Last August, my family and I packed up our bags and left Chicago, the anchor of the American Midwest, for South Carolina, the heart of the American South. The “South” conjures up images and stereotypes both in and outside America, and as a virtual American correspondent, I thought my insights into our new region and its Greek communities might be of interest.
It is no exaggeration to say that the “South” is a nation within a nation. The region attempted to secede from the American Union and almost succeeded. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the United States, and ten other states followed suit in an unsuccessful attempt to gain independence. The region did not (until recently) have the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Northern or Pacific states, with immigrants coming from all corners of Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. The “South” was primarily white and black, the former largely Anglo-Celtic with French and German enclaves, and the latter descendants of African slaves. Whites and blacks were largely Protestant and proud of their southern identity, but lived in parallel and unequal societies. While the North was at the forefront of industrial and corporate revolutions, the South was largely agricultural and poor, although whenever the United States faced an enemy, Southerners were the first to volunteer.
It is hardly surprising that the wave of European immigrants, including our own Greek community, migrated largely to the North. These were the jobs, and despite the enormous prejudice faced by all immigrants, especially non-Protestant Southern and Eastern Europeans, in the north, Greeks were part of a mosaic of European immigrants from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Orthodox origins, a more diverse environment than a largely monocultural South.
And even . . .
The South attracted immigrants, notably Greeks. Lots of Greeks, in fact. If we look at history, the first Greek enclave in the New World was the colony of New Smyrna, a colony in what is now Florida where a number of Greeks and Spaniards led precarious lives in the 1990s. 1760, before the colony collapsed and moved to nearby St. Augustine. America’s first Greek Orthodox church and community was founded in 1864 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the South’s largest port and a Catholic and French-speaking southern enclave.
French-speaking New Orleans was somewhat of an exception, a merchant colony more typical of the Greek merchant communities of central Europe rather than the larger immigrant communities that would become the norm with the mass Greek migration that began in the 1890s. Jobs in factories, mines, and railroads were scarce in the South, so the Greeks headed North first. Slowly, however, Greeks migrated South, usually in more entrepreneurial roles, or radiating out from key Southern ports, such as Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, Houston, Texas, and of course New Orleans, all of them. including long-established Greek communities.
Perhaps the most Greek place in the United States is the coastal town of Tarpon Springs, Florida, which has seen an influx of Greek sponge divers, first from Hydra and Aegina, then from the islands of the Dodecanese, in the years preceding the Balkan wars. The city still has a very large Greek community, bolstered by tens of thousands of Greeks from Chicago and New York, part of a wave of northern migration that transformed much of coastal Florida into something that is no longer entirely southern culturally.
In its early years, America had many utopian or religious communes, and the South was the site of America’s only Greek Orthodox experiment in communitarianism, the Malbis Plantation near the port of Mobile. Founded in 1906 by Jason Malbis, a Greek Orthodox monk from Chicago, the community had a thriving collection of farms and businesses before slowly dismantling in the 1950s. Many residents of nearby Greek communities are descendants of the Malbis settlers.
The Greeks moved inland from the coasts, establishing communities throughout the interior south. AHEPA, the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, was founded in 1922 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the height of nativist prejudice against Southern Europeans, whether North or South. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), originally founded in the post-Civil War South, had targeted Greeks on its undesirable list, and AHEPA’s efforts to combat prejudice, safeguard heritage and fostering American patriotism played a key role in the state’s success and empowerment. -the confidence of the Greek-American community, in the South and elsewhere in America.
‘UNCLE NICK’ THE GREAT OLD MAN OF THE GREENVILLE GREEK COMMUNITY
We now live in upstate South Carolina, in the college town of Clemson, where I study and teach. About 30 miles away is the town of Greenville, a former cotton mill town now one of the fastest growing cities in America. Greenville is home to our Greek Orthodox parish, St. George, a community founded about a century ago by Greek immigrants, entrepreneurs and factory workers. As in most American communities, there is a large Peloponnesian contingent, primarily from Laconia, but there is also a strong Evritanian community, the legacy of a chain migration that continued until recently.
One of the first people I met was “Uncle Nick” Theodore, who I call the grand old man of the Greenville Greek community. In his own immediate family, this would be contested, as “Uncle Nick”, aged 90, is the younger brother of three older sisters, aged 101, 100 and 98. I met Nick one day after church, as he was deep in conversation with my 14-year-old son, making sure the Chicago transplant boy felt at home in the South.
The youngest son of immigrants from Laconia, Nick credits the example of his older siblings and the American public school system for his integration into American life and his realization of the American dream. At the same time, its Greek heritage was fostered by the presence of an active church and the strong influence of AHEPA, particularly the Sons of Pericles, who raised a generation proud of their country and its heritage. He credits the Sons of Pericles with his introduction to politics; he became supreme president of the national order in 1953.
And then of course there were the dances, he recalls with a wink, and at one he met Emily, his wife of 63 years. In the early 1960s, he entered the South Carolina State Legislature, at a time when South Carolina’s lower house was all white, all male, and all Democratic (Southern). When I asked him if his Greek heritage provoked prejudice or raised eyebrows, Nick, typically cheerful and optimistic, replied: “Some, at first, but people are people.” His sonorous voice, reminiscent of an old-time Southern orator, with a hint of Demosthenes, combined with a popular “local” authenticity, which is found here, where the coastal plain meets the Appalachians, has endeared him to his voters.
He gave back to his community. Citing the role that education played in his life, throughout his political career, which included two terms as Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina, from 1986 to 1995, Nick worked tirelessly to improve education and the state’s business prospects. His administration successfully moved BMW’s North American headquarters and production to the state. When I told him about it, he smiled softly and reminded me, “we were just doing our job for the people of South Carolina.” While most white South Carolinians have become Republicans, Nick remains a Democrat.
He’s lived the American dream but he cautions everyone, especially his own Greek-American community, “not to forget where we came from” both literally and figuratively. He remembers the Greek community he grew up in, people who worked hard and tried to create their own American dream, and now notes with pride his community, now more diverse, with many intermarriages, and how a recent parishioner passed out in the church and was assisted. by several doctors on site. “I’m telling you, buddy, she got better care at church than she did in the ER (hospital emergency center)!”
On Election Day in November of this year, I was at Nick’s house with my kids, taking a few photos for this story. After learning about school and sports, Nick spoke to these future voters about change: “Times are changing, and we want them to change, but we want it to be done in a civil way.” Wise words, from a man embodying the best of American, Greek and Orthodox traditions.
