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South Slavs in Michigan

The South Slavs first appear in recorded history in the sixth and seventh centuries, when they split off from the Slavic tribes that were slowly migrating into what is now Eastern Europe. According to one hypothesis, the origins of the Slavs could be linked to Iranians and Goths, but these theories of descendance are speculative, because there is little evidence beyond a few citations of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, a Byzantine emperor who wrote between A.D. 948 and 952 a treatise on geography and Byzantine diplomacy.

The South Slavs slowly drifted down into the Balkan Peninsula, and probably separated themselves off into Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Macedonian branches soon after their arrival. The Bosnian Muslims became a distinct group later when they converted to Islam; otherwise they are the same as the other South Slavs. Through their long history as distinct peoples, the South Slavs have forged their own traditions, which in the 1991-1995 Yugoslav wars of secession proved stronger than their sense of a shared experience.

Chapter Two Croatians

The Croats inhabit the independent Republic of Croatia, but they dwell in the other republics of the former Yugoslavia as well. Throughout their history they have had a strong affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Croats migrated from the Ukraine, and in the sixth and seventh centuries moved into present-day Croatia in the area between the Velebit Mountains and north and south of the Cetina River. Croatia was an independent kingdom in the tenth and eleventh centuries, prospering under its first king, Tomislav (914-928?), and one of its last kings, Zvonimir (1076-1089). Yet in 1102, after the lack of an heir sparked a civil war, the Croatian nobility had to unite with the Hungarian kingdom, as no Croatian leader was strong enough to control the country. A rich culture flourished from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries in the republic of Dubrovnik and along the rest of the Dalmatian coast, as represented by the stone sculptures of Radovan and the sculptural and architectural works of George the Dalmatian.

The crown of Croatia was transferred to the Habsburgs in 1527, and this arrangement lasted until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I. The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was proclaimed in 1918, becoming the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. In 1941 Axis forces invaded and divided the country, and Croatia became an independent state with Axis supervision. The Croatian fascists then perpetrated terrible atrocities on the Serbs and other minorities. The victory of the Communist Partisans under Josip Broz Tito (whose father was Croat and mother was Slovenian) in 1945 saw the creation of a federal Yugoslavia, with Croatia as one of its six republics. When Croatia declared its independence in 1991, Serbian and Montenegrin forces attacked, with hostilities ceasing in 1992 after United Nations intervention.

Why They Left and Where They Settled

The world the Croatians knew was the hilly farms of the Adriatic coast and the interior, from which in the 1850s and 1860s they began to emigrate after hearing about the opportunities in the Pennsylvania coal mines, the California Gold Rush, and the Copper Country of Michigan. The peasants, 80 percent of which were landless and between the ages of fifteen and forty, worked for large landowners who were insensitive to their plight.

These men from the countryside longed to emigrate because the increase in population on the farms since the 1750s had left them in dire economic straits. The Viennese authorities had resisted the industrialization of the outer reaches of the Austro-Hungarian empire, further hardening their plight. Above all, the loss of vineyards to phylloxera blight wreaked havoc in Dalmatia. Along the Dalmatian coast, the highly skilled shipbuilders saw an impoverished future for themselves because their sailing ships had been replaced by steam-powered craft. The construction of railroads into the barren interior put local inhabitants out of work as long-distance haulers, and they were forced to emigrate as a result. The subsistence farmers in the impoverished Dinaric Mountains along the Adriatic coast, whose forests had been cut down for the Venetian and Dubrovnik galleys, desired to escape conscription and political oppression. The economic pull to far-off America was strong, as letters from friends and relatives revealed it to be a land of freedom, high pay, and luxurious living, all of which were, of course, exaggerated.

In the 1870s immigrant families from Severin, on Croatia's Kupa River, arrived to work for $1.25 a day as unskilled laborers in the dangerous Red Jacket copper mines of Calumet, Michigan, near Lake Superior. Among the families to arrive in 1881 were the Lesacs; their relatives and several hundred townspeople from Severin soon followed to work in the Copper Country as an intricate network of chain migrations developed. Louis Adamic's short story, "Manda Evanich from Croatia," is based upon their lives. Another Lesac, Luka, sent for his wife, opened a thriving saloon, and began to raise a family. Mijo Lukas came in 1882 from the Croatian Primorje area, as did many others, and settled in Houghton. He was unschooled and illiterate and got a job with the Slovenian Peter Ruppe. He saved up enough money to bring over his wife and three sons. Nine more were to follow, and President Theodore Roosevelt sent a congratulatory telegram in 1902 when his wife gave birth to the last two-twins. One son, Anthony Lucas, would play a major role in the 1913-14 copper strike.

By the turn of the century, ten thousand Croats were living in Calumet, the largest Croatian mining colony in the United States. The newcomers soon started cooperatives, one of which was a grocery that began operation in 1906. By 1910 the population of the Copper Country was 90 percent foreign-born.

In 1905 Emily G. Balch, the chronicler of the Slav immigration, visited the town of Severin and wrote that almost half the population of the village had emigrated to Calumet. The loss of population was so extensive that the local governmental authorities in Zagreb, recognizing that this drain of its citizens was weakening the national life of Croatia, passed laws to prevent it. This was to no avail, however, since the Austro-Hungarian officials in Vienna and Budapest desired the emigration of discontented subjects, whose influence would have put too much pressure on the volatile imperial structure.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company (C & H) owned Calumet. The company could freely impose upon the employees dangerous working conditions, such as the use of the one-man drill (called the "widow-maker"); and the company mine shafts could be a mile in depth. C & H, owned by Bostonians Quincy Adams Shaw and Alexander Agassiz, required eleven-hour days and six-day workweeks, paid $2.50 a day, and refused to recognize a union. Among the town's diverse ethnic groups, however, there was bitter and violent rivalry: Calumet was no "melting pot." The Cornish, Finns, and Irish, the Greeks and Turks, the Croats and Serbs, all despised each other. There was little acculturation in the town, as each group held on to its ethnic prerogatives.

The harsh working conditions and the workers' difficult lives resulted in the 1913-14 strike of more than thirteen thousand copper miners belonging to the Western Federation of Miners (American Federation of Labor). The strikers were inspired by Ana Clemenc (1888-1956), the daughter of a Croat mineworker and his wife, who led them every day in marches to the mines. C & H brought in armed strikebreakers from New York, the state militia, and sheriff's deputies. When two strikers were killed by the militia, the strike received international attention. John Mitchell, head of the United Mineworkers of America, renowned lawyer Clarence Darrow, and labor activist Mother Jones all marched alongside Ana Clemenc, later elected president of the Western Federation of Miners Auxiliary No. 15.

The strike attracted international attention because of two tragedies. First, Croatians accidentally killed a deputy sheriff, and ten of them were tried and found guilty. It was District Attorney Anthony Lucas, the son of the Croatian pioneer in Calumet Mijo Lukas, who came to the defense of the accused and pleaded for a reduction of the maximum penalty. Then, in the Calumet Italian Hall at a Christmas party organized by Ana Clemenc for the strikers' children, a man, allegedly belonging to the C & H-sponsored Citizens' Alliance, which had fought against the strike, shouted a false alarm of "Fire," and over seventy-five people, a number of whom were Croat and Slovene children and adults, were crushed to death in the ensuing stampede. After nine months, the strikers voted to return to work when they won an eight-hour day and a fifty-cent-a-day raise, but they still had to work six days a week and their union was not recognized by the mine owners.

The decline of the copper industry just before World War I caused the internal migration of Croatian miners from the Upper Peninsula to farming towns such as Paw Paw on the eastern edge of the Lower Peninsula's fruit and berry farms. They also journeyed to the large industrial cities of Flint and Detroit, where they found good jobs working for the American Car and Foundry Company and Ford Motor Company, which paid them a wage of $5 for an eight-hour day. Many flocked to Detroit's Russell Street neighborhood to become laborers, tradesmen, merchants, steamship agents, and saloon owners.

Fledgling Organizations and Croat Enclaves

The first Croatians arrived in Detroit around 1890. G. Savich migrated from Pennsylvania because he had heard of the American Car and Foundry Company, where good-paying jobs were available. He contacted fellow countrymen and they came too, many moving from the Pittsburgh area. These pioneers in Detroit hailed from the towns of Petrinja and Ogulina in Croatia's interior. They were single and willing to take any kind of job while they lived in shanties and congregated in the Russell Street neighborhood. After the workers came shopkeepers, craftsmen, and clerks. In 1907 they founded a branch of the Croatian Union, which they named the Star; and in 1913 they opened the Croatian Home on East Kirby Avenue. By 1916 there were fifteen thousand Croats in the city, the largest number situated in the Russell and Kirby Avenues area.

The majority of the immigrants believed that they would return to their homeland, and joining the Croatian Union was not an easy step for them because they did not have an understanding of or confidence in benevolent organizations, so the Croatian Union grew slowly. It was only when they saw the $800 or so that a widow received in benefits after a member's death that many Croats recognized the value of such an organization.

In 1913 a branch of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation was founded in Detroit, and in 1914 the members began building a workers' center, which served as a venue for music, plays, and lectures and debates on economics, health, science, and philosophy, as well as lessons in English. After World War I, however, the persecution of immigrants involved with socialist organizations became widespread during the "Palmer raids," organized by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and 6,000 alleged communist immigrants were imprisoned in 1920. Some were tortured and 556 were deported, although they had not been convicted of any crimes. In Detroit twenty-six Croatian workers were arrested, of whom eight were eventually deported and one died in prison. Membership in the Yugoslav Socialist Federation declined during this period, and the organization never regained the vitality and membership it had before the "red scare." The federation's workers' center was sold during the Depression. As World War II raged in Europe, the Detroit federation chapter aided the struggle against fascism in Yugoslavia. The Central Croatian Organization set up a radio program, "The Croatian Radio Hour," which broadcast music and cultural programs in Croatian.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Croatians had migrated from Pennsylvania to Manistique, Munising, Escanaba, and Hermansville in Michigan's Upper Peninsula in order to work in the burgeoning logging camps and lumber mills. A number suffered injuries and death from logging accidents, but there was little or no recognition of what they had accomplished or even who they were. Most were unmarried and lived in unsanitary boardinghouse rooms that were so crowded that sometimes ten to fifteen workers had to share two or three rooms and sleep in shifts.

The greatest number of Croats, estimated at about 400,000, arrived in the United States between 1890 and 1914. Croatian emigration, however, followed the boom and bust cycle of American capitalism: in 1907 over 22,000 came, but only 2,800 migrated the following year during the Panic of 1907-8. From 1900 to 1914, 33 to 40 percent of Croats in the United States, rich with money saved or broken by their grueling work, returned to Croatia. Those immigrants who chose to remain would make an important contribution to the development of American industry.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Croat peasants who arrived in the mass migrations began to bring their wives and families. Coming from small villages, they were totally dependant on the Croatian language and the tightly-knit groups that spoke it. These Croat-speaking communities aided the newcomers in confronting the alienation and complexity of urban life. In these enclaves the immigrants were protected from the discrimination and violence of foreigners who had themselves recently immigrated and were very fearful of losing jobs to their newly arrived competitors. The Croat settlements also banded together for protection from American nativists who discriminated against all foreigners, especially those from eastern Europe.

Beliefs and Prejudice

In contrast to American individualism, Croatians in America, like most immigrants, banded together with people from their own villages and formed cooperative boardinghouses. These establishments in many ways resembled the zadruga, a living arrangement among large extended families, often numbering from eighty to ninety people, which was common in Croatia and Serbia. This reliance upon cooperation and family aided them in overcoming extremely harsh living conditions, and enabled their children to achieve an education and much higher standard of living.

The Croatian community began to set down roots and prosper. With the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, however, each European nation received a quota of 3 percent of its nationals residing in the United States in 1910. The 1924 National Origins Act further decreased the quota to 2 percent and made the base year 1890, when the number of immigrants from northwestern Europe was higher. These acts thus restricted an influx of what the Immigration Restriction League viewed as less desirable immigrants from Europe's south, east, and southeast, in order to preserve "the mental and moral qualities which make what we call our race," according to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The previous great migrations of Croats would not be repeated.

It was only after the 1940s that Croatians began to reject the traditional peasant beliefs dating from the eighteenth century of strong adherence to the Catholic religion, the family unit, social control, and discipline. Although they still played a role in family life, the traditional peasant beliefs could not prevent family structures from becoming more nuclear and less extended. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, family units had been growing smaller. The father had maintained his prominent position, and his wife was his possession: a woman bore sons and listened to her husband. It was the mother who watched over the daughters, a responsibility that she assumed gladly in order to give them a better life when they married. The father was distant from the children, although he did concern himself with his sons' education, if not his daughters'.

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Excerpted from South Slavs in Michigan by Daniel Cetinich Copyright © 2003 by Daniel Cetinich. Excerpted by permission.
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