Polish-American Heritage Month

HAMTRAMCK, Mich. - October each year is designated as Polish-American Heritage month. It is a quintessential American ethnic commemoration. Obviously no one in Poland celebrates it. We Polish Americans use it to commemorate the rich history, culture and traditions of the land from which we or our ancestors came. More importantly, during this month we celebrate Polish achievements in America, past and present. We remind our fellow Americans of the contributions to our country of the Jamestown pioneers, of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, of ordinary Polish immigrants who built industrial America and who fought its wars, and of contemporary scientists, astronauts, statesmen, entertainers and other notables of Polish ancestry.

The Polish story in America we tell our fellow citizens usually begins with the Jamestown pioneers who came to America more than 400 years ago to help establish some of our first industries. Although there are many aspects of that story that are obscure and may never fully be known, we do know that these first Polish pioneers acquitted themselves well. They were, by all accounts, conscientious, courageous, loyal and hard working– traits that marked Polish achievements in America for centuries to come.

More importantly they, like all immigrants who followed them, sought to make themselves at home in the new place and create the basis for a life different and better than the one they left behind. Their demand for the right to vote was indeed the translation of the Polish spirit of equality into a practical right here. If, however, we see their action to withhold their work to achieve this right only as a labor “strike” and/or interpret it solely through the prism of later Anglo-Saxon prejudice against Polish immigrant workers we will miss both context of the event and its import for the Polish contribution to the shaping of America.

It is unlikely that these early Polish immigrants had the right to vote in Poland – the gentry who did have the right to vote, did not take up artisan trades – but they had probably observed the process. Here in America they claimed the rights of their social betters as they demonstrated for the same rights claimed by their English colleagues, most of whom probably did not have voting rights in England. They created a new way of being at home in America and participating in its formation just as the English were seeking to shape their own traditions to fit a dramatically new context in the new place. Together they were inventing America through their dialogues and disagreements.

Although the Jamestown story has no narrative continuity with later Polish immigrations, it is significant. Poles were present at the creation and helped to determine at the outset what this new democratic experiment would look like for the many immigrants who would come after them.

Next week I will reflect briefly on Kosciuszko who was also present at the creation in a different way.   

For more information
contact Virginia Skrzyniarz at 313.733.4535
or by email at skrzyniarz@piastinstitute.org