Roma Americans

Roma Americans (or Romani Americans) are a diverse group of people with a common history, heritage, and language (Romani) that is traced back to northern India in the 11th century. Gradually, over the following centuries, the Roma spread westward throughout all parts of Europe, adapting to and adopting from the peoples around whom they lived, all the while retaining a degree of cultural distinctiveness. In English, the Roma have popularly, though inaccurately, been called Gypsies, a name originating from a belief in their Egyptian origins. Modern linguistic, genetic, historical, and cultural studies have disproven this story of origin. Today, Roma or Romani is their preferred name, because of the inaccurate stereotypes the term Gypsy implies.

Although it is likely that some Roma were brought to the Americas in the 16th through 18th centuries from a variety of European locations as servants, enslaved people, and convicts, the first verifiable wave of Roma immigration to the United States began in the 1840s and 1850s. They mainly arrived in family groups from Great Britain. More immigrated in the 1870s and 1880s, and another wave came in the early 20th century. These Roma immigrants tended to arrive from southern and eastern Europe. After 1970, increasing Roma immigration occurred from the communist countries of eastern Europe. Roma Americans have come to the United States from nearly every nation in Europe.

After a first wave of Roma immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s, another group began arriving in the 1870s and 1880s. More currently, a wave of Roma immigration has taken place since the 1989 collapse of Communism in eastern Europe. This portrait of a Roma family and their camp was likely taken near Bethesda, Maryland, in 1888.

Early Roma immigrants listed such diverse occupations as farmer, laborer, showman, animal trainer, horse trader, musician, and coppersmith, among others, to census takers. In the 19th century Roma American men tended to pursue such nomadic European occupations, while women often practiced fortune telling. As the car replaced [Page 1850]the horse, men shifted to such work as selling and repairing cars and metalworking. Mobility has been a key trait of Roma culture, and although some Roma Americans travel or move as urban migrants in search of employment, others are no less sedentary than non-Roma Americans.

Roma have suffered extreme persecution throughout European history, including enslavement and deportation. Anti-Roma laws were the norm, and prejudice has continued through the 20th century—most deadly during the Holocaust, when 1 million Roma may have been killed. Such discrimination has likely caused increased immigration to the United States, although Roma have also emigrated for the same reasons as the non-Roma around them. In the United States as well, Roma have frequently experienced discrimination based on perceived stereotypes about them, as well as their traditional culture.

For example, laws against fortune telling or special licensing requirements in the United States have targeted Roma people. Today, Roma Americans, like the international Roma population, are becoming more politically active and better organized as they struggle to achieve their civil and human rights.

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