My grandparents, in the early 1920s
Metaphorically of course. I know this diary is a bit after the DNC news cycle, but it has taken me a while to be able to put my thoughts into words.
When I saw Khizr and Ghazala Khan at the DNC, they touched something deep in my heart and I felt an immediate connection with them. They reminded me so much of my paternal grandparents, rather the struggles and sacrifices of my grandparents. I didn’t really know my grandparents. My grandmother died when I was three, and my grandfather died when I was 11. I know them mostly through pictures and stories.
John and Julia, from Czechoslovakia, more specifically what is now Slovakia, were immigrants. John was born in 1892 and came to the US in 1913 to avoid WWI. He was, in essence, fleeing from a coming war and economic hardship. He worked in the coal mines of southwestern Pennsylvania, back-breakingly difficult work that non-immigrant Americans were not really flocking to do. Other relatives were either already here or followed.
A few years later, Julia came to the US as well. While John came through Ellis Island (I think, but I’m not 100% sure of that), Julia was actually illegal. Her sister had a passport, so Julia used it and posed as her sister to avoid Ellis Island. Yep, grandma was an illegal immigrant fleeing a war torn and economically depressed area!
They had an incredible struggle to start their lives. Coal miners at that time were at the mercy of the mine owners. They had to use company housing, buy their goods from the company store. The company kept them poor and dependent. This was the era of the beginning of the labor unions, a struggle that the companies fought in every way possible, including with physical oppression.
Neither of my grandparents spoke English when they came here. My father told me that when he went to school on the first day, he couldn’t understand anything. He spoke only Slovak, it was all that was spoken in his home. Eventually he learned English and spoke both languages as well as any native.
My grandparents had 6 children. Their first child died at the age of 2 from measles. They had 4 sons and one daughter that lived to adulthood. All four sons served in the military during either WWII or the Korean war. My father served in the Army. He was too young to serve during any action in WWII, he joined the Army at 17 and by that time WWII had just ended. He was assigned to the graves registration unit and worked to recover bodies of servicemen who were buried in Italy. He later re-enlisted during the Korean War and was stationed in Germany to work on the identification of our dead. One of my uncles served in the Navy during WWII, the other two in the Air Force a little bit later and one of those made a career of the Air Force. My aunt became a nurse. While my grandparents struggled, the next generation struggled less, and the next after that produced multiple college graduates. I wish my grandparents had lived to see their grand children do so well.
My mom’s family has been in the US for centuries actually. I’m a direct descendant of Pocahontas through my mother (and I do have documentation to prove that), and it really pisses me off when Trump calls Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas. I think way back there, we might also be cousins to Thomas Jefferson, although that I would have to research to prove. My mom joined the DAR, through Colonial Andrew Lynn as an ancestor. And you know that guy with the nickname Buffalo Bill? He’s a relative too, I think he’s my sixth cousin, maybe higher.
So here’s me. On one side of my heritage, English, going back to the American Revolution, and even back to the native Americans here at the founding of the colonies. On the other side, two generations from ethnic immigrants, even an illegal immigrant. I graduated from college and work for the US Government, the Department of Defense actually.
My grandmother, the illegal immigrant on the left, her sister on the right, circa 1960.
When I saw Ghazala at the DNC, I immediately thought of my grandmother. I have pictures of her in a babushka. I also have photos of her sister, my great aunt, and in every single one of those photos she wears a babushka, even inside the house. Slovak women often wore babushkas. They never seem to smile, they always have solemn looks on their faces. Muslim women are not the only women to wear scarves to cover their heads.
I get very emotional when I think of the struggle that my grandparents and other immigrants of the time faced. Not only did they leave their homeland, and I can’t imagine the courage that a 21 year old would need to do that, but they came to a place where they did not speak the language, to a place where their employers sought to exploit them to the greatest extent possible. And they came to a land where the people already here, even though the natives themselves were descended from immigrants, thought they were lesser:
The development of large, thriving communities of immigrants and minorities generated a considerable backlash among native-born Americans who feared they were losing their cities to "undesirable" newcomers. Prior to the coming of the New Immigrants, a large majority of the American population—more than 60%—could trace their ancestry back to either the British Isles or to Germany. These old-line Americans, mostly fair-skinned and Protestant, tended to view the darker-complected, mostly Catholic or Jewish New Immigrants as not just different but "inferior"—members of lesser races, likely lacking the Anglo-Saxon temperament many believed necessary to maintain a free society. The New Immigrants, in the prejudiced imagination of many native-born Americans, lacked self-discipline and work ethic, lived immoral lifestyles, and could not be trusted not to throw their votes (should they attain citizenship) to corrupt machine politicians or radical troublemakers. The New Immigrants generated a renewed nativism in hostile reaction to their arrival on American shores.
We are repeating this today. Donald Trump and his followers think the same of Mexicans and Muslims as people of the early part of the last century thought of our grandparents, the immigrants from Europe who are the very fabric of our being. What kind of work ethic does one have to have to risk his life mining coal?
Had Donald Trump been the demagogue that he is in the early 1900s, he would be saying the same things about my grandparents and the other immigrants like them. My parents died last year, and when I visit their graves I try to tell them all that is going on. They were both life-long democrats, they loved Hillary Clinton and supported her in 2008, would have done so again this year. I was at their graves last weekend, and I told them about Trump, and I broke down in tears as I told them about the Khans and how they reminded me of my grandparents.
I did not know my grandparents, but if I could have 5 minutes with them, I would hug them and thank them for their struggle, thank them for their sacrifice, thank them for coming here and facing so many perils so that I could be born a US citizen, the greatest country on earth. If I ever meet the Khans, I would hug them too, because I would be hugging my grandparents.
Update: Rec list! First time! Thank you! I love reading the stories of other immigrant grandparents, please share in the comments.
