    Wisdom
    Wisdom Words
    Women
    Words
    Work
    Workers
    World
    World Society
    World War I
    Wyoming
    Yellowstone River
    Yellowstone River Valley
    Zennie's Travels

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Photo Gallery
  • Contact