I think it happened in 1907. Whether I was told this or read it I don’t remember but something tells me that I read it.
Though he wasn’t lynched, my own grandfather, as a 12 year old shoeshine boy, was told to move from in front of a local hotel because “Only white boys can shine shoes here”.
Frankly, I’m a little surprised that some of you have a hard time believing that Greeks faced what amounted to racial discrimination here in America. Do you also deny that the Irish faced discrimination at the hands of the WASPS?
That is not at all the conversation we were having. There are ugly people everywhere. Decent folks despise people who are ugly to somebody on account of his ethnicity.
Here is what you said:
Greeks weren’t considered “white” into the 1920s. In the South it was bad, very bad, into the early 1960s. Greeks didn’t find friendliness in the WASP South, AAM.
You were just flat wrong in that statement, because I was HERE, in the South, in the 60s, and my dad lived here all his life and was born in 1924. Nick Lambros was his law school classmate and lifelong friend. I can't express to you how much everybody loved Nick, he was a great big man with a great big laugh and always ready to help somebody in need. He was a good judge, too, stern but fair on the bench.
Did you bother to read the resolution in memory of Judge Lambros? A man doesn't get to be a city alderman, state representative, and re-elected repeatedly to the State Court bench in a place where Greeks "don't find friendliness." That resolution was sponsored by the then Speaker of the House and great power in the land at the time, Tom Murphy (D-Bremen). He was Speaker for almost 30 years, and he didn't have to curry favor with anybody - he sponsored that resolution because Judge Lambros was a much loved and well respected man.
I can't speak for other areas of the country, but you were flat wrong about the South based on my personal, lifelong experience and that of my father.
I'll repeat PAR's question -- is your idea that Southerners hate Greeks based on personal experience, or just something else that you think you were told or read somewhere and don't really remember the details?
I have no problem believing discrimination. Most immigrant groups faced a certain amount of it.
A lynching in Wisconsin is another story. It would be strange to lynch a Greek for “consorting with a white woman”, when there were no blacks lynched in the state for it. As I said, the last lynching in the state that I found was in 1891. Most of the state’s lynchings were related to the state’s elimination of the death penalty after exactly one execution in the state.
A small article about Orthodox church history in the state:
Another about Greeks in Wisconsin:
Article about difficulties (discrimination) faced by early immigrants to the US.
Several Greek men were lynched in Omaha, NE in 1909 & some discussion about discrimination in Chicago, IL.
Yes, I’ll deny that there was widespread discrimination against the Irish in the south. Large parts of the upper South were settled by Scots-Irish Presbyterians.
Southerners pretty much limited their discrimination to Blacks. Even the local Jewish folks were not subject to overt discrimination. (The situation involving Mr. Franks being an aberration, and the lynching having occurred only after he was duly convicted. It also has as much to do with him being a Yankee as it did with him being Jewish.) Much of the hostility that Jewish folks encountered in the South can be traced to their involvement in the civil rights movement.
So in what Southern city was your father told to not shine shoes in front of the hotel?