Polish American Reflections - 100th Anniversary of the NAACP

When the NAACP began its struggle in 1909 for racial equality, it was clear, as the anecdote indicates, that racial prejudice was embedded in a wide spread system of discrimination in deep in American Culture.  The work of the NAACP on behalf of African Americans in the end helped to dismantle the system that kept not just Blacks but also many other groups down.

It is with great pleasure this evening that I bring congratulations to the NAACP on its 100th Anniversary on behalf of the Polish community.  As one of the most important organizations in 20th Century America, it has done more to shape the life and culture of our country in a more tolerant and inclusive direction over the last century than almost any other. It helped to win equality not only for African Americans, but also other Americans of all ethnic, racial and religious groups.  We also commend the work of the Hamtramck chapter of the NAACP as it engages the twenty first century with renewed vigor.

Poland, the country of our ancestors, has produced one of the ten world class cultures of modern times.  Its immense roster of musical geniuses- Chopin, Szymanowski, Gorecki, and Paderewski, to name only a few of its greatest composers – has enriched world music. Its literature with more Nobel Prize winners than any other country of comparable size is deep and impressive.  The country located at one and at the world’s most important religious and cultural fault lines has produced a Western Latin faith and culture that has drawn on best of East and West.  Polish folk culture influenced by the same sources is one of the richest in Europe. 

The base of Poland‘s population is in the West Slavic peoples who first created the Polish State.  But Polish nation has also absorbed many Lithuanians, Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Scots, Armenians, Italians, Jews, Tatars, Belarussians, Ruthenians, Ukrainians and others who became part of Poland as it grew or migrated to it.  The diversity of its population is reflected in its political institutions which evolved to protect an open and pluralist society.  Some of the key elements of Poland’s complex political culture include ancient traditions of civil rights, elected parliaments and kings, decentralized government, cultural pluralism and religious toleration.  All of these were rooted in a profound concern for human dignity and personal freedom.  Pope John Paul II not only exemplified this tradition at its best and most generous but gave it to the world  as a model through his writings, teachings, and ultimately his life.

In the Age of Revolutions at the end of the 18th Century when Poland came under attack by autocratic empires that surrounded it, Poles not only fought for their own freedom but moved by their ideals joined the fight for freedom elsewhere. “Where ever people fight for Freedom, there is Poland” became their motto.  Among the struggles they joined was the fight for the freedom of the people of Haiti against France.  Having joined the French Army to liberate their own land, they found themselves commanded by Napoleon to crush the liberty of others.  Hundreds of Poles joined the rebels and helped Haiti to win its independence.  Declared honorary Blacks, they stayed and married local women.  Their descendants, deeply conscious of their Polish roots, still live in villages in Northern Haiti.

No one exemplified more this Polish spirit better than Thaddeus Kosciuszko.  Having left Poland with a deep animus against rigid class structures and serfdom, he volunteered to join the American fight for independence.  He served with honor and distinction from 1776 to 1784.  After the American Revolution he returned to Europe to lead the Polish struggle for liberty and independence.  His American reputation, his principled commitment to liberty and equality for all and his gallant fight for Poland’s cause won him world acclaim. His name in the 19th Century was usually bracketed with Washington and Jefferson around the world. Thomas Jefferson called him the “purest son of liberty I have ever met and not just liberty for the well born or wealthy”.” While in America, he spoke out strongly against slavery and for the equality of all.  His closest friend in America was his aide, a free Black man, named Agrippa Hull.  Once, against strong opposition of his fellow officers, he gave the clothing of a friend killed in battle, to that officer’s slaves, saying “their skin deserves to feel fine cloths as much as ours”.

He left a will leaving the lands that Congress had voted him to be sold by his friend Thomas Jefferson in order to free slaves, educate them and give them land and tools so that they might become good, loyal citizens and good mothers and fathers who would have the education and resources to prevent others from ever enslaving them again.  Jefferson did not carry out the will but the publicity and court cases it occasioned made it an important part of the Anti-Slavery debate in America for four decades before the Civil War.

There were others who came with similar views such as the Polish Poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid (John Paul II’s favorite poet) whose poem on the execution of John Brown, attacking slavery and predicting the cataclysm of the Civil War, is inscribed on the walls of the U.S. National Monument at Harper’s Ferry.

Poles and Blacks also have a local story

We met as communities of new immigrants to Detroit about 130 years ago. The Poles coming came first in large numbers. Their mass immigration began about two generation before that of African Americans.  The early Polish Immigrants sometimes rented their first dwellings from members of the tiny African American community and used services of its lawyers, doctors and dentists who usually treated them better than did professionals in the white community.

In the 1920’s, the Polish Community in Detroit became the city’s largest group and the Black community as a result of the first great migration from the South was well on its way to become the city’s second largest. The two groups combined to defeat the newly reborn Ku Klux Klan. The KKK with 22,000 members in Detroit by 1923 campaigned with violence and demagoguery against foreigners, Catholics, Jews and Blacks.  Poles and Blacks rallied around the Mayoral candidacy of Johnny Smith who despite his name was raised by his widowed Polish mother and felt sharply his exclusion as a “Polack” and a “foreigner”.  The NAACP was central to organizing the Black community for his campaigns in 1925 and 1927. The combined votes of the two communities in a record turnout crushed the political ambitions of the Klan.  It was one of proudest chapters of Detroit history written together by our two peoples.

The Depression crushed us both.  Hamtramck, for example, had over 50% unemployment.  It also intensified the struggle for jobs and housing and set our communities in opposition to each other.  A 1942 secret government report said that tension on the East side is not a “Black-White” issue it is a “Negro-Polish” issue and Detroit’s two most discriminated against communities had struggled for a  for years  for the far too few number of jobs available in the Detroit area.

Yet in the middle of this tension, Reverend Charles A. Hill, one of Detroit leading NAACP leaders spoke out against discrimination against Poles.  In a statement issued in Hamtramck he said “Unlike the White People of Detroit, Negroes do not consider Polish people stupid, uncouth and fit only for manual labor”.

More than twenty years later in response to one of the most comprehensive survey ever done in Detroit almost 60% of the Black population said that next to themselves Poles were still the most discriminated against group in Detroit.

In wake of the terrible and searing events of 1967, Poles and their Black neighbors came together in Northeast Detroit to form the Black-Polish Alliance to try to heal the city.  It was unique and it was successful for almost a decade.  It was able to mend the wounds and win substantial benefits for the neighborhoods in which it operated.

In the course of their history in the Detroit area, Polish immigrants and their children were able to build 29 neighborhoods out of raw farmland and swamp.  In many of them (and the best example is Hamtramck) they shared those spaces for generations with their African American neighbors.

I think we can see from the perspective of a long and rich history that in our struggles have often found our two groups on the same barricades and that the victories of the NAACP were victories that expanded the meaning of equality and justice not only for Black Americans but for those like Polish Americans with whom they shared space and community in the city. For this we are all in its debt.


THADDEUS C. RADZILOWSKI, PH.D.
PRESIDENT - PIAST INSTITUTE

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Since 1997, the Polish Popular Music Awards  whose symbol is the Fryderyk (named after Chopin) have included an award for Hip Hop and Rap – a musical form pioneered by African Americans which has spread throughout the World.  As they have done in the past with other cultural forms, Poles have taken this new form and made it their own.  It is fitting therefore, that we mark this anniversary with a performance by Dzejo – One of the Detroit area’s leading Polish rappers.

For more information on this speech contact Virginia Skrzyniarz at 313.733.4535 or at skrzyniarz@piastinstitute.org.