Czech Americans

Czechs are a Slavic ethnic group, descended from tribes who inhabited Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia—the historic Czech lands that today are part of the Czech Republic. Many Czechs have partial German ancestry due to widespread German immigration in the Middle Ages. Part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, the Czech lands then became part of the independent nation of Czechoslovakia. One of many central European nations to become a Communist country in the aftermath of World War II (except during the Prague Spring, a brief period of democracy in the late 1960s), Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the separate states of Slovakia and the Czech Republic in 1993, after the fall of European Communism in the early 1990s.

Czech Americans include many of those whose ancestors identified as Bohemian, Silesian, or Moravian Americans, as well as many who were classified simply as Slavic, or less commonly Austrian or Austro-Hungarian, by immigration officials. Czech immigration to the United States was extensive in the 19th century, and by century's end, Chicago had the world's third-largest Czech [Page 662]population (after Prague and Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Much of this period of immigration coincided, perhaps paradoxically, with the rise of romantic nationalism among the Czech people. A century-long quest to restore the historic rights of the Czech lands under Habsburg (Austrian) rule had failed; even the minor concessions granted in the late 18th century were rescinded. Czech language and culture suffered a dilution under the Germanization of the Austrian Empire, and the rise of romantic nationalism inspired many Czechs to reclaim their heritage; abroad in the New World, they could more freely celebrate that heritage and language, in a country becoming known for the opportunities it offered to immigrants.

Though it was sparse until 1848, Czech immigration began much earlier than the 19th century. In fact, the first English colonists in the New World included Joachim Gans, a metallurgist and mining expert whom Sir Walter Raleigh recruited to settle in the ill-fated colony of Roa-noke, Virginia, in 1585. Gans was also the first Jewish person in North America. He was not the last Czech among the pre-Revolutionary settlers; Bohemians were prominent in the colonial days, including the wealthy Philipse family of New Amsterdam and the 17th-century explorer Augustine Herman, first lord of Bohemia Manor, who created the first maps of the Delaware Bay and Chesapeake Bay regions. Herman's descendants have included Richard Bassett, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and four Delaware senators: James Asheton Bayard, Richard Henry Bayard, Thomas Francis Bayard, Sr., and Thomas Francis Bayard, Jr. Bayard Sr. also served as secretary of state.

Sustained Czech immigration began in 1848 after a failed revolution, and even those Czechs who returned home after a few years when it was safer to do so spread the word of America, and attracted further immigration. While many immigrant groups settled primarily in New York City or nearby northeast cities because of the proximity to their arrival point at Ellis Island, Czechs clustered around Chicago, which in the 19th century was the hub of American railways.

...