Kenosha News Courier from Kenosha, Wisconsin • 23

Lady Liberty Wednesday July 2 1986 1 0 Waves of immigrants found Kenosha home Many immigrants found work in manufacturing and road construction first settlers were Yankees from New York and New England in 1835 The second wave of immigrants came in the years before 1900 from the British Isles Germany and northern and western Europe At the turn of the century Kenosha had a Yankee-British coi almost equalled in size by a combination of Germans Scandinavians Irish and other northern Europeans There was little evidence of the immigration from southern and eastern Europe which was to form such a vital part of the population growth in the next 30 years Whereas the Old Immigration had been fairly well distributed in the county the New Immigration was heavily concentrated in the city and surrounding area By 1930 95 percent of the people of Italian background in the county were found in the city as well as more than 90 percent of its Russian Czechoslovakian and Polish and more than 85 percent of its Yugoslavian and Lithuanian-Americans By then the southern and eastern European immigrants had nearly equalled both of the two other population sources In the 1920s about three-fourths of the labor force was employed in manufacturing The need for unskilled labor drew the southern and eastern European immigrants to Kenosha as recruiters from city manufacturers sought them out in Chicago and New York New Immigrants arrived in a city that was already divided into distinct ethnic enclaves The original Yankee settlers had largely built their residences on the lakefront And the main business district downtown was called The Germans settled north of the Pike river on the Lakefront along what later became 6th and 7th avenues Yankees often talked about over the Rhine to Little The Scandinavians moved to what was then the southwest side of the city Danes Swedes and the Norwegians lived close together for several blocks along Roosevelt Road and east of Lincoln Park between 60th and 75th Streets Italians of all origins settled together on the west side around Nash Motors and along the 22nd Avenue business district The Poles generally settled farthest north going as far as 30th Street Mostly though they concentrated around the intersection of Washington and Sheridan roads north of 52nd Street and between 7th and 10th avenues The Lithuanians settled near the Poles in Kenosha The Slovaks concentrated farther east along 6th and 7th avenues just north of the main business district Although the children of the New Immigrants were often forced to work at a relatively early age most parents were still sustained by the hope that the second generation in America would enjoy greater opportunities For all the poverty the New Immigrant neighborhoods were usually happy places characterized by large close-knit families and friendly helpful neighbors The family was the center of life including not only parents and children but also aunts uncles cousins and grandparents who lived nearby In addition to his family and his ethnic group immigrants were sustained primarily by two highly important institutions their churches and their fraternal and benevolent societies immigrants survived and adjusted to their new environment largely through the actions of the family and those institutions Social and economic progress was aided significantly by two other often closely connected devices the labor union and political action More than any other means unionization and politics provided immigrants with the means to Create alliances with other ethnic groups having similar problems and with the power to force more established citizens to give them a share of the American Dream Unionization and politics were both areas where the numbers could make up for his lack of money and other material resources The ending of mass immigration in the 1920s cut off the flow of fresh recruits and severed the most direct tie with the old country Few second and third generation Kenoshans like their counterparts elsewhere have any real ability with their language The ethnic neighborhoods have largely broken up Intermarriage has become commonplace making many third generation Kenoshans human Many of the fraternal and benevolent societies have disappeared or lost much of their ethnic distinctiveness by the admission of outside members through marriage Others have becomp more like American social lodges with only dim memories of ethnic beginnings Churches which once included a particular nationality in their official name have membership lists sprinkled with the cross section of ethnic names Yet for all that there are still signs that has not completely carried the day After reaching a low point in the late 1950s and early 1960s the membership in many ethnic societies has undergone a steady increase in the last decade Many young people unhappy with the values and life styles of the wider American culture and seeking alternative models have turned to their ethnic heritage the son tries to a prominent immigrant historian has noted grandson seeks to remember" As late as 1966 two prominent Kenosha Jews the sons of Russians immigrants were denied membership in the Elks Club because of their ethnic background an indication that assimilation still had some way to go That situation has since corrected itself with a number of Jews now members of the Elks Club Indeed the Kenosha Elks Club pioneered in developing policies that eradicated racial discrimination The influx to Kenosha of Mexican-Americans blacks and Asians add a new dimension to the debate over the meaning of America which has been going on for 210 years Of Kenosha 122500 people as of 1985 approximately 3250 are black and 3650 are Spanish Americans Although the greatest number of blacks and Hispanics to move into this area did not occur until the mid-1940s records of blacks living in Kenosha County dates back to Joseph Hobbs who settled here in 1837 By 1920 census records listed 101 black families in Kenosha County For Hispanics records are unclear Spanish surnames appeared in the city directory as early as 1927 Employment opportunities were few for blacks especially in the industrial sector Simmons Co began hiring blacks in the early 1920s if they were veterans of World War I Nash Motors would hire minorities but only in the foundry It was only after World War II that manufacturing jobs opened to minorities in any great number The Spanish community had a harder time establishing its own identity If minorities could find jobs in Kenosha they found roadblocks in obtaining housing from landlords real estate agents and banks They found they had to commute from Racine Milwaukee and Waukegan In 1965 the Human Relations Commission was established and began to change'the atmosphere of Kenosha towards minorities In the 1970s schools became arenas for minority concerns Today those changes are still occurring.