Greek Americans: Struggle and Success

Citation preview

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Struggle and Success Second Edition

Charles C. Moskos iSTANBUL BiLGi UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Transaction Publishers New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

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Dedicated To: PFC Peter Shukas (1923-1944), uncle, killed in action, France; SP4 James C. Shukas (1948-1970), cousin and f?0dson, killed in action, Vzetnam; Patricia Shu/ws (1923-1977), aunt, of Scotch, Irish and German descent, she became the center of a Greek-American Family. Third printing, 1990 New material this edition copyright (c) 1989 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Originally published in 1980 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mech~mical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, Witllout prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 88-37387 ISBN: 0-88738-778-0 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moskos, Charles C. Greek Americans, struggle and success / Charles C. Moskos, Jr., with a new preface and two additional chapters by the author. p. cm. Bibliography: p Includes index. ISBN 0-88738-778-0 1. Greek Americans. 1. Title E184.G7M67 .989 973'.04893-dcI9 88-37387 CIP

MAY THEIR MEMORY BE ETERNAL

Contents Preface to the Transaction Eriition

IX

CHAPTER. ONE

The Greek Comes to America

1

Beginnings and False Starts, 2 The Era of Mass Migration, 8

CHAPTER TWO

Greek America Forms

30

Returness and the End of Mass Migration, 31 Disorder and Early Progress, 33 From the Thirties to the Fifties, 46 The New Greeks, 54

CHAPTER THREE

The Greek-American Community

62

The Greek-American Population, 63 Greek-American Institutions, 66

CHAPTER FOUR

Greek-American Themes

90

Across the Generations, 90 The Greek Imagination in American Fiction, 97 Ideology in Greek America, 104

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"iii

CHAPTER FIVE

Mahing It in America

111

Preface to the Transaction Edition

Greeks in American Politics, 116 Greeks and Restaurants: An American Phenomenon, 123 Images of Greek Americans, 126

CHAPTER SIX

Growing

Up Greeh American: A Family and Personal Memoir

127

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Sociology of Greek Americans Greek-American Studies: Contrasting Perspectives, 142

CHAPTER EIGHT

Greek America in the 1980s

150

CHAPTER NINE

Politics and the Greek Roots of Michael Du/wkis

172

APPENDIX

lV/odern Greek a'l/,d Greeh-A1tI.erican Studies

187

Selected Bibl£ograjJhy

194

Index

The reception to the first edition of Greek Allin/milS: Slmggll' and was gratifying, Published in 1980, the book went out of print three years later. I n light of a continuing demand, Irving Louis Horowitz of Transaction Publishers proposed that I reprint the lirst edition with an epilogue, This was well before Michael Dlikakis's advent on the national political scene gave Greek Americans a certain trendmess. What began as a reprint with a modest sequel became a substantial expansion with the addition of two new chapters, an appendix, and an updated bibliography. Chapter 8, the first of the new chapters, covers events in Greek America during the eventful 1980s. Chapter 9, the second new chapter, describes the Greek roots of Michael Dukakis in the context of Greek Americans in politics. The new appendix examines the problems and potential of modern Greek and, especially, Creek-American studies. In this eclition, as in the first. I have tried to present a perspective on the Greek experience in America by employing those insights of sociological, historical. and cultural learning of which I have been a beneficiary. At the same t.ime, the writing of this book was a personal statement inseparable from my background as a Greek American. Greek Americans are sometimes a contentious people and there will be few who will not take exception to some of what is written here. This too is par! of the Greek-American experience. Ifthis study has value, it is because of my reliance on all those who have toiled in the vineyards of Greek Americana. First I would like to acknowledge my brother, I-larry, who has been my secret sharer in this venture. For tracing down elusive materials, I am especially indebted to Costas Caraganis, Paul Denis, Peter Dickson, Steve Frangos, Andrew T, Kopan, and Peter N. Marudas. I am grateful for the insights provided by Demetrios J. Constante\os, Chrysie M. Costantakos, Eugene Diamond, Stanley S. I-Iarakas, Harris P. Jameson, Alexander Karanikas, Alexander Kitroeil', Yiorgos A. Kourvetaris, John T.A. Koum()ulides, Fotios K. SUU'(>SS

200

IX

x

PREFACE '1'0 THE TRANSACTION EDITION

Litsas, I-Jelen Zeese Papanikolas, I-larry.J. Psoll1iades, Alice Scollrby, Eva Catafygiotu Topping, and Evan C. Vlachos. My gratitude is especially warm to my former students at Northwestern University who have joined with me to advance the cause of Greek-American studies: Kathryn Marie Jaharis, Leon M. Vainikos. and Evan Vassos, In addition to ongoing observations and readings. this new edition benefits greatly from personal interviews. For sharing their time with me, I am grateful to Michael S, Dukakis, John Nassikas. Paul S, Sarbanes, Basil Vlavianos, and George Vournas. Most of all I am indebted to Euterpe Dukakis for her generosity of spirit and information in retracing the immigrant odyssey of her family and that of her husband. All errors in hlCt of interpretation in this book are. of course. my sole responsibility, C.C.M. EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

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The first Greek to set foot on these shores was Christopher Columbus. Such at least is the belief of many Greek immigrants in America. Columbus's purported Greek lineage was to be given credence in a full-~ength treatise--Christopher Columbus: A Greek Nobleman-by SeraP:11m G. Canoutas, a mc~or figure in Greek-American letters dunng the fIrst half of this century.l Canoutas, himself an immigrant, devoted the last years of his life to prove that Columbus was a member of a distinguished Greek family that had gone to Italy from Byzantium. Whatever the ancestry of the Great Discoverer-and one is obliged to admi,t th~t Columbus's Greek background is not accepted by non-Greek iustonansthe belief in his Greekness does reveal two enduring qualities of Greek immigrants: their overweening pride in their Hellenic background, and their striving to 'lssert some psychic precedence over the dominant groups in American society. 1 .J The Greek experience in the United States has been a blend of ethnic pride and resourceful participation in American society. In its early years it is the story of immigrants who suffered incredible hardships, many of whom, nevertheless, eventually became secure members of the middle class. It is a story of the children of the immigrants, the second generation, most of whom have enjoyed levels of education and income surpassing the American average, and some of whom have been outstandingly successful in the country of their birth. And there a~'e the third and fourth generation who are still half-sketched figures 111 the unfinished canvas of Greek America. It is also the still unfolding story of the new immigrants from Greece who have been coming to Am.erica !n large numbers over the past decade and a half. The Greek expenence 111 the United States also has a darker side: immigrants whose lives drained away in poverty and loneliness after serving the demands of a~ expanding industrial economy, exploitation of Greek by Greek, conflICts across

The Greek

Comes A to mericQ

'Seraphim G. Canoutas. Christopher Columbus: A Greek Noblemall (New York: St. Mark's Press. 1943). Canoutas's treatise is not the first on the subject. In 1937 Spyros Cateras of Manchester, New Hampshire. privately printed a small book entitled Chril·topher Columbus Was a Grel?k Prince alld His Real Name Was Nikolaos YIIsilantisfrom the Greek Island of CMos.

2

THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

generations, and misunderstandings between older and newer immigrants. Yet in its broad outlines, the sociological portrait of what are today some one million Greek Americans is one of an ethriic group that has maintained a remarkable degree of communal and family cohesion while also comfortably accommodating itself to the achievement standards of the larger society. This almost self-congratulatory "best of both worlds" adaptation may well be the distinguishing quality of Greek Americans. BEGINNINGS AND FALSE STARTS

Leaving aside the tenuous and self-serving belief that Columbus was descended from Byzantine nobility, one may ask who was the first Greek to arrive in America. This distinction goes to Don Teodoro or Theodoros, a sailor and ship caulker serving aboard the expedition of the Spanish explorer Panfilio de Narvaez. In October, 1528, Narvaez anchored off what is now Pensacola, Florida, to secure fresh water. An agreement was reached with the Indians on the land who, however, insisted on keeping a hostage while the water was to be procured. Don Teocioro volunteered himself as the hostage and went ashore. He never returned to the ship and was presumably killed by the Indians. Though his life ended tragically, Don Teodoro is the first Greek known to have set foot on American soil. 2 The Eighteenth Century

We are fortunate that the historian E.P. Panagopoulos has given us a full and absorbing account of the first large migration of Greeks to America-the ill-fated New Smyrna colony.a It involved a trans-atlantic odyssey that started with high hopes and was to end in privation and misery. The story began in 1763, when Florida passed from Spanish into "The fate of Don Teodoro is related in The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cab/lia de Vnca and His Comlmnionsfrolll Florida/o the Pacific, 1528-1536. trans F, Bandelier (New York: A.S. Barnes & Co .. 19(5), cited in E.P, Panagopoulos. "The Greeks in America during the Eighteenth Century" (paper presented at the Bicentennial Symposium on the Greek Experience in America, University of Chicago, 1976), p. 2. The question of who were the first Greeks in America is one that has many answers in diverse Greek-American sources. It has been asserted that Greek sailors accompanied Columbus during his various voyages. Some claim the Spanish admiral and explorer. Juan de Fuca. who in 1592 discovered the straits south of Vancouver Island that bear his name, was a Greek sea-captain, Ioannis Phocas, from the island of Cephalonia. Panagopoulos, who has made the most thorough and reputable examination of the early Greeks in America. holds that these and similar claims are plausible. but that there is no solid historical evidence to sustain them. "E.P. Panagopoulos. New Smyma: An Eighteenth Century Gn:ek Odyssey (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 19(6). The account of the New Smyrna Greeks given in the text is essentially a paraphrase of Panagopoulos.

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THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

British hands. Several influential people in Great Britain became intrigued with the idea of establishing plantations in the newly acquired territory by bringing in Greek settlers. Among these was Andrew Turnbull, a Scottish doctor, who was married to Maria Gracia Rubini, the daughter of a Greek merchant in London. Maria Rubini had been born in Smyrna, Asia Minor. Turnbull secured a royal grant of twenty thousand acres (eventually to grow into a land area of over one hundred thousand acres) about 75 miles south of St. Augustine, Florida. He named this land New Smyrna to honor the birthplace of his wife. Funded by a generous subsidy from the Board of Trade in London, Turnbull was able to sail in April, 1767, into the Mediterranean to recruit his colonists. These were to be indentured laborers, the terms of whose contract specified that after completion of their service-between five and eight years-they would acquire a certain amount of land in their own right. Turnbull first stopped at the island of Minorca to arrange an assembly point for his settlers. There he found willing volunteers for his venture, Italians from nearby Leghorn, as well as Minorcans. By the following year, Turnbull had been able to recruit a total of 1,403 people for his Florida colony, about four to five hundred of whom were Greeks, principally from Mani on the southernmost tip of the Greek mainland. He then left for Florida with eight ships carrying the colonists. On June 26, 1768, the first ship arrived at St. Augustine. The others caught up soon afterwards. From St. Augustine the colonists continued southward to the site of New Smyrna. A contemporary report stated this to be the "largest importation of white inhabitants that was ever brought into America at a time."4 The conditions the settlers encountered were appalling. Over half of the colonists died within two years of their arrival in New Smyrna. Not only was food scarce, but also the colonists were put to brutally heavy labor in clearing the wilderness under the supervision of former noncoms of the British army. Flogging was common. On August 19,1768, the colony exploded in anger. A riot started, overseers were attacked, and a ship was seized and readied to set sail for Havana and freedom. Quickly a British frigate was dispatched and prevented the colonists' escape. A detachment of soldiers was landed, which was able to suppress the rebellion. Three of the leaders of the rebellion-two Italians and a Greek from Corsica, Elia Medici-were sentenced to death. The Court, however, in what seems to have been an obvious attempt to create divisiveness among the colonists, promised the Greek his life on condition that he personally execute the two Italians. A Dutch surveyor who eyewitnessed the event gives us the following description: 1

4Ibid .• p. 54.

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THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

, On this occasion I saw one of the most moving scenes I ever experienced; long and obst.inate was the struggle of this man's mind, who repeatedly called out, that he chose to die rather than to be executioner of his friends in distress: this not a little perplexed Mr. Woolridge, the sheriff, till at last the entreat.ies of the victims themselves, put an end to the conflict in his breast, by encouraging him to act. Now we beheld a man thus compelled to mount the ladder, take leave of his friends in the most moving manner, kissing them the moment before he committed them to an ignominious death. 5

After the suppression of the rebellion, the colony sullenly resumed working operations. Things were going badly for the landowners. When colonists applied for discharges after serving their work time, they were turned down and a few thrown into confinement. Finally, in the late spring of 1777, the several hundred surviving colonists simply picked up and moved to St. Augustine. Because of their repeated petitions seeking freedom, the conditions of the colonists had become an open scandal within British circles. ~rhe British courts formally freed the colonists from their indenture on July 17, 1777. By that time New Smyrna had already been completely abandoned. The Greek remnant of New Smyrna-probably no more than about one hundred-found a new life in SI. Augustine. A census in 1783 reports that most of the Greeks in St. Augustine were prospering, some had established themselves as merchants, and a few even owned slaves. John Giannopoulos left a deep imprint in the educational history of Saint Augustine by establishing a school in his house; now restored, it stands as the oldest school building in the United States. But the first Greeks in the New World were to disappear without a trace by the middle of the nineteenth century. Although some left Florida for other places, the m "'The first and still most informative account of the orphans brought to America d~,nr~g or shortly after the Gr~ek ~ar of ~ndependence is Burgess, Gralls in America, pp.

1.l2-207> A useful systellllzed hst of the ong1l1s. educauon, and adult careers of the Greek orphans is George A. Kourvetaris, "Greek-American Professionals: 1820's-1970's," Bailian Sludies, 18. no. 2 (1977),318-23. The two most prominent of the nineteenth-century Greek Amencans have been thesubject of extended study: sec Franklin Sanborn, Miclwe! Anagnos 1837-1906 (Boston: Wnght and Potter, 19(7); and Eva Catafygiotou Topping, "John Zachos: American Educator," Grt?ell Orthodox Theological Review. 21, no. 4 (winter. 1976), ,151-66. II Burgess. Greek, in Amaica, p. 194.

THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

7

United States in 1867 at the bequest of the philhellene Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe. Eventually, he married I-lowe's daughter and succeeded his father-in-law as head l)f the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, a position he held for thirty years. Under Anagnos's administration, the Perkins Institution became the leading school for the blind in the world. At about the time the Greek war orphans were making their mark, another group of Greeks appeared on the American scene. Starting in the 1850s a small number of Greek merchants began to set up their import-export business in such port cities as New York, Boston, San Francisco, Savannah, Galveston, and New Orleans. It was in New Orleans that the first Greek Orthodox church in America was established in 1864. 12 The founders were mainly Greek cotton merchants-Nicholas Benakis being the prime mover-but the church also served non-Greek communicants of the Orthodox faith, as well as Greek sailors in port. The parish minutes were kept in English-reflecting the pan-Orthodox nature of the congregation in the early years-until 1906, when Greek prevailed. Maintaining its existence into the present, Holy Trinity in New Orleans can rightfully claim to be the oldest Greek church in the Western Hemisphere. Almost three decades would pass before another Greek Orthodox church would be organized anywhere else in America. Another trickle of Greeks to come to this country in the nineteenth century consisted of sailors from ships arriving in American ports. Most of these Greek sailors began to work on ships in the Great Lakes and on steamboats plying the Mississippi River and its tributaries. A few became oyster fishermen in the Gulf states. The number of such Greeksprobably several hundred-working and residing in the United States was sufficient enough to merit the attention of aNew York Times story in 1873. 1:1 In whatever employment they found in America, Greek sailors were praised for "their abstinence from drinking and their hard work."14 Neither the educated Greek Americans of the orphans' generation, nor the Greek merchants, nor the Greek sailors were, of course, typical of the waves of Greek immigrants who were to come to these shores in a 12The best account of the founding of the New Orleans church is Alexander Doumouras, "Greek Orthodox Communities in America Before World War I," St. Vladimir's Seminmy Quarterly, II. no. 4 (1967), 177-79. Doumouras also reports fra~mentary evidence of the founding of a Greek church, Sts. Constant1l1e and Helen, 111 (,alveston, Texas. in 1862. Lillie is known of the Galveston church except that it served a small pan-Orthodox community of Serbs, Russians, and Syrians as well as Greeks and that it later passed into the hands of the Serbs who had split from the Greeks. On the Galveston church see also Orthodox America 1794-1976 (Syosset, N.Y.: Orthodox Church in America, 1975), pp. 37-38. > > 13"The Greeks in Amedca." NI!W York Times, August 4. 1873. repnnted 111 Hecker and Fenton, The Gralls in Anwrica, pp. 61-64. !>lIbid., p. 63.

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THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

later age. Nineteenth-century Greek arrivals did not establish deeply rooted Greek-American institutions. This was to be the accomplishment of the poor and uneducated, but energetic and resourceful, immigrants who came to this country later, from the villages of rural Greece. It is the saga of these immigrants that was to mold the Greek experience in America. THE ERA OF MASS MIGRATION

The world of the Greek peasant at the turn of the century was desperately poor. Simply having enough to eat was a constant concern though actual starvation was rare. Whatever the glories of its classical monuments and the beauty of its seas and mountains, Greece was a harsh land from which to wrest a living. But the Greeks of the countryside knew they were poor. They made invidious comparisons with the small bourgeoisie and the petty government functionaries of their homeland. The notion of moving to better places-anticipated in the Greek maritime tradition and entrepreneurialism in the cities of the old Ottoman Empire-was already part of the common worldview. As the refrain of the folk song went: Mother, I want to go to joreign lands. To j01"l:ign lands I must go. I"

It was a world in which the Greek Orthodox Church was an embodiment of historical, cultural, and social as well as religious experience. The ~oly days, of the liturgical calendar dominated the year-long cyclethe clImax bemg the Passion of the Holy Week. It was a society of parental authority, puritanical strictness, and sexual segregation. Fathers a~d br?ther.s were committed to come up with a suitable dowry-the prtka-If their daughters and sisters were to marry. Not to do all that was possible to insure the marriage of female relatives would be a violation of one's philolimo-a concept hard to translate, but connoting values of self-esteem, dignity, and obligation. If, , I.;Helen Zeese 'papanikolas: Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek hmmgmnts in Utah, 2nd edl',,(S.alt L~ke CI.ty: .Utah I-hstoncal Soci~ty,.1974), p. 107, , DISCUSSion of plulotzlIlo and lis ce11lrahty 111 the Greek national character is found III Dorothy Lee, Freedom and Cultm'e (New York: Spectrum Books, 1959), pp. 141-49; and ~ohn G. Penst~a~y, "Honour and Shame in a Cypriot Highland Village," Honour and Shallle, cd." Penst~any (London: University of Chicago Press. 19(6), pp. 171-90. In June, 1978, Preslden~ JImmy Carter called a meeting of Greek-American leaders at the White H0l!se to explam why he reneged on a campaign promise to retain the U.S. arms embargo agalllst Turkey (passed by Congress,in the wake of the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus). One of the Amen~an-bo:n Greeks III attendance. Christos Spirou, Democratic leader of ~he. Ne~ Hampslure .1C!~lslat~re, characterized the Administration's bid for support as o~fendmg Greek phlloumo. When reporters asked what the word meant, a chorus of vOIces shouted back, "Love of honor." Washington Post, June 23. 1978, p. A 14.

THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

9

It was a time in which the nationalism engendered by the Greek War of Independence still burned strong. The pantheon of Independence heroes was more vivid and empathetic than the distant immortals of classical Hellas. At the time of its independence, in 1830, Greece consisted of the Peloponnesus, the peninsula forming the southern part of Greece, the acljacent mainland regions of Roumeli and Attica, and certain nearby islands. The still "unredeemed" Greek lands waiting to be liberated only exacerbated the Greeks' hypernationalism. The Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece by Great Britain in 1864. In time (principally through wars with Turkey and Bulgaria) Greece expanded to include Thessaly (1881), Crete (de facto in 1898), Macedonia and Southern Epirus (1913), the Aegean Islands (1914), and Western Thrace (1919). Despite the territorial expansion of modern Greece, the maximum goal-the "Great Idea"-of a reconstituted Byzantine Empire was to be irrevocably shattered in 1922, when Turkish forces inf1icted a catastrophic defeat on the Greek Army in Asia Minor. The 1922 disaster was a watershed event for modern Greece: a three-millennia Hellenism was eradicated from Anatolia, over 1,300,000 refugees had to be absorbed by the mainland population, and Greece was destined to remain a minor nation, a perpetual pawn of the major powers. Even today, the "Great Idea" still evokes memories of opportunities lost. After World War II the Dodecanese Islands were acquired from Italy. Hopes to incorporate Northern Epirus (in southern Albania) are periodically raised, but the claim has not been pushed seriously in recent decades. The issue of Cyprus enosis (union) with Greece resulted in a compromise of sorts with the establishment of an independent Cyprus republic in 1960. But following the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974, the ultimate status of Cyprus has remained unsettled. Throughout the twentieth century, the Greek-American community has played an important role in Greek irredentism. The Greek immigrant around the turn of the century was coming out of a homeland where internal politics had become highly personalistic and often turbulent. Seeking to usher Greece into the modern era, a group of reformist military officers in 1909 summoned a Cretan liberal, Eleutherios ~os (1864-1936), to head the government. Soon Venizelos was to'be locked in a bitter struggle with the newly crowned King Constantine I (1868-1923). The schism between the royalist adherents of Constantine and the more republican supporters of Venizelos was to dominate Greek political life for a generation. It was a political schism that was to be carried over with a vengeance into the Greek community of America. It cannot be overstated that the overriding motive for Greek migration to the United States was economic gain. The intent of the overwhelming majority of immigrants was to return to Greece with sufficient capital to enjoy a comfortable life in their home villages. At the least,

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THE GREEK COMES TO AMERICA

they expected to insure the proper marriages of their daughters and sisters by building up dowries with their American earnings. The onlv m