In this episode, Dominic Pacyga (Emeritus Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago) and Tobias Brinkmann (Malvin and Lea Bank Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and History, Penn State) discuss the immigration of Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians and Lithuanians to Chicago via the Hamburg-America Line.

Topics include the following: -the first Eastern European immigrants in the 1850s -the self-definition of these groups through language, religion, and ethnicity -the concept of spatial integration and social segregation in Chicago -the role of railroads in opening up Eastern Europe to the port of Hamburg -the turmoil in Europe that caused different waves of immigration -the importance of foreign-language, ethnic newspapers in Chicago -the new roles available to immigrant women in Chicago -the inter-ethnic conflict in Chicago caused by World War I -the effect of immigration restrictions on Eastern Europeans due to the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 -the inter-ethnic conflict between German Chicagoans (the German-American Bund) and other groups before and during World War II -the softening of immigration restrictions after WWII with the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 -the differences among Polish, Czech, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian experiences during the Cold War

If you are interested in learning more about Polish Chicago, check out Back Home: Polish Chicago at the Chicago History Museum through June 8, 2024. https://www.chicagohistory.org/

And visit the Packingtown Museum to learn more about the role of the stockyards in the immigrant experience. https://www.packingtownmuseum.org/