Audio
8. Baltimore Immigration History Part 3
Transcript
– Intro Music –
Francesca: This is the third and final segment to our special three part Baltimore Immigration History series that we recorded with Baltimore National Heritage Area at the Baltimore Immigration Museum. In today’s episode we’re going to go over different waves of Jewish immigration during the 1800’s and the 1900’s into the city of Baltimore. As well as, Italian immigration history in the 1800’s and how those stories resonate with present day Italian American experiences.
– Intro Music –
Peter: Hello, Francesca.
Francesca: Hello, Peter.
Peter: Hey, I’m so excited to hear this next episode.
Francesca: Yeah, yeah. This is the conclusion, part three, of our special three part segment that we recorded with Baltimore National Heritage Area at the Baltimore Immigration Museum, on Baltimore’s immigration history.
Peter: Yeah, and-and listening through this, ah, in the first go-around, I’m amazed at how much time you spent talking to folks down in Baltimore, it’s really great.
Francesca: Yeah, yeah. It was um, it was a full day of recording. I was really happy to go and listen to the different conversations, and, yeah, I’m really excited for folks to hear about all of these different—
Peter: I think—
Francesca: —Stories.
Peter: I think, you know, there’s great insights into the whole, not only the history of immigration in Baltimore, but it, when we look at immigration today, um, the carryover of things that have happened back in the 1800’s, and some of those things that we’re still working out today, it’s pretty amazing.
Francesca: Yeah, yeah, I think people think of history as, you know, points and facts on some sort of timeline, when really it’s kind of a continuous story.
Peter: Yeah, it just keeps going and going. So, um, we’re gonna hear from Deborah Weiner—
Francesca: Mhmm.
Peter: —And Rafael Alvarez.
Francesca: Mhmm.
Peter: So, I’m very excited to get into this, are you ready to go?
Francesca: Yeah, yeah.
Peter: Let’s proceed.
Francesca: Sure thing.
– Intro Music –
Francesca: Hello, this is Francesca. I am recording from the Baltimore Immigration Museum, and we are continuing with our series, going through and learning about the different history of different immigrant groups that came to Baltimore and shaped the city into what it is today. Right now we are going to be diving into the history of Jewish immigrants coming into Baltimore, and I am here speaking with Historian, Deborah Weiner. Deborah: Hi, nice to meet you.
Francesca: Hello, nice to meet you as well. Could you tell me a little bit about your background and, um, what you’ll be discussing today?
Deborah: I am a historian, an independent historian right now. My background is in immigration history and also in Baltimore history. I recently co-published a book called, “On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore.” And for many years I worked as the Research Historian at the Jewish Museum, where I worked on their exhibitions and publications.
Francesca: Alright, well thank you. So, who are Jewish immigrants coming into Baltimore in the 1800’s? Where are they coming from?
Deborah: Well, there are actually two major Jewish immigrations into Baltimore. One occurred in the mid-19th century, and, ah, those were Jews who came from the German states, uh, Central Europe. And then from the 1880’s to the 1920’s, Jews were coming from the Russian Empire and other parts of Eastern Europe. So there were two sort of distinct immigrations, the second one much bigger than the, than the first.
Francesca: What were some factors that lead to these two groups leaving their home countries and coming to Baltimore?
Deborah: Well, it was a mix of factors for both groups, a mix of say economic and social factors, I would say in both cases. Ah, for the German immigrants, they came partly due to the economic conditions in Germany at the time. And also because of political upheavals that were going on in Germany. 1820’s to 1870’s, with most of the Jewish immigrants coming before the Civil War. So, ah, many of them had been working in the countryside in Germany. They were many times, ah, traders and peddlers and people who played a commercial role in the economy. And what happened then was the economy was changing, and they were sort of losing their place in the economy of German states. So, it was a-a lot of young men who were the main people who emigrated, people who were looking for economic opportunity. Also, they were subject to sort of many discriminatory measures in Germany that also encouraged them to move. So it was a combination of both of those factors.
Francesca: Okay, and that was for German Jewish immigrants coming in.
Deborah: Right.
Francesca: What about those coming from Eastern Europe?
Deborah: Well, that, ah, too was a combination of factors. The economy of Russia, and Poland, and Austria and Hungarian Empire was also changing a little bit later so, this was starting in the 1880’s. And again, Jews who were living in the countryside were seeing their economic role sort of reduced and the economy was going through terrible upheavals. And Jews in many cases were being blamed for many of the economic problems that were occurring in the Russian Empire. So there was a big increase in sort of anti-Semitism, and um, riots against Jews and-and that kind of thing. So many Jews would’ve left anyway because of the economic realities, but they also were leaving because of many discriminatory measures and the persecution that they faced in the Russian Empire.
Francesca: I think anybody who’s living in an unsafe situation has an incentive to move somewhere else.
Deborah: Absolutely, and there was a whole lot of like whole areas which were basically poverty stricken in Eastern Europe too. So, I think people have a-an idea that Jews came here because of pogroms, ah, anti-Jewish riots, and that was really, that was a part of the immigration but it wasn’t the whole story. I would say for most people they came because of the economic conditions. They just couldn’t make a living anymore in-in that part of the world.
Francesca: That makes a whole lot of sense. When coming to Baltimore, were there challenges unique to these different Jewish immigrant groups?
Deborah: Well, they each came at a different time and so, the Baltimore that they were coming into was-was very different. Well, in both cases they were gonna find lots of opportunity in Baltimore. For the German Jews the opportunity was often as small retailers. Many of them started out as peddlers and got established as store owners. They were basically using the experience that they had in their home countries, they were sort of building on that experience to find a place in the economy of the city that they moved to. And this was true across the east coast and all the places that Jews came to. So, they did find opportunity in Baltimore, it, because Baltimore had a growing economy at that time. Ah, and the later when the, well another thing that the German Jews did was they established the garment industry in Baltimore. As, again starting as tailors and then building up into manufacturing. One thing that people don’t talk about very much or know about very much is the invention of the sewing machine in the 1840’s gave a big boost to the garment industry, and German Jews were the ones who established a lot of the small garment factories, which grew into larger factories. And then when the Russian Jews came in the 1880’s they had, ah, this was very helpful to them because they had a place that they could start in the economy. Ah, but when they came they were more likely to start out as workers, as tailors, and worked in the factories and the sweatshops. Um, the factories which were mostly owned by the German Jews. So, that was their start in the economy for many of the Russian and the Polish Jews who came.
Francesca: I guess, there are less challenges if there’s an industry set up where you are able to more actively, ah, find work—
Deborah: Right.
Francesca: —And employment.
Deborah: One reason that the Jews actually had a large immigration to Baltimore was because Baltimore did have this garment industry established. And in fact from the 1880’s to 1920’s, the most immigrants who came to Baltimore during that time were-were Jewish immigrants. But this was not to say that life was easy for them, at all, because the conditions were very bad. They came here with basically nothing, the pay was terrible, the working and living conditions were terrible, and of course they were disoriented by finding themselves in a new place and-and having to build their lives from scratch.
Francesca: Certainly, that’s not an easy thing I think to move anywhere.
Deborah: Right.
Francesca: Yeah. Today even, I can’t imagine getting on ship.
Deborah: Well, yeah, when you think of what they did, what immigrants did to come to this country, then an-and now it, it just takes a great amount of energy and courage, and desperation. All of it, all at once.
Francesca: Yeah, I think that’s an accurate ah, depiction. But given all of those challenges, and perseverance in the face of challenges, what could you identify as some success stories for Jewish immigrants and Jewish Americans in Baltimore?
Deborah: Well, for the German period, they were very successful pretty quickly and founded a lot of stores that grew into Baltimore’s major department stores. Families like the Hutzlers, the Houshles, the Kones, names that aren’t remembered now that much but to Baltimoreans in the early part of the 20th century or even mid-20th century would be well known, and again the garment factories that they established. Then Russian and Polish immigrants who came in later years, also a lot of them managed to become entrepreneurs and had success, well they had success in a lot of different ways. Some of the people who started as tailors went on to form factories of their own. For example, the brand London Fog was started by a Russian Jewish immigrant, Israel Myers. Some of them also succeeded through the labor movement too, because when they came here and were faced with these terrible conditions, they organized. There was a very strong garment workers union and, ah, succeeded in improving conditions. And some of them went on to other things starting from that point of view. So, for example, Jacob Edelman started out as a tailor, as an organizer for the garment workers union, ended up becoming a labor lawyer, and then became a politician and city council. So, there are different routes to, to success. Ah, also another thing that you’ll find with Jewish businesses, most of them were family businesses, so it wasn’t just the men who were starting in business, but the whole family, ah, women, w-wives and husbands together. So, ah, one example of a very successful family business was Silber’s Bakery. When the Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants came, the ones who didn’t go into the garment industry were often sort of establishing small businesses, sometimes to serve their fellow immigrants, and Dora and Ike Silber established a small bakery that ended up growing into a substantial bakery that had shops all over Baltimore. And the brains behind this bakery was actually Dora Silber, Ike did the baking but Dora did all the business. So ah, there are just lots of examples of-of things like that. I mean I could go on if, if you want more.
Francesca: That’s, I think that those are a couple of really good examples.
Deborah: Though I should mention one more! Because it’s—
Francesca: Sure!
Deborah: —It’s ah, very well known, and I mentioned that there were these two major immigrations the-the German and the Russian and the Polish Jewish immigration, but then in the 1930’s there was a much smaller group of people who came, um, escaping Nazi Germany. It was a much smaller number of people, but they too had to start from scratch and establish themselves in Baltimore. And one was um, a spice maker named Gustav Brunn, and he came over here with nothing except his, basically his spice maker machine, and he ended up setting up shop across from the fish market in Baltimore, and ended up, ah, developing a-a spice for the ah, people who sold the seafood purveyors there, ah, which he called “old bay.” And old bay became, of course a major sort of icon of-of Baltimore. And he-he too again, that was a family business that Gus and Bianca Brunn establish in the 1940’s.
Francesca: I did not know that about old bay, I just know it tastes really good on shrimp.
Deborah: Yep! Shrimp, crabs, yeah, pretty much can’t eat steamed crabs in Baltimore without having old bay on them.
Francesca: [laughter] Okay, that’s definitely good to know.
Deborah: [laughter]
Francesca: So, those are some, those are some fascinating success stories I’d say, ah, for the Jewish immigrants coming in, that smaller group during the time of Nazi Germany prior to World War II, were there any challenges that they faced in terms of immigration, given—
Deborah: Yes, for them the situation was very different, because unlike the previous immigrants, they had not been sort of poverty stricken in Germany. They were, they were middle class people for the most part, and after Hitler’s rise to power, it became increasingly clear that they, there was no place for them in Germany. And particularly after Kristallnacht in 1938. Those who hadn’t already figured out a way to go, were desperate to get out at that point. But the problem for them was that the U.S. had passed immigration laws in the early 1920’s that greatly restricted immigration. So, whereas our ancestors from Germany in the 19th century, and Russia, and Poland, found it very easy to enter this country, because there were very few barriers, the people who were trying to escape the Nazis, ah, found it very difficult. They had to get sponsors, they had to get visas, that had to go through a huge bureaucratic, um, you know a lot of red tape, and also there were quotas that limited the amount of people who could come here. So, that’s the challenge that they faced, and the ones who did manage to come mostly had, many of them had relatives here already, ah, some who they hadn’t communicated with in generations. They even, they would call people up, they would look in phonebooks, American phonebooks and find people with their same last name, and call them up and say, “Um, can you help me get out of Germany? Can you sponsor me?” Things like that. So, and in all those cases they, the immigrants benefited from having a Jewish community already here that-that could help them out.
Francesca: I think a support system is really important when you’re moving, anywhere.
Deborah: Yes. O-one sort of interesting, um, sort of dynamic in the Jewish community is that, ah, the Russian and Polish Jews who came here, they did benefit from the fact that there were Jews here already who had come from Germany in the 19th century, but their relationship was very complicated, shall we say. Because on the one hand, while the German Jews wanted to help them Americanize, the German Jews were also the people who owned the garment factories, which had all the terrible conditions that they were suffering from. And, socially the two groups didn’t get along at all. Even their, ah, religious views were completely different. So there was actually quite a bit of tension between the two groups, in addition to cooperation. It was a dynamic that lasted really well into the 20th century.
Francesca: That is, that is interesting. You ah, usually I think when people think of immigrant groups, if they have, even anything in common like religion, you tend to think of them being monolithic and unified, but that’s almost never the case I would say.
Deborah: Right, and in this case they were different in almost every way. Or in many, many ways.
Francesca: I’m sure even speaking different languages.
Deborah: Right.
Francesca: Yeah.
Deborah: Right, because the ah, the Russian and Polish Jews spoke Yiddish when they got here, and of course the Germans had been here long enough they only spoke English by that point, and even earlier many of them had spoken German, um, when they arrived. Although more of them spoke Yiddish than is generally known, but they had basically had generations to Americanize. So, when the Russian and Polish Jews came, it was a population that seemed quite foreign to them in many ways.
Francesca: When you say Americanize, I feel like that means different things to different people, so what would your definition of Americanize be?
Deborah: Well, basically Americanization refers to acculturating to America. So a-adopting the language, sort of losing some of your traditional ways, or adapting your traditional ways, not necessarily losing them completely. It doesn’t necessarily mean mixing with Americans on a social basis, but it means sort of adopting American culture for your own. And, ah, for the Russian and Polish Jews who came, a lot of times immigrants don’t really, fully Americanize. It’s their children who Americanize. And that’s another thing that I think people tend to forget. Like today when we have, when immigrants come to this country, people say, “Well why don’t they speak English? You know they need to Americanize!” But in a lot of cases in the past, people, it wasn’t, you know, a lot of the immigrants came and never really did learn English. And I think there are plenty of Jewish people today, if they really thought about their great-grandparents, or asked their parents about it, they would find that they had relatives who came over as older people and never fully Americanized and spoke Yiddish till the day the died. But Americanization is usually a, a two generation process. So ah, in the case of the people who came in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the American education system had a lot to do with Americanization. Cause the children started going to public schools and really became American through that, through that means.
Francesca: Well thank you for giving your, your overview. I think that it’s a very fluid, you know, dynamic process, that’s ever ongoing, Americanization, assimilation, things of this nature.
Deborah: Right. And there are different terms, people talk about Americanization, they talk about assimilation, Americanization, acculturation, and they’re all slightly different and we all have slightly different ways of-of using the term.
Francesca: I think so, yeah, so I think it’s always good to I think understand what we mean when we, when we say the things that we do. I think because it is different for everybody.
Deborah: Right.
Francesca: Yeah. Um, do you have anything else you want to say on any of these topics?
Deborah: The Jews who came to Baltimore in many cases were like immigrants who, the Jewish immigrants who came and ended up in other places. But there were certain things about Baltimore that were different, because we talk about this in-in our book “On Middle Ground.” For one thing Baltimore was a border city, and that made it distinct in-in a lot of ways. So it had some of the characteristics of the North and had some of the characteristics of the South. It was I would say the, the further south city that had a large Jewish immigrant population. And that had an impact on the, ah, immigrants who came here. Ah, for one thing there was a much larger African American population in Baltimore than there were in northern cities. This is another thing that people tend to forget is that before say the 1920’s cities of the North did not have large African American populations. So, when Jews came to Baltimore there was a lot more interaction then with the black population. Baltimore also tended to be a more conservative city than a lot of the cities to the North. And that had an impact on the Jewish community. The Jews of Baltimore are known for being, sort of, more religious in some ways than in other communities outside of New York, other Jewish communities. So, Orthodox Judaism became, remained very strong in Baltimore. One reason might be that the-the city itself was sort of a more conservative city. And religion sort of kept a hold in other groups as well, and maybe to a greater degree. Those are just-just some of the things.
Francesca: Specific to Baltimore.
Deborah: Yeah.
Francesca: Yeah.
Deborah: Well, one more thing I would say about Baltimore as a, as a border city, and when I was talking about Orthodoxy before, another reason that Baltimore has a large Orthodox community is simply its proximity to New York and as a affordable alternative. So in-in recent years, with the growth of Orthodoxy just generally and in New York, many, many people have moved to Baltimore for that reason. Baltimore has developed, had developed very strong Orthodox institutions through the years, and this helped sort of attract other Orthodox Jews from elsewhere. So today, Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community is a larger percentage of the Jewish population than in any other city accept New York.
Francesca: Well thank you so much for your time, and thank you for sharing all of these stories, and all of this important background information. I really appreciate it.
Deborah: You’re welcome, thanks.
– Music Reprise –
Francesca: Before beginning this second conversation with Rafael Alvarez, he was unable to attend the event in person, but he was able to record a phone conversation to provide his perspectives on Italian immigration history and Italian American identity. So, ah, this is a phone call, just disclaimer in terms of audio quality, that this is a phone call conversation.
– Music Reprise –
Francesca: Hello, welcome back, I am here on the phone with Rafael Alvarez. He is going to be talking a little bit about Italian Immigration history in Baltimore and the Italian American experience. So, Rafael, welcome.
Rafael: That you, thank you very much. My name is Rafael Alvarez and I am a writer, reporter, screen writer in the city of Baltimore where I’ve lived my entire life. I grew up in a very multi-cultural ethnic family. My father’s father was from Spain and came to Baltimore in the 1920’s and married an Italian woman named Francesca Preto, born in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania because there was a lot of Italians in Pennsylvania, western Pennsylvania in the coal mining industry. And in what was known in the early 1950’s as a mixed marriage, a Spanish-Italian Catholic married my mother a Polish Catholic from the ethnic village just down the street. I, so I grew up with wonderful smells and tastes of a kitchen that represented all sides of-of my family. I grew up concentrating on stories that I heard around the kitchen table, stories that I heard as my grandmother rolled out pasta dough and they canned tomatoes every year. There was none of this store bought stuff. The Italians would call things from the store, “a la box,” it came from the box and that was no good. And then I used all those stories as the foundation for my journalism career. I began as, almost as a teenager in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun in the late 1970’s. I was there for about 25 years. I wrote about Italian Americans very often and often those stories featured my family members. Ah, and then I wrote for Hollywood and an HBO show called “The Wire.” And now I’m back to writing books as I said in the, this morning I was writing at the table where my Italian grandmother would make that little volcano of flour and crack the eggs in the middle, and I was not much taller than the table itself and would watch her and help her.
Francesca: It’s really amazing listening to all of that. I myself am half-Peruvian, half-Italian American, and I have the same name as your grandmother. [laughter]
Rafael: [laughter]
Francesca: Um, named after my grandfather, which I guess is a very Italian thing to do, to name your children after your parents.
Rafael: Yeah, I’m named after my Spanish grandfather, my son is named after my father and it’s been that way for about six generations.
Francesca: Yeah, it’s the tradition. It’s definitely the tradition. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk about Italian Americans and Italian immigration. Could you tell me a little bit about the immigraiton history of Italians coming into Baltimore?
Rafael: Well, a lot of people don’t know this, but Baltimore was the second largest point of immigration on the east coast, only to Elis Island. And the Italians arrived in large numbers often from the southern part of Italy in the late 19th century, and they were preceded, the greatest number of immigrants were German, and they preceded the Italians in the mid-19th century. And then the Italians, and the Eastern Europeans, the Poles, of which my mother’s family are, was in the late-19th century, maybe beginning around the 1880’s. And like many immigrants, they didn’t go far from where the ship landed. So the original Little Italy in Baltimore is just to the east of what most folks know as Baltimore Inner Harbor, our tourist area which in the old days it wasn’t tourist at all, it was hardcore shipping industry, warehouses, docks, watermelon barges, things of that sort. And Baltimore’s Little Italy was actually a very small Jewish neighborhood just prior to the Italians landing. And most of the ethnic groups would hopscotch around. When they would arrive, they would, ah, typically move in with a relative who was already here. You know squeeze into the house, and then as things improved naturally they would want something a little better, a little larger, more space. The Jewish folks didn’t stay in what we know now as Little Italy all that long, and it was quickly established as, ah, it’s still there as our Little Italy. Sadly no one, Francesca, is-is really raising kids there anymore. It sort of died out as a place where families raised children and sent their kids to the parish school in the mid-1970’s. Now it’s become an expansion of the Inner Harbor, as a tourist destination for restaurants and boutiques. What-what fascinates me about a lot of the Italians here is when they were building the Inner Harbor, back, late 70’s early 80’s, the very suspicious and skeptical Italian mindset was that it was going to destroy the restaurant trade in Little Italy. And-and it’s done exactly the opposite, it’s been a boom. What has suffers is not the, not the businesses and the restaurants, what has suffered is, ah, the neighborhood as a real neighborhood. It’s almost like an Italian Little Disneyworld now, and because, you know, we’re now from the late 19th century, ah hundred years forward, the Italians have spread throughout the city and mostly in the suburbs, they jumped out of the city of Baltimore altogether. And many of those ethnic groups that I’m speaking of, ah, have done the same. We tend to lose population by the year. Lately we’ve seen some of these descendants of the Italians come back as certain old neighborhoods are being gentrified.
Francesca: That sounds very similar to what had happened to Little Italy in Manhattan in New York. So it’s interesting to hear similarities in-in Baltimore.
Rafael: There are still families in Little Italy, but I bet the median age Francesca, is between 70 and 85.
Francesca: Okay.
Rafael: And sometimes the children stay and move in, but often the houses are, are bought by potential businesses.
Francesca: So it’s becoming more of a business center than a residential—
Rafael: It’s been that way, it, that’s been the trend for at least 40 years.
Francesca: Okay, alright. Historically can you identify any other challenges that Italian immigrants faced coming to Baltimore?
Rafael: Well, you know, I-I don’t have to tell you that, just look at what the Hispanic population is up against now in 2018 in terms of quote-unquote the Americans and how they feel about others coming into their country. Italians faced all of those challenges, they had to prove themselves. Ah, it was also, not only was Baltimore predominantly white back in the mid-19th century, it was predominantly Protestant. So the double whammy was quote unquote foreigners and-and Papists. You know they, part of the prejudice against them was that they are, their fealty would be to Rome, and by Rome I mean the Vatican, before it would be to the United States. And those immigrants worked very hard to quote unquote become American. I can give you an example, this is of my Spanish grandfather but this happened in the Italian families all the time. So, my name is Rafael, and my grandfather is Rafael with an “f,” Spanish spelling. And when he came here and got that job at the ship yards and fell in love with the Italian girl who became my grandmother, he decided it would be best to best known as Ralph. That made it easier for him to get along, and I swear to you Francesca, just about nine out of ten Ralphs that I meet in the United States are Italians named for their grandfather who was Rafael. And, I don’t know if that occurs anymore, it’s-it’s okay now to be ethnic, the Italians are accepted now. I mean look, people think spaghetti is American food. That’s how long they’ve been here, how well they’ve done, how entrenched they’ve become. I have dear friends of Italian ancestry who are very supportive of our current immigration policies, and I try to remind them, you know, how short is your memory? And then they’ll come back, “Well my,” you know they’ll always say the same thing, “My family did it the right way.” Well if you dig a little deep, there was a lot of deportations in Baltimore of Italians who quote unquote did not do it the right way. So I celebrate my Italian heritage, and I celebrate Italian Baltimore, but it pains me that so many of these folks seem to be playing the same game against current immigrants that was played against their ancestors when they first landed here.
Francesca: One of the themes that’s been coming up having conversations with different folks about different immigrant groups and their history in the city of Baltimore, is that there’s a great deal of similarities that you can draw from those past experiences to experiences of modern day immigrant groups coming into America. So yeah, that makes sense that you would see the similarities as well.
Rafael: It seems, and-and maybe three generations from now the current wave of Hispanics might feel the same way if the next wave comes from some other part of the world. But the American experience seems to be, you get in, you establish yourself, you get yours, you climb a little bit, and then you want to close the door on the next wave, and I find that very distressing.
Francesca: I think that seems to be the historical pattern, not just for Baltimore, but for the United States in general. And so I do feel that compassion is really important, not just in this day and age, but always. So thank you for sharing, ah, what you, what you are reporting on and seeing. Before we close do you have any final thoughts or anecdotes on the Italian American experience in Baltimore?
Rafael: I wish more descendants of the early immigrants would move back into the city and embrace what their forbearers worked so hard to establish. And I wish that anyone who within the last, within memory can trace their heritage back to a country other than the United States would be a little bit more open-minded about folks who are desperate for a better way of life in the 21st century.
Francesca: Thank you so much.
– Music Reprise –
Peter: Wow that was a, some really great interviews you did, Francesca.
Francesca: Thank you Peter, it was, it was really great to be able to talk to all of these people and learn all of these different stories of diaspora and immigration into Baltimore.
Peter: Yeah, and I have to say I learned a lot, you know, just listening to the, to the interviews you did, you know, starting with Nick Fessenden—
Francesca: Back in Episode 1.
Peter: Yes, back in Episode 1, and I really was, you know, pretty-pretty amazed with Conor Donnan and the whole Irish history, and then you connected that with the African American history with Prof. Brewer, and you know just, he has an amazing handle on the history and it almost made me want to like go down there and take a class from him. Cause he’s, ah, really interesting. And then the, you know your final episode with Deborah Weiner and Rafael—
Francesca: Mhmm.
Peter: —Alvarez. I just felt like I learned so much and I-I really hope that the folks at the Baltimore Heritage Area are able to promote some of this that you’ve, ah, recorded, because I think it will really help tell their story, ah, in the heritage area.
Francesca: Yeah, they, they approached us to create this resource, this podcast series of panelists sharing the city of Baltimore and Baltimore National Heritage Area’s history.
Peter: Yeah.
Francesca: And it was, it was really amazing to just sit and listen and hear their stories and learn about even the similarities of each of the groups. Like, Germans, Irish, in both of those conversations there is mentions of the Know Nothing Party.
Peter: Right, right.
Francesca: And those types of negative sentiments against immigrants coming in. I think that each group coming into Baltimore faced challenges that were perhaps unique to their situation, but similar in that there was something that they had to, you know, kind of live through and work through to make a better life for their families.
Peter: Yeah, yeah. I mean some of the things that really stick out, ah, when I was listening, ah, were the information about the Irish and how they were looked down upon and the Irish women, um, were always drawn as apes or something and you know, one of the things that Prof. Brewer was talking about was, I didn’t realize that Maryland was the second largest slave state in the nation. Um, but then, you know the whole information on how there were more freed blacks than enslaved blacks in Baltimore, and, you know, how that effected the city.
Francesca: Yeah, it was unique, and in addition to Baltimore being this massive immigration hub, second to New York for the east coast, ah you then like, because it has this unique situation of having this massive freed black population, you know, Conor speaks to how the Irish working class was kind of pitted against freed blacks—
Peter: Yeah.
Francesca: —When competing for jobs, and then Deborah in this episode kind of mentions how Jewish immigrants have the unique experience in Baltimore of interacting with this free black population; that was unique and specific to Baltimore compared to other immigration hubs on the East Coast.
Peter: Yeah, yeah. I mean I think overall just the notion that, you know, lots of different people from lots of different places come in, you know, not just to our country but specifically Baltimore and created, you know a civilization here that we’re richer for because of, there was so much diversity of people coming in. Something that we really have to keep in our minds when we look at our country today and say hey we wouldn’t be the way we are now if it weren’t for this heritage. And I think, you know, that’s certainly something that reflects well on Baltimore Heritage Area as they promote this and tell-tell the stories that you’ve been able to record in these podcasts.
Francesca: Yeah, I-I would also hope that people who have this heritage, um, immigration history going back to Baltimore, that they can feel pride in knowing, you know, what their ancestors and generations past were able to accomplish and achieve.
Peter: Yeah.
Francesca: Not just for the city, but for the country.
Peter: Yeah, yeah. It’s a really important, an important message. So thanks so much for doing this and I look forward to working through our next episodes in the future.
Francesca: Yeah! Yeah, I look forward to it.
Peter: Okay.
– Outro Music –
Francesca: For today’s episode we owe a special thank you to Baltimore National Heritage Area’s Director of Programs and Partnerships, Shauntee Daniels, who organized this panel of speakers.
– Outro Music –
Francesca: This podcast series is produced by the National Park Service Northeast Regional Office. Today’s episode was edited by myself and Volunteer Audio Engineer, Suzie Calarco. The episode’s music was performed by Suzie and Sam Wolf. Thanks for tuning in and have an amazing day.
– Outro Music –
Description
In this episode, Francesca speaks with two more guest panelists. Historian Deborah Weiner discusses different waves of Jewish immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1800's and 1900's. Author Rafael Alvarez discusses Italian immigration into Baltimore in the 1800's, as well as present day Italian American experiences.
Duration
38 minutes, 2 seconds
Credit
NPS Northeast Region
Date Created
10/30/2018
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