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Slovene Settlements in the United
States of America
by Matjaz
Klemencic
Most of the Slovene emigrants in the United
States of America settled in Slovene communities. Many of their descendants
still live in the same places today. The majority of them settled in this country
during the period between 1870 and 1924. Before that, immigrants were likely
to be Slovene missionaries or adventurers from Slovene ethnic territories. In
a later period, from 1948 to 1954, Slovenian émigrés settled in the United States.
The period 1870 to 1924, when most of
the Slovene emigrants came to the United States, was the classic period of development
of industry and mining in the United States, especially after the end of the
Civil War. According to US census data, which are believable, in 1910 the United
States was home to around 180,000 Slovene immigrants and their children (judging
by mother tongue). According to the Census, by 1920 there were already 228,000
Slovene immigrants and their children living in the United States. On the basis
of a 5% sample in 1990, American statisticians estimated that there were 123,000
people of Slovene descent. Based on the earlier counts, this number looks too
low. A more reasonable estimate is 500,000 people of Slovene descent in the
United States, if one includes those who have only one-quarter or one-eighth
Slovene ancestry.
The map Cities and Towns with Slovene
Immigrant Settlements in the United States of America shows the territories
of Slovene immigrant settlements in the United States. In first place is the
industrial, developed Northeast, with metropolitan New York spreading from Bethlehem
(eastern Pennsylvania) to Bridgeport (Connecticut). In addition to Bethlehem,
there are some other cities with larger historical Slovene settlements (the
most important is Forest City); especially numerous are places in eastern Pennsylvania
(Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Cannonsburg, etc.). Slovene settlements can be found
in the northern part of western Virginia (Triladelphia) and in southeastern
Ohio (Lorain, Akron) and northwestern Ohio (Barberton, Cleveland, Euclid, etc.).
Cities in which Slovene immigrants settled
may also be found in southern Michigan (Detroit) and in the so-called Copper
Region in northwestern Michigan (Calumet). In central Wisconsin we should mention
also the farming settlement Willard. The majority of Slovene settlements in
this state can be found, however, in the cities near Lake Michigan (Milwaukee,
Sheboygan, West Allis). There are also numerous Slovene settlements to be found
in Illinois (Chicago, Waukegan) near Lake Michigan. We should mention also Joliet,
which lies south of Chicago, and La Salle, west of Chicago. In the central and
southern parts of Illinois there are also numerous Slovene settlements. One
of them is in Springfield. East of the Mississippi River we should mention also
the Slovene settlements on Minnesota’s Iron Range (Ely, Tower, Eveleth, Hibbing,
Chisholm, etc.) and Brockway in northern Minnesota, one of the oldest Slovene
settlements in the United States. In the Ozark Plateau there are some places
with Slovene settlements in southeastern-most Kansas (Frontenac, Pittsburgh,
Kansas City) and in northwest Arkansas (Jenny Lind). In the Southeastern United
States, Samsula in east Florida, which was established by Slovene farmers, should
be mentioned.
From the Mississippi River to the Pacific
Ocean, most places with Slovene settlements were in the mining areas of the
Rocky Mountains. In Colorado, Pueblo, Denver, Leadville, Trinidad, Wallsenburg,
Aspen, and Crested Butte deserve to be mentioned. Some places with Slovene settlements
could be found also in neighboring Utah (Sunnyside, Helper) and Wyoming (Rock
Springs, Diamondville); while in mountainous Montana, Anaconda, East Helena,
Butte, and Bear Creek had substantial communities. In the northwestern United
States, there are Slovene settlements in the Washington cities of Enumclaw and
Black Diamond and the Oregon towns of Oregon City and Portland. Slovene immigrants
settled also in California, where San Francisco and Fontana deserve to be mentioned.
Slovene immigrants settled also in other regions of the United States, too numerous
to mention in this short survey. They were mostly smaller Slovene communities
or dispersed settlement, especially in farming areas.
A Slovene ethnic settlement is defined
as a part of a city or town with a large enough concentration or nucleus of
a Slovene community that at least one of the ethnic organization structures
existed: a lodge of a Slovene fraternal benefit society, a Slovene national
home, a Slovene or mixed Catholic or Evangelical ethnic parish, or editorial
offices or publisher of a Slovene ethnic newspaper.
Slovene fraternal benefit organizations
represent a fundamental form of organization of Slovene immigrants in the United
States. These are insurance companies that came into being during the period
when the United States did not have any kind of insurance, and they have kept
their form of organization until today. The fraternal organizations insured
workers against accidents at work or illnesses. These organizations used their
profits to support cultural and editorial activities of the Slovene immigrants.
These are centralized organizations composed of individual lodges that were
active or are active in Slovene settlements. Among those still active today
are:
Organization;
National Headquarters City; Membership
American Fraternal
Union; Ely, Minnesota; 15,000
American Mutual Life
Association; Cleveland, Ohio; around 12,000
Slovene National
Benefit Society; Imperial, Pennsylvania; over 50,000
Western Slavonic
Association; Denver, Colorado; 6,500
American Slovenian
Catholic Union; Joliet, Illinois; around 30,000
The relatively great number of Slovene American fraternal
organizations is, on the one hand, a consequence of the dispersed Slovene settlements
in the United States and, on the other hand, based on ideological differences3
in part brought from the old homeland and in part a consequence of conditions
in the new homeland. The American Slovenian Catholic Union, once named Grand
Carniolian Catholic Union, demanded that its members be active Catholics; while
the Slovene National Benefit Society did not mix the religious beliefs of its
members with the operation of the society, because it proclaimed that the religious
beliefs of individual members were their private affair. The Slovene National
Benefit Society ideologically consisted of two wings, liberal and socialist.
The leading members of the Society were active in the socialist workers movement
in the United States.
Slovene immigrants in the United States
also built Slovene national homes, buildings in the midst of the Slovene communities.
In these buildings, meetings of the lodges and cultural events and parties took
place. In larger settlements, Slovene national homes consisted of two- story
buildings with one smaller and one larger hall for cultural events and smaller
rooms for meetings of lodge committees. In those settlements, the homes had
their own libraries. In some large Slovene settlements, individual entrepreneurs
built larger halls and rented them to cultural societies and lodges of the fraternal
organizations for meetings and celebrations.
Knaus Hall in Cleveland was opened in
1903. Shops were located on this building’s first floor, while there was a hall
and smaller meeting rooms on the second floor. With its commercial, societal
and cultural spaces, this hall was also an example for decades to the other
Slovene groups in the United States.
The idea of establishing Slovene national
homes in the United States caught hold in the first decade of the 20th
century. Slovene immigrant settlements strengthened at the end of the 19th
century, but until the beginning of the 20th century most of the
immigrants were bachelors or married men who came without their families. Women
came in larger numbers after 1890, when families started to settle. They also
bought or rented permanent homes. This happened after the first fraternal benefit
lodges, libraries, singing and dramatic groups and sport societies emerged.
The first Slovene national homes were
build by fraternal benefit societies. In 1905 there existed only two homes of
Slovene societies, in Chicago and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. During the next ten
years more new Slovene national homes were built, most of them in mining areas:
Rock Springs (in 1913), Frontenac, Kansas (1910), Herminie, Pennsylvania (1908)
and Ely, Minnesota (1911). The lodges of the St. Barbara Society built some
homes in Pennsylvania, especially in Willock (1911) and Presto (1911).
Most of the Slovene national homes in
the United States were built of wood or brick. Inside was the main hall, with
a stage large enough to accommodate singing choirs, drama groups or gymnastics
performances. In the kitchen it was possible to prepare food for banquets or
weddings; in addition, where it was allowed, there was also a saloon (“gostilna”).
There were many Slovene national homes with bowling alleys and smaller rooms
where the different committees met. Reading rooms provided a place where people
could read Slovene ethnic newspapers and other periodicals and Slovene and English
books.
After World War I began, American Slovenes
were united in concern about the destiny of their old homelands. At the same
time they planned to build new national homes in Slovene communities. They raised
money to build them by selling stock to individuals and organizations, by organizing
dance parties, with sales of potica, with lotteries. To build the Slovene national
home on St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland, community members sold paper bricks that
buyers were later able to exchange for stock. In 1919, four Slovene national
homes opened in Cleveland; only one of them was a new building. When the Slovene
Workmen’s Home in Collinwood was built, many immigrants and their children cooperated.
They formed a chain every evening and brought bricks from a nearby brick factory.
Immigrants in other Slovene settlements built Slovene national homes, especially
in western Pennsylvania. After World War II, Slovene Americans united with Croatian
and Serbian Americans and built homes together, for example the American Yugoslav
Center in Euclid, Ohio, or the Slovene Croatian Club in Escanaba, Michigan.
Other immigrant groups also held their events in some of the Slovene national
homes.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the building of
Slovene national homes reached its peak. The largest Slovene national home was
built in Cleveland on St. Clair Avenue in 1924. The main hall had 1,000 seats
on the main floor and 324 in the balcony. In this hall many performances were
given, including Slovene-language operas. In the building were eleven offices,
seven shops, a gymnasium, a reading room and a private clubroom. Among those
renting offices there were a Slovene school, singing societies, a drama school
led by Augusta Danilova, the Kolander Travel Agency, a photographer’s studio,
and a store that sold Slovene books and newspapers. The building also housed
a school of Slovene art led by Harvey Perusheck and the Slovene National Museum.
For some time it was also the headquarters of the Slovene Mutual Life Association
and more then 100 lodges and organizations.
Main halls were decorated with paintings,
mostly of Lake Bled with its island and church. The Cleveland Slovene national
home on St. Clair Avenue still today displays a picture by Maksim Gaspari in
which he painted leading cultural figures from Slovenia. In some homes one could
find works by Božidar Jakac, which he painted during his journeys in the USA
in the 1920s and 1930s. Numerous Slovene national homes were administered by
lodges and societies on a volunteer basis. They organized dances, which were
well attended until the 1950s. Well-known Slovene orchestra leaders Frankie
Jankovic from Cleveland and Louis Bashel from Milwaukee started their careers
in Slovene national homes. In these homes important local-level political meetings
and party conventions took place, mostly of the Democratic Party.
During World War II and in the 1990s,
the Slovene national homes were centers for the gathering of material and moral
help for the homeland. Among other important gatherings was a meeting of the
Slovene American National Congress, which elected the Slovene National Council
in December 1942. Here in 1991, United Americans for Slovenia was organized
to help Slovenia in the 1990s.
The nucleus of the post-World War II Slovene
émigré community in Cleveland bought a building across the street from the Slovene
national home on St. Clair Avenue. The building, called “Baragov dom,” was incorporated
in 1956. In the basement were the offices of the League of Slovene Americans
and of “Slovenska pisarna.” They sold the building in the 1990s.
In the 1930s, lodges of the Slovene National
Benefit Society started to build recreation centers in the countryside. In 1938
the Cleveland Federation of SNPJ Lodges opened a recreation center with a dance
hall and sport and playgrounds in Kirkland, Ohio. Slovene lodges have such countryside
get-aways in Fontana, California, and Samsula, Florida. The Cleveland Slovene
political émigré community built “Slovenska pristava” in Harpersfield, Ohio,
with a hall, swimming pool and a chapel to commemorate the victims of World
War II.
The Slovene National Benefit Society built
the largest recreation center owned by a Slovene organization near Ennon Valley,
Pennsylvania, on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. It has a ballroom, restaurant,
Slovene heritage center, summer cottages and trailer campgrounds. In 1977 a
camping ground was registered as the smallest town in Pennsylvania.
Movement of city dwellers towards the
suburbs in the 1960s caused the closing down of some national homes. Homes were
left in deteriorating areas of towns. Third- and forth- generation Slovene Americans
are quite assimilated and are not willing to sacrifice as much time and money
to preserve Slovene national homes and other Slovene organizations as their
ancestors did. Slovene national homes in Cleveland united in the Cleveland Federation
of National Homes. In the 1970s two Slovene national homes were opened in Florida,
where quite a few Slovene pensioners moved. Slovene national homes have been
searching for new roles, not as exclusively ethnic organizations. In the 1990s
new Slovene national homes opened in Detroit, Michigan, and Imperial, Pennsylvania
(including an administrative center for the Slovene National Benefit Society).
A Slovene Cultural Center was built in Lemont, Illinois, near Chicago.
Ethnic parishes, which were built from
1890 onwards, represent a special form of organization of Slovene, as well as
other, immigrant communities.
A general European Catholic Congress was
held in Liege, Belgium, in September 1890. During one session devoted to problems
of the European immigrant to America, Abbe Villeneuve of Canada claimed to have
information that twenty-five million Catholics had entered the United States
as immigrants, that the Catholic population in 1890 was slightly over five million,
and that the other twenty million Catholics “have turned Protestant or have
become indifferent.” This caused quite a stir and provided the impetus for another
conference in Lucerne, Switzerland, on December 9 and 10, 1890, to consider
the problem of the emigrants’ loss of faith once they arrived in the United
States. That conference brought together representatives of the national branches
of the European St. Raphael’s Society. These representatives agreed to appeal
to Rome to ease the conditions in the church administration that they considered
responsible for this tremendous loss of faith.
The Marchese Battista G. Volpe-Landi,
president of the Italian St. Raphael’s Society, and Peter Paul Cahensly, secretary-general
of the German central office of the Society, were instructed to submit to the
Pope the wishes of the conference. The resulting Lucerne Memorial was destined
to be the spark that eventually detonated an ecclesiastical power-keg in the
United States. The memorial was written in February 1891 and taken to Rome by
the two appointed delegates. Cahensly and Volpe-Landi were delayed in receiving
an audience with Pope Leo XIII, but arrangements were finally made for April
16, 1891. Because of a death in the family, Volpe-Landi could not attend the
audience with the pope, so Cahensly brought the document to the Vatican himself.
The Lucerne Memorial was signed by ten
members of the German St. Raphael’s Society, nine Austrians, eight Italians,
seven Belgians and one Swiss, all men of considerable reputation. It was also
approved, through a separate communication, by Premier Mercier of Quebec. The
document claimed that “the losses that the Church has sustained in the United
States of North America amount to more than ten million,” a reduction by 50%
of the total asserted by the Abbe at Liege. In view of this fact, the memorial
stated, certain steps were essential, including: (1) establishment of separate
churches for each nationality; (2) appointment to these churches of “priests
of the same nationality as the faithful”; (3) provision for religious instruction
in the national language, even where the numbers of immigrants did not justify
separate parishes; (4) establishment of separate parochial schools for every
nationality; (5) a guarantee of equal privileges for priests of every nationality;
(6) the foundation of Catholic mutual aid associations; (7) inclusion of bishops
of every nationality in the American episcopate, when possible; and (8) papal
encouragement to train missionary priests to serve in the United States and
to establish branches of the St. Raphael’s Society in European countries.
American reactions to the Lucerne Memorial
were critical. Especially interesting was the reaction of John Ireland, Archbishop
of St. Paul, Minnesota. The objective of Cahensly and his friends, Ireland stated
bluntly to a New York Herald reporter:
1 is to harness
the Church in America into the service of recently arrived immigrants from
Germany.1 We have to note here the actual or assumed
ignorance of Mr. Cahensly as to the condition of German speaking Catholics
in America. In asserting that they are neglected he does most positive injustice
to the bishops of the country.1 The bishops of
America have no more idea of making the Church Irish than they have of allowing
it to be made German.1 What is the most strange
in this whole Lucerne movement is the impudence of the men in undertaking
to meddle, under any pretext, in the Catholic affairs of America.1
All American Catholics will treasure up the affront for future action.1
The inspiration of the work in Europe comes1 from
a clique in America.1 I am quite sure I am right
when I bring home to this (Deutsch-Amerikanischer Priester Verein) the whole
promptings of the Lucerne proceedings.1 That great mass of German-speaking Catholics, laymen
and priests, are totally opposed to all plans and intrigues and are most heartily
in sympathy with everything that is American.1
The promoters of German foreignism in America are certain journalists whose
trade is gone if the German language loses its hold, and certain priests who,
on coming to America in advanced years, never learned much English and scarcely
know that there is in America a country outside the German village or quarter
surrounding their parsonage.
Where were the Slovene Catholic priests
in this battle, and how much did Slovene priests profit from it? Timothy L.
Smith, a well-known historian of the American Catholic Church on the resolution
of ethnic conflicts, describes how this played out for Slovenes on the Iron
Range in northern Minnesota:
However willing the bishops were to
compromise for a time with ethnic sentiments, their long-range goal was to
make the newcomers Americans—on an Irish model, of course. Their policy appears
in retrospect to have become the dominant theme of American Roman Catholic
history during the first half of this century: a melting-pot church in a mosaic
culture.
Finally the Slovenes, unlike any other
ethnic group in American history, were preceded into the New World by priests
of their own nationality. Frederick Baraga came to Lake Superior as a missionary
to the Chippewa Indians in 1831. Later, as bishop of the Diocese of Marquette,
he recruited pastors who welcomed French Canadian, Slavic, and Irish newcomers.1
Meanwhile, his countryman Fran Pirc carried on the Indian missions in Minnesota.
Pirc returned to Slovenia in 1864 and brought back Buh, already an ordained
priest, and 15 students, whom he enrolled under Buh’s care, in St. Paul Seminary.
In later years Buh returned to recruit similar groups of students. Already
competent in German as well as in their native Slovene, many of these men
learned Czech and Polish as well, along with the Chippewa language, so as
to be able to minister to the scattered enclaves of Slavic immigrants appearing
along the frontier near their Indian missions.
When, therefore, the earliest Roman
Catholic congregations emerged in northern Minnesota their priests were often
Slovenes, even though the parishioners were of many nationalities. Riding
the spreading network of mining region railroads from his base at Tower, Father
Buh said Masses regularly in schoolhouses and town halls as new communities
appeared on the Mesabi Range to the South
.1 In Tower
and Ely, however, and thereafter in Mesabi towns such as Aurora, Eveleth,
Chisholm, and Gilbert, Slovenes and Croatians comprised a majority within
the parishes.
As the population of the Range towns
grew, dissatisfaction with melting-pot parishes produced desultory attempts
to establish National ones.
Most Slovene parishes in the United States
were founded in the first quarter of the 20th century, when Slovene immigration
to America was at its height, so that by 1941 there were thirty-two Slovene
parishes and one Franciscan monastery in the United States. Seven mixed Slovene
and Italian, Norwegian, or Finnish parishes were founded in Minnesota. Six Slovene
parishes were founded in Ohio, five in Illinois and Pennsylvania, four in Wisconsin,
three in Colorado, and one each in Connecticut, New York, Indiana, Kansas, Montana,
and Wyoming. Eight of these parishes have since ceased to exist as Slovene.
In those parts of the country where there
were either not enough Slovene immigrants or the immigrants were too impoverished
to establish their own parishes, Slovenes founded ethnically mixed parishes
with Croats, Slovaks, Germans, Italians, and Hungarians. The reasons for joining
with these ethnic groups and not others are easily explained. The immigrants
formed parishes with Croats because of the similarity of their languages and
the geographical proximity of their homelands; with Slovaks because the Slovak
language is linguistically similar to Slovenian and could be understood; with
Germans because Slovenes had lived under the Habsburg monarchy until World War
I and thus had learned the language; with Italians because that language was
understood by Slovene immigrants from the coastland; and with Hungarians because
their language was understood by Slovenes from Prekmurje, the Slovene ethnic
territory that had belonged to the Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy.
In 1915, Slovene immigrants formed at
least fifteen ethnically mixed parishes. In the 1920s, however, the reasons
for forming mixed parishes—small numbers and/or financial problems—ceased to
exist. Slovene settlements increased in size with the arrival of new immigrants
and through a natural increase in their population. This situation led each
immigrant group in the ethnically mixed parishes to develop its own separate
parish, which in turn resulted in a reduction in the number of mixed parishes
to eight: five in Minnesota, and one each in Pennsylvania, Montana, and California.
Most Slovene immigrants were Catholics, but there were also Protestants from
Prekmurje as well as atheists. Both of these latter groups represented only
a small percentage of Slovene immigrants.
From 1871 through 1900, Slovene immigrants
established twelve parishes, or 30% of all Slovene parishes that have existed
in the United States; from 1900 through 1914, twenty-two parishes or 55%; and
from 1914 to 1941, six parishes or 15%. This pattern is consistent with Slovene
immigration to the United States from the mid-19th century until World War II.
After World War II, Slovenes did not establish new parishes in the United States,
since most new immigrants settled close to established Slovene communities and
could use the existing parishes for their religious needs. Although no new parishes
were built after this time, however, Slovenes were forced to move many of their
churches to new and sometimes distant locations because of the construction
of the new freeway system, which, too often to be coincidental, tended to run
through and uproot ethnic settlements.
Many formerly Slovene ethnic churches
now draw non-ethnically identified parishioners from their neighborhoods. An
example of such a church is St. Joseph’s in Calumet, Michigan. Slovene immigrants
built beautiful, large, and expensive churches, around which they sometimes
built schools or church halls. These infrastructures, too large to serve only
Slovenes, currently serve African and Hispanic Americans who now live in the
formerly Slovene neighborhoods.
So with the support of the Catholic Church,
there came into being in the USA during the period 1871–1923 forty Slovene or
mixed ethnic parishes with Slovene participation. The ethnic parishes where
there were enough believers organized Parish schools also. The language of the
masses was only Slovenian at first; later the masses were held in English as
well as Slovenian. The language of the Parish schools was English, but Slovenian
was often taught as an additional subject in those schools.
Parish priests in Slovene ethnic parishes
were usually Slovenes, as were teachers in the schools, born in Slovenia or
of Slovene descent. Therefore the organizing of ethnic parishes had a positive
influence for awareness of their Slovene roots among Slovene immigrants and
their descendents.
Ethnic newspapers and organization periodicals
were helpful in retaining the awareness of Slovene roots among the Slovene immigrants
in the United States. They were published either for the use of Slovenes in
one large settlement or to be sent to all members of a Slovene fraternal or
other organization in some or a majority of U.S. states. Newspapers and periodicals
like almanacs represented one of the most important symbols of the life of an
ethnic group. To publish a newspaper some conditions had to be met: there had
to be an editor, who had to choose reporters and other writers; he had to have
a printer and distribution system. All these were not enough to publish a newspaper.
Another important condition had to be met. The Slovene community had to be full
of life; events had to take place that were worth writing about.
Slovene newspapers in the United States
usually began publishing about ten years after the Slovene ethnic community
was created in one or another place. This was the time that had to pass before
a Slovene community achieved all the previously mentioned basic conditions for
an ethnic newspaper to be published. This process did not proceed uniformly,
however. The need for an ethnic press among Slovene immigrants was particularly
pressing among Slovene immigrants after World War II because of their better
education. There were also more options technically, so these immigrants started
to publish ethnic newspapers soon after they settled, or they even continued
to publish a newspaper that they had started in a refugee camp.
Slovene ethnic newspapers in the United
States played a leading and leadership role among Slovene immigrants, especially
from 1891 till 1920. They not only reported about events in the Slovene community,
they also stimulated political and economic happenings among Slovene immigrants
in the United States. Beginning in 1891, Slovene newspapers have been published
in many different cities and townships all over the United States, mostly in
the largest Slovene communities. The place of publication sometimes depended
on the place where the editor lived. In spite of that, it is clear that the
newspapers were read not only in the places where they were printed but all
around the country. That is logical, especially if the newspaper was an organ
of a certain fraternal benefit society. Some newspapers are still published,
among them Ameriška domovina/American Home, a local newspaper for Slovenes in
Cleveland that is, however, widely distributed in the United States. American
Slovenes also published Amerikanski Slovenec – Glasilo Kranjsko slovenske katoliške
jednote, which is both the successor to the first Slovene newspaper, published
in the United States since 1891, and an organ of the American Slovenian Catholic
Union. Slovene fraternal organizations publish also. Glas (Voice) is an organ
of the American Mutual Life Association, headquartered in Cleveland. Voice of
WSA is an organ of the Western Slavonic Association, and Prosveta/Enlightenment
is published by the Slovene National benefit Society. Many newspapers have ceased
publication; among them we should mention Glas naroda, which was published in
New York until 1957.
The way Slovene immigrants were organized
in their settlements also provided the basis for individual members of Slovene
communities to participate in politics, first at the level of the wards, then
on the level of cities, counties and states. It is worth mentioning that members
of the Slovene community have become members of the American Congress (both
the House of Representatives and the Senate). In all the immigrant settlements
that I have researched so far3 Cleveland, Leadville,
Rock Springs, San Francisco3 the level of political
participation of Slovene immigrants was always greater than their numerical
strength in the city or county.
In Cleveland, Slovene immigrants and their
descendants were actively present in the political life of the city from 1925
onwards, when John L. Mihelich was elected to the City Council. They are still
present today. In the 1930s four members of the City Council were of Slovene
decent. From 1941 until 1944, Frank Lausche was mayor of Cleveland. At the end
of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, the mayor of Cleveland was George Voinovich,
whose mother was of Slovene descent. Lausche and Voinovich continued their careers
to become governors of Ohio and U.S. senators from Ohio (Lausche from 1956 till
1968, Voinovich from 1998). Among U.S. representatives we should mention John
Blatnik from the Iron Range in Minnesota (from 1948 until the mid-1970s) and
three members elected in the 1980s: Dennis Eckart from Cleveland, Ray Kogovsek
from Colorado and James Oberstar from northern Minnesota (still in office).
Slovene settlements
in the USA started in the 1880s as nuclei of geographically
defined areas within American cities. The communities have survived
to this day, although geographically more dispersed; since the
grandsons and granddaughters of Slovene immigrants moved to
the suburbs. But they still meet in the old neighborhoods for
a Saturday evening event at a Slovene national home or for Sunday
mass in the old Slovene church.
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