The influence of Greek culture on Michigan began long before the first Greek arrived. The American settlers of the Old Northwest Territory had definite notions of Greeks and Greek culture. America and its developing society and culture were to be the New Athens, a locale where the resurgence in the values and ideals of classical Greece were to be reborn.

With these presuppositions in mind, the way Greeks arrived and preserved their culture in Michigan has an added dimension not usually encountered by other immigrants to America. The newly arrived Greek immigrants actively attempted to deal with the existing myths...

Grecian Fever was the term quickly coined in 1821 for the worldwide excitement caused by the Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Empire. This bid for freedom especially captured the imagination of Americans still proud of their own Revolution. The Greek War of Independence occurred when Michigan was one of the most distant of Western frontier outposts. The region was mostly inhabited by wild animals and roving bands of none-too-friendly Native Americans. The entire territory boasted only one town, Detroit, and it had fewer than two thousand inhabitants. Here in this most unlikely of locations, four names in particular deserve to...

At the turn of the century Greeks began leaving their homeland in large numbers for theKseniti,(the foreign lands). The decision to labor in foreign lands was most often motivated by a series of social obligations (such as providing a dowry for sisters and acquiring capital in the countryside), by long-established labor practices (verbal and written agreements to work for employers abroad for fixed periods in exchange for the initial fare), by a desire to avoid the growing class discrimination in the rural countryside, and, in the years just before the Balkan Wars and World War I, to avoid...

Written historical accounts of Greek communities in Michigan number only a handful of articles, which often do not provide more than an introduction into the individual community’s history. Michigan, Detroit, or Greeks in Michigan are not even listed in the indices of the standard texts on Greek-American history.⁴⁰ Collections of random newspaper articles, folklore, and recorded interviews do exist but are cursory accounts and focus only on traditional folk customs and not on the life experiences of the person being interviewed.⁴¹

The Greek-American ethnic press coupled with available state and federal records indicates that in the first years of mass...

The Greeks in Michigan benefited from the experiences of Greek communities around the country that had discovered the benefits of hosting classical Greek dramas and musical performances. The Greeks took care to hold these public events on American holidays, such as Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. In the years between 1920 and 1940, every Greek community, hamlet, and family cluster in Michigan had its drama group, playwright, or aspiring opera singer. All reports agree that these public bilingual performances were meant to draw in the American public. One woman from Ann Arbor recalls these events with zest: “[W]e...

As the case of the Walker Monument in Muskegon documents, the ongoing relationship between Greek immigrants and the life and landscape of the peoples of Michigan is quite complex, with Old World experiences holding great influence over the actions of daily life among these immigrants.

In 1799, Jonathan Walker was born on a farm in Harwich, Massachusetts. Walker, who took to the sea as a young man, became both a sea captain and a committed abolitionist. Like many more abolitionists that are now recognized, Walker actively helped African American slaves escape their bondage. In 1844, while making a voyage from...

Census figures and daily reality point to the inevitable assimilation of Greeks into the wider American culture. This seemingly undeniable fact has been met with considerable fury. Today, not just in Michigan but all across the country, there are two more or less distinct groups: those who proudly recognize descent from Greek immigrant ancestors but see themselves as principally Americans, and those who contend they are Greeks living abroad. While this opposition of identities is an eternal constant in any ethnic or Diaspora community, at this point in time in North America, specific social and economic factors among the Greeks...