A Puzzling Response

by Susan Zehnder, Director of Education

Recently, I presented the topic of immigration to second graders, and asked “who is an immigrant?” Ever since, I’ve been thinking about one response I heard. 

Required to study immigration by New York State, second-graders learn who  came to the United States during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and some of the reasons why. Students easily identify the Statue of Liberty. They understand it was a gift to America from France, and was dedicated in 1886 as a sign of friendship between the two countries. Well over a hundred years old, the statue has been carefully restored three times. She is an important symbol of what America stands for, and continues to hold her torch high over New York's harbor.

Statue of Liberty's recently restored torch.

Nearby, other buildings of a similar age used to process newly arrived immigrants, now house the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration run by the National Park Service. Operating as a gateway to America and the possibility of a better life, Ellis Island processed over 12 million hopeful people from 1892 until it closed in 1954. Immigration is nothing new.

 

Both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island can be seen in this photo from a NYC tourist website.

Immigration is in the news a lot these days. In the United States, the first restrictive federal immigration law was passed 144 years ago in 1875. Called the Page Act after Representative Horace F. Page, a Republican from California, it aimed to prohibit Chinese women entry to the United States. Up until then, immigrants from China were mostly men. Lured by the financial possibilities surrounding the 1848 California Gold Rush, the majority of these men borrowed money to make the trip. Working, they paid back that money plus interest.

However, what they earned was often not enough to bring over their wives or girlfriends. Lacking family life, prostitution, nothing new to the west, grew in this immigrant population. Congressman Page created The Page Act, saying he wanted to address the issue of prostitution and to focus on the plight of poor Chinese girls brought over as prostitutes or slaves. Today, speculation is the restrictions were to keep Chinese laborers from taking jobs that could go to white men, by depriving them of the chance to start families. 

To implement the Page Act, potential immigrant women were subjected to rigorous questioning first by the American consul in Hong Kong. Passing that, they would have to again answer the same questions just before sailing. These answers were carefully compared to their previous ones. Those that were approved, were then asked the same questions by Hong Kong’s harbor master of the British colonial government. Once on board the ship, the women were questioned again, and upon arriving, the women presented their photographs, health records and answered the same questions again. If anyone changed any answer or didn’t match their photo from before, they were returned to Hong Kong and seen as duplicitous.

In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was adopted. This second immigration law suspended immigration of Chinese laborers to America for ten years; permitted those already in the US to remain in the country only after a temporary absence; and barred Chinese from naturalization, among other things.

There weren’t many Chinese in Chemung County at this time. In Elmira there were two Chinese launderers listed in the 1885 City Directory, with an additional three listed in 1896. Notes in our files indicate the number was “stable up to the 1920s.” 

In the immigration unit, the second graders read over copies of original documents to find clues about different characters who lived in our area. We use an advertisement from one of the laundry businesses listed in the Star-Gazette from September 2, 1914. 

Star-Gazette, September 2, 1914

This shows one business that was a successor to another, was open every day, and worked to provide the very best work. Through discussion, the students learn a little more of why hardworking people might have left their home countries and ventured to America. We look at documents on different immigrants who make up the complexity of our area.  

 

Just like in the early days as a nation, today America is a country of immigrants from countries all over the world. 

The answer that I heard when I asked the students “Who is an immigrant?” didn’t make sense until I thought about it. While I suspect he wouldn’t agree, it’s who the kids hear always talking about immigrants.

The puzzling answer I heard to who is an immigrant? The President.

Note: For more information on Chinese immigrants in Chemung County, see Rachel’s blogfrom August 13, 2012. It includes the story of Mr. Yee Lee, owner of the first Chinese laundry business in Elmira.

Cultural Diffusion vs. Cultural Appropriation: What’s the Difference and Why Should We Care?

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

Do you like Chinese food? How about Mexican or Italian or Thai?  Me too.  The spread of ethnic cuisine is a tasty example of the phenomenon known as cultural diffusion.  Cultural diffusion is the spread of a cultural aspect from one group to another.  Food is one example, but styles, technologies, ideas and languages can also be transferred between cultures.  The process has a well documented history going back to the spread of agriculture if not earlier.  It is generally considered an important part of how societies interact and evolve. 

Contrasted with that is cultural appropriation.  Cultural appropriation is when members of one group take a specific aspect of another group’s culture and use it in such a way as to radically alter the meaning of that aspect.  Here’s an example:

In the culture of many groups of Native Americans living on the Great Plains, the feathered war bonnet was worn on ceremonial occasions by warriors who had earned the right to do so through acts of valor in battle.  It was awarded to them by the leaders of the tribe and was not only a mark of honor but also was believed to have protective properties.  What do you suppose the chances are that these random white guys in face paint have earned the right to wear the Native American equivalent of the Medal of Honor?   Some other examples of cultural appropriation include Lady Gaga wearing a burqa because she thinks it looks cool and Disney attempting to trademark the Latin American holiday Día de los Muertos to go with their new movie. 

So, how is this different from cultural diffusion?  The main difference is how the originating culture feels about it.  No one cares that I love palak paneer (an Indian spinach dish), but most Hindus would be deeply offended if I wore a bindi (Hindu mark of wisdom and protection).  For many cultures, the context-less appropriation of their important religious and cultural symbols is deeply problematic.   I know from some earlier examples it may seem like all the cool kids are doing it, but as late as the 1940s people thought minstrel shows and blackface were okay too.  It took decades of effort by African Americans and their allies to teach people that it was actually offensive.  Now, is there anyone reading this blog post that doesn’t find this photo horribly racist and insensitive?

Chemung County Melting Pot: South-Asian Heritage Month

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

According to my good friend Wikipedia, May is Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, Jewish Heritage Month, National Military Appreciation Month and, randomly enough, National Bike Month.  It is also South Asian Heritage Month.  South Asia generally refers to the countries south of the Himalayans including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  While the peoples of these nations have long and storied histories, their history in the United States and Chemung County has been relatively brief. 

Prior to the 1960s, immigration to the United States from these countries was almost unheard of.   Before 1965, immigration from Asia was restricted through strict racial and national quotas which favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.  However, the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 changed the way the United States handled immigration, doing away with racial-geographic quotas and instead given preferences to those with useful job skills in targeted fields or family members already living here.  By the 1970s, this resulted in an influx of highly skilled and educated immigrants from India and Pakistan.  As of the 2000 census, there were 2,000,000 people from India and 724,000 people from Pakistan living in the United States, plus their American-born children.  According to the 2010 Chemung County census, .78% of our residents are of South Asian descent. 

Attracted here by the hospitals and high-tech industries like Corning Inc., Chemung County’s South Asian immigrants have been settling in.  There are Indian groceries in Big Flats and Horseheads and a Mosque in Big Flats too.  The Southern Tier Indian Cultural Association (http://www.stica.org), a local social and cultural organization, hosts annual events celebrating Indian culture which have become quite a hit in Corning.  Still, their integration into the community hasn’t been easy.  In a recent interview as part of an oral history project, a Horsehead’s student of Pakistani descent expressed her anger at a patient who refused to let her mother treat her because she was wearing a hijab. 

The South Asians in our community might not have been here quite as long as some, but they are an important part of our Chemung County melting pot.  We here at CCHS are looking forward to collecting both their stories and their stuff.

Jewish History

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah is just wrapping up.  Like many Jewish holidays, Hanukkah celebrates perseverance in the face of religious oppression.  Similarly, the early Jewish settlement in the Chemung Valley is a story of survival and growth in the face of oppression.   The first Jews arrived in the area following a failed revolution in the German states in 1848.  The revolution was an attempt on the part of the merchant middle class and the poorer working classes to unite the various German-speaking states into one democratic county.   It was put down by the aristocratic powers and was followed by an anti-Semitic backlash.

Most of the Jews who fled to America arrived in New York and Philadelphia and spread out from there.  By the early 1850s, the Erie Railroad had connected Elmira with New York and so the Jews came.  The earliest settlers worked as peddlers.  Some of them, especially those with families, established homes in Elmira and from there traveled by foot to outlying villages and settlements selling jewelry and other fancy goods not available in general stores.  After they’d gained enough money, many would settle down with a shop in a favorite village or return to Elmira to open up a store.  Rosenbaum’s, for example, was opened in 1863 by former peddler Leham Rosenbaum. 

By the 1860s, after years of worship in private homes, the Jewish community pulled together enough funds to build a synagogue.  It was called B’Nai Israel and was located on High Street on Elmira’s eastside in the heart of the Jewish community.  Initially, there were only 31 families in the congregation, but it grew steadily throughout the 1860s & 70s.  

A second wave of Jewish settlers arrived in the 1880s and 90s, this time from Poland and Russia.  Throughout the 1880s, Eastern European Jews were plagued both by violent mob attacks and increasingly harsh anti-Semitic laws which restricted where they could live, what jobs they could have and how much education they could receive.  Between 1881 and 1920, over 2 million Jews fled Russia and Poland for the United States. 

While the members of this second wave who settled in Elmira moved into the same eastside neighborhood as the more established Jewish families, they didn’t blend seamlessly.  The members of B’Nai Israel practiced Reform Judaism while the newer immigrants were Orthodox.  This lead to the founding of a new Orthodox temple called Shomray Hadath in 1883.  By the next year there was a third temple known as the Sullivan Street Synagogue and Talmud Torah which eventually merged with Shomray Hadath after a fire destroyed their building in 1941.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Jewish community began to move west out of the old eastside neighborhood centered around John Street.  First B’Nail Israel in 1952 and then later Shomray Hadath moved out to West Water Street.  Due to dwindling populations, the two congregations have recently merged to form Kol Ami.