"Gypsies in Czech and Czechs in Texas"

Dubina Cemetery, photo by Eva Eckert

During one of my frequent visits to Texas I was introduced as a professor from Prague to an elderly man who spoke Czech. I rejoiced, "You're Czech!"

"No", the tall Texan responded, "Jsem Moravec" (I'm Moravian,) my grandparents came from Kozlovice."

I almost burst out, "Yes, but you're Czech nevertheless, it's the same: same nation, country, capital, standard language..."

But then I realized his act of identity and defiance. I represented to him Czechs who tried to indoctrinate his Moravian ancestors into Czechness some one hundred and fifty years ago in the homeland.

Since the rule of Maria Theresa, Bohemia and Moravia formed separate provinces within the Hapsburg Empire, that of the Czech Kingdom and Moravian Margravate. German was the language of social advantage in both provinces still in the middle of the 19th century. Germans, who in particular in Moravia represented the ruling class and powerful minority, stressed historical differences of Czechs and Moravians, emphasizing that both were Slavs, but that Moravians certainly were not Czechs. The goal was to offset Czech National Revival proclaiming historical union of all Czech Lands in the Monarchy under the Czech Crown and Czech unity in the first half of the 19th century.

By the late 1860s when influx of immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia was steady and strong, relations of both provinces reached rapprochement and the campaign of unity of the Czech nation and its literary standard language spread through the press and activity of traveling writers and politicians. Adherence to the literary standard was undeniable among all of Czech descent. Texas Moravians would without exception admit that, "Czech was the proper way of speaking, the language of priests, ministers and teachers". They would emulate the standard in writing, with some success, and hide their Moravian dialect which for them was good enough to be used only at home, among family. Nevertheless, the concept of ethnic Moravians against Czechs has been petrified in Texas since the 1850s and 60s; at that time, the first immigrants reached the prairies. Still today, Texas Moravians use it to define themselves against Czechs. But to the American world the same Texan would define himself as Czech, conscious of advantages gained by access to a well-recognized broader Texas Czech identity.

In the 1850s, but mainly after the Civil War, thousands of landless peasants from a concentrated territory in Moravia picked up and left for Texas, pushed by potato famine, loss of artisan jobs and lack of land, and pulled by cheap accessible land and the myth of the Wild West.

In Texas they did not disperse but stayed in the central region where they also found the best blackland of all Texas and established Czech communities. We find them there still at the outbreak of WW2. They represent the fourth dominant Texas ethnic minority and number about _ million Czech descendants today.

How did those literate, ethnicity conscious peasants fare in America? Did they melt in or mix with others, as the once prevalent presupposition stemming from American moral superiority and unique national character, had it? Did they assimilate by the second or third generation? Or did they survive as Texas Czechs?

They survived for four generations, which is not totally unusual. Slow acculturation is also associated, for instance, with German Russians in the Midwest or Pennsylvania Dutch Germans. But in comparison to Czechs, Germans in Texas who started arriving some twenty years before the Czechs were gone to town by the turn of the century.

Today, fourth generation Texas Czechs born in the 1950s live in the cities... but some still speak Czech. Their parents lived on farms in Texas Czech communities and spoke Czech daily out of necessity because they knew English poorly. One of them mentioned to me that she failed the first grade because she did not know English.

"My parents", a sixty year old Brethren Reverend wrote in his memoirs, "could use Czech when shopping, in the bank and in dealing with a cotton merchant in those days. Czech was the language of heart to them."

In 1900, a Svoboda newspaper published by local Czechs had the largest subscription rate of 4,000 from the whole state (German "La Grange Zeitung" was the second largest was the readership)! Yet, it is as if Czechs did not exist for the Texas Anglos. While in every issue of Svoboda one finds references to American history and holidays with an obvious pedagogical subtext of educating Czech immigrants about American history, local American newspapers never even mention Czechs' presence. An 1902 American history of a Texas County with the heaviest Czech population lists a single Czech prominent citizen among pages and pages of Americans.

Lately it occurred to me that the story of Texas Czechs' slow acculturation might also be interpreted from a different angle. Their ethnic awareness and the value they attached to homeland, language, history and traditions certainly account in part for the lacking assimilation in America. But despite being literate and economically successful (they arrived to Texas exactly at the time when Texas badly needed their work force and ushered in three decades of economic growth right after the Civil War), they were still treated with ambivalence and hostility by the American majority. Perhaps they had no choice but to remain in their Czech enclaves.

How were the Czech immigrants measured by American standards? The reason why I thought of this question was a one-month old report on Czechs' treatment of Gypsies who today represent the only ethnic minority of the Czech Republic.

Let me give you some background. From almost 100,000 in 1945, the Gypsy population in Czechoslovakia quadrupled over the period of less than fifty years after the WW2. The numbers represent estimates because Gypsies were acknowledged as being of separate identity only in 1991 and could claim their nationality as Romas since then. Under the socialist regime, they were considered an ethnic group of distinct social identity but expected to assimilate into the majority society. This assimilation was helped by forced relocation of Gypsy families, breaking up of their communities and distributing their members among the majority population. This proved unsuccessful.

Although Gypsies were finally allowed to organize themselves according to their Roma nationality in the nineties, their emancipation has not produced social cooperation and adjustment. New economic climate of the 1990s imposed new demands on them. Social contributions to the so called "weak" social groups were terminated then. Unemployment of Gypsies increased because they were no longer forced by law to work. They have also encountered hostility of the majority population and open racial discrimination that was earlier hidden. Today Gypsy children typically do not get to regular public schools because they are evaluated as "not ready and immature"; they are unable to pass tests prepared by the white society from the position of the Czech majority culture. For instance, they cannot answer questions such as who the Czech president is. They are thus disqualified, sent to special remedial schools, circumscribed and separated without hope of returning to regular schools, graduating, getting jobs... branded for life. Their treatment resembles the Texas Czechs being disqualified for not knowing English.

I speculate that Czechs in Texas, too, did not pass the tests of the majority, did not understand the questions and cultural framework of reference. Presently, young Gypsy individuals from families that assimilated into the majority society, overcame obstacles and established an intellectual elite, meet at retreats and learn to understand the conflict in order to establish paths from Gypsy communities into the Czech world.

Today Czech Gypsies represent the ignored ethnic minority. They claim that they do not care about Czech values of civilized life, do not need Czechs, are self-reliant and have their own culture. Out of pride or helpless defense? In the context of the segregated South, immigrating Czechs were not even considered as white. From the beginning, a very unlikely cultural juxtaposition of their national costume and Texas boots led to conflict and separation. They did not share American cultural values and lifetime goals. They did not pass the majority test in language. Although they were protected by the walls of their church, which considered language the exclusive tool to propagate one's faith, they were attacked from the outside: "Why don't you speak like us? Why didn't you learn English at home and leave your language and culture at the Ellis Island?" Similar comments appeared in press of the time.

The Czechs did not pass the test of religion either. Surrounded by Puritanical Methodists and Baptists, they proclaimed, nevertheless, Catholic religious devotion. Although they could not transfer the visual aspects of Baroque Catholicism that endowed every homeland village with Saint John of Nepomucen sculptures, decorated churches and pilgrimage stations, they built striking steepled churches that attracted attention on the flat Texas prairie. They also established their own parochial schools where they propagated traditional values, respect for their language and culture, religion, family and the past. Many kept their children from attending American public schools because they did not share the value of education as a way to economic advancement and social improvement.

They were attached to their land and worked their small farms so that every acre yielded a good crop; wherever Czechs settled, the land was parceled into small fields. Thus, they got in the Americans' way and the Americans who needed large open farms and cattle pastures moved away from the areas settled by Czechs. Unlike the Anglos, they were unable to speculate and invest their money but paid off debts as quickly as they could and stayed on their farms generation after generation.

Czechs intermarried; dating Americans whom they considered immoral and irresponsible was prohibitive. They established their own clubs, farmers' unions, insurance companies and benevolent organizations because American insurance companies supposedly refused to insure them due to high suicide rates.

Czech elite began to emerge already in the 1880s. First Czech lawyers, doctors and proprietors pushed the English language law at public schools. They understood the English advantage and established early on a narrow passage into the American world. But for several generations, they kept returning from English taught schools (where Czech was only one of many subjects) to their Czech communities where they had own churches, stores, banks and press. They wanted to learn English and be like their German and American neighbors, as they write in press. But they also resented the pressure to give up their past, forget their language and become American quickly. They saw English as a practical tool but could not embrace values of the English-speaking world values. They had their own. Language played a critical role in this story. Language is a measure of identity and, "Homeland is where one's language is spoken", to paraphrase Humboldt. Language can also be the screen through which one sees the world on the outside; a shield against the incessant pressure of change valued by the prevalent American culture.

Bilingualism and multilingualism defined America of the decades around the turn of the century. Millions kept immigrating into America until the 1920s freeze.

Despite this naturally multicultural atmosphere, the majority society defined itself by a single linguistic identity ­English, and unscrupulously imposed it to the arriving millions who were supposed to cast of homeland language and culture quickly. But few could do that.

Identities are deep in us; our language communicates layers of traditions, rituals and memories. Even those for whom associations with the homeland were negatively tainted by incessant hunger and poverty, could not step out of the mold shaped by centuries.

The story of robust community and language maintenance is imprinted in Texas Czech newspapers, and engraved in tombstones. Gravestone inscriptions, in particular, are silent witnesses that provide most compelling evidence of a group's value of ethnicity. Their messages tell the story of a prolonged language survival, contact, shrinkage, attrition and dissipation. This story is written on hundreds of tombstones in central Texas. It is not a story of murder or suicide, but drying up of one's tongue.

In 1918, Czechoslovakia was founded. In the 1920s, the Congress put a cap on immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe because the changing ethnic structure of European immigration became obvious. East Europeans were viewed as undesirable, dirty, uncultured and illiterate. Americans looked down at Czechs because they were peasants and miserably poor. They were also suspicious of Czechs' Catholicism and feared its impact on American freedom and democracy.

In the 1920s, Czech was still used in the communities but was not refreshed by new immigrants from then on. After WW2 domains of Czech language usage became compressed until one could no longer speak of communities but only of families.

The young stayed where the War drafted them and followed the roads established from the countryside to the city. Czechs became swept by the immense social mobility caused by the War. At that point, Czech language came into a deadlock. It lived on by means of self-preservation through cultural rituals of song and prayer but that could not go on forever. Today, the Texas prairies reclaimed their own; communities disappeared; the national costume was replaced by Texas boots. Only tombstones with curious inscriptions remain. But who reads them? Few linguists who collect their data to preserve the memory.

And the Gypsies? How many generations will it take for their acculturation? Will they be ever tolerated or even respected for who they are? I suspect that before such a paper can be delivered, we will hear one on the Czech Gypsy minority in Britain. Gypsies are emigrating from the Czech Republic. A new story of acculturation is unfolding.

Reprinted with permission of the author, received on 8/23/01

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