Polish immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE:Poles constituted the most numerous Slavic group to immigrate to the United States during the late nineteenth century. A large number of Polish immigrants settled in the Midwest, where they and their descendants played important roles in the politics and industries of cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

Polish immigration to the United States can be divided into three primary periodsbefore 1870, 1870 to World War II, and the decades following the war. The majority of Poles who immigrated to the United States arrived during the early twentieth centuryhey were preceded by Poles who joined the British settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, as early as 1608. Most of the Poles who came during the nineteenth century were common laborers searching for job opportunities and better lives for themselves and their families.

Early Immigrants

The Poles who arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608 were brought in by John Smith to make soap, pitch, tar, rosin, and glass. The earliest name recorded was Robert the Polonianwho became known as Robert Poole. In 1619, Virginia’s Polish workers petitioned for the right to vote. When they were denied, they staged a strike and were granted their petition. That incident was evidently the first recorded workers’ strike for voting rights in American history.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Pennsylvania became the primary destination for Polish immigrants. Many arrived with the Moravian Brethren when they came to settle in the area. After Anthony Sadowsky arrived there in 1730, he soon moved to the Ohio River Valley and changed his name to Sandusky—which can now be seen on maps of Ohio. Sandusky and his family became prominent in the exploration of the Ohio territories. Poles continued arriving in small numbers up until the American War of Independence.

The Revolutionary War (1775–1783) attracted the attention of Europeans, including Polesmany of whom came to America to join the struggle against British rule. By 1776, hundreds of Poles lived in the British coloniesmany supported the revolutionary cause. Kazimierz Pulaski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko played particularly important roles as brigadier generals in George Washington’s Continental Army.

Pulaski had been a leader of the Polish Bar Confederacywhich had resisted Russian influence. After leading a failed revolt against the Russian Empire, he fled from Europe to North Americawhere he volunteered to help train the fledgling American cavalry and tried to create elite cavalry and infantry units similar to modern rapid response forces. He was eventually killed while leading a cavalry charge against the British forces in Georgia and has become recognized as the founder of American cavalry.

A graduate of the newly formed Polish Military Academy, Tadeusz Kosciuszko found his opportunities limited in Polandhe decided to join the American revolutionary cause. He became a good friend of the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson. Kosciuszko was an engineer and artilleryman by training and was assigned to design the fortifications at West Point in New York. He later wrote the first manual for American artillery. After surviving the war, he was awarded a plantation and slaves by the new American government. However, he freed his slaves, sold the plantation, and gave the money from the plantation sale to the former slaves for their education.

In 1795, Poland was partitioned among its more powerful neighbors and ceased to exist as a sovereign country. Throughout the nineteenth century, Polish nationalists struggled to re-create their homeland. Between 1807 and 1813, the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte resurrected a truncated Polandit soon fell back under Russian, Austrian, and Prussian control. Over the next five decades, Poles staged several failed revolts against their foreign masters. After each rebellion failed, Polish refugees fled westmany came to America. In 1834, 234 Polish refugees arrived in New Yorkthey formed the Polish Committee in America. In 1852, the Democratic Society of Polish Émigrés was formed and became affiliated with the antislavery movement.

The U.S. Civil War and Afterward

When the U.S. Civil War broke out in 1861, Poles found themselves on both sides of the conflict. In Louisiana a Polish Brigade was formed to fight for the Confederacy, while in New York Wlodziemierz Krzyzanowski organized the Fifty-eighth New York Infantry for the Union Army. Known as the Polish Legion, Krzyzanowski’s infantry unit dressed in Polish-style uniformsoth units saw action in Virginia and eventually faced each other at the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Overall, an estimated 4,000–5,000 Poles served in the Union Army and 1,000 in the Confederate Army.

The decades immediately following the Civil War began the first major period of Polish immigration. The Polish regions of central Europe were still disrupted by warfare and political uncertainty, and all of Europe fell into an economic depression during the 1870s. Consequently, the lure of America became ever stronger. Most of the Poles who began immigrating to the United States during this period settled in the states of the industrial northsome also went farther west. In Texas, Polish immigrants founded a settlement known as Panna Maria.

Most Polish immigrants gravitated to the industrial North, attracted by expanding employment opportunities in factories and the coal and iron mines that fed the industries. Buffalo, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago became especially strong magnets to Polish peasants with limited education, few industrial skills, and little or no ability to speak English. Most filled lower-rung jobs left by earlier Irish and German immigrants who had moved up the labor ladder. Irish and German workers moved into managerial and foreman positionsPoles and other immigrants from central and eastern Europe became common laborers in factories and mines.

Because Polish immigrants were sometimes seen as competitors responsible for lowered wages, they were not always welcomed with open arms. Signs with slogans such as “No Polaks Wanted” became commonplace in shop and factory windows. Many Polish immigrants had to pay bribes to find work. Nevertheless, despite these handicaps and ethnic bias, Polish immigrants generally succeeded in finding work.

Polish immigrants initially settled into communities among other central Europeanssuch as Germansuntil their numbers grew large enough to form ethnic enclaves of their ownsuch as “Poletown” in Detroit. The largest concentration of Poles formed in Chicago, around the city’s Milwaukee Avenue. Polish shops, churches and social clubs were soon to follow.

While many immigrants settled in cities, others chose rural communities so they could continue their familiar agricultural lifestyles. Many saved their earnings from factory work to purchase midwestern farms. Central Wisconsin’s Portage County attracted such a large number of Poles that the majority of its residents were still Poles into the twenty-first century.

The Roman Catholic Church

As the number of Poles in the United States grew, they began to push for social organizations of their own rather than sharing with other ethnic groups. Having their own Roman Catholic parishes became a major priority. The Catholic Church had played an important role in Polish society in Europeit was only natural for immigrants to want their own Polish parishes in America. Chicago’s St. Stanislaus Kostka Churchformed in 1867was the first Polish parish to form in the upper Midwest. The following year saw the opening of the first Polish parochial school in the United States in Milwaukee.

During the late nineteenth century, demands for Polish parishes grew at such a rate they began to trouble the Roman Catholic hierarchy. In South Bend, Indiana, a Polish parish formed directly across a street from an Irish parish. To avoid wasteful redundancy, the church’s hierarchy worked to discourage ethnic-based parishes by portraying Catholic churches as vehicles for the Americanization of immigrants. However, many Polish immigrants regarded this attitude as a form of discrimination because German and Irish immigrants had already been allowed to form their own parishes. In 1904, a group of disaffected Poles decided to split from the main body of the Roman church by forming the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC)which allied with the Episcopalian Church. Within a dozen years, PNCC membership grew to more than 30,000 members. Father Francis Hodur was consecrated as the first bishop of the PNCC in 1907.

Meanwhile, within the Roman Catholic Church, Polish parishes were quickly followed by Polish religious ordersthe most prominent was the Felician Sisters. The Felician Sisters formed their first base of operation in New York City to aid newly arriving immigrants in 1877. By 1882, they had moved to Detroit as Polish immigrants moved west. The Felician Sisters became the bulwark of the Polish parochial school systemther orders soon followed, such as the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

Adjusting to American Life

With their spiritual lives safely provided for, Polish immigrants turned more toward self-help organizations and Polish language newspapers for information on their specific concerns and needs. As early as 1852, the Democratic Society of Polish Émigrés in America was formed in New York City. It continued until 1858, when its name was changed to the Polish Committee. During the 1860s, the St. Stanislaus Kostka Society was formed to aid Polish Catholics, and the GminaCommunePolska was formed to aid Poles without regard to their religious or political affiliation.

In cities from New York to Philadelphia to Milwaukee, organizations named after saints and Polish national heroessuch as the American Revolutionary War general Tadeusz Kosciuszkosprang up during the 1870s and 1880s. To coordinate efforts on shared Polish concerns, several national bodies were formed during this period. The Polish Roman Catholic Union was formed in 1873the Polish National Alliance appeared in 1882. However, the members of these two organizations did not agree on all issues because of a religious and secular dividethe organizations were often in conflict with each other.

The Poles also created their own athletic clubssimilar to the German Turner’s Clubscalled Sokols or Falcons. The initial purpose of these clubs was often to train future soldiers to fight for a reborn Poland. The creation of fighting squads known as Bojowki was popular in the socialist-oriented Sokols but condemned in the Catholic-oriented halls. The goals of the Sokols revealed a basic division within the nation’s Polish communities between those who considered themselves “Poles in America” and those who saw themselves as “Polish Americans.”

Polish-language newspapers became immigrants’ primary sources of information about what was happening in the Old World as well as what was happening in their new world. One of the earliest newspapers was Buffalo’s Polak w Amerycewhich began publishing in 1887. It was quickly followed by Kuryer Polski in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,Ameryka Echo in Toledo, Ohio, Dziennik Polski in Detroit, andone of the longest-enduring Polish newspapersGwiazda Polarna in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. By 1907, even Polish socialists were publishing their own paperDziennik Ludowy, in Chicago.

During the 1880s, Poles began making their presence felt in American politics with the election of Polish city and state officials in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Polish women also took an active part in politics by working in the women’s suffrage movement. To coordinate their efforts, the Polish Women’s Alliance was created in 1898 in Chicago.

Twentieth Century Developments

When World War I broke out in 1914, Polish immigrants in the United States formed the Polish Defense Committee to support the Polish Legions of Józef Pilsudskiworking to get the Central Powers to guarantee the re-creation of the Polish state. By 1917, however, when the United States entered the war against the Central Powers, Poles were shifting their support to a Polish army formed in France under Józef Haller. Polish Americans sent both money and volunteers to France to fight for a free Poland.

Many Poles volunteered for the U.S. Army after the United States entered the war. The conflicting efforts of Polish immigrants during the war reemphasized the split personality of the Polish community. When U.S. President Woodrow Wilson aided in the rebirth of Poland after the war, immigrants not ready to think of themselves as “Polish Americans” had the opportunity to return to their homeland and resume being Polish citizens.

For those immigrants who opted to remain in the United States, Polish social and fraternal organizations played a major role in helping them become Polish Americans. Poles also began playing larger roles on the American scene. They became leaders in the labor protests of the 1920s and 1930smost notably Chicago’s stockyard strikes during the 1920s and Detroit's auto worker strikes of the 1930s. Poles began to break into the arts and sportsespecially baseball, the quintessential American game. Stanley Coveleski was an integral member of the Cleveland Indians during the 1920s and eventually made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was followed shortly thereafter by Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals. Poles were also making their way into professional football.

Maintaining Polish Identity

Despite efforts to become more American, Polish Americans still wanted to maintain some elements of their ancestral identity. Polish cultural clubs helped maintain that identity by sponsoring concerts of Polish music, art exhibits, and weekend classes in Polish language and history. Nevertheless, within each new generation, ties to Poland and PolishnessPolkoscbecame weaker. During the 1920s, the numbers of new Polish immigrants were severely diminished by new federal anti-immigrant legislation.

World War II started in Europe in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The response of the American Polish community showed how much it had changed in only two decades. This time, Polish Americans did not enlist in a Polish army in exile as they had in 1917. Instead, they enlisted in the U.S. military forces that they thought would contribute to the liberation of Poland while defending the United States. Now, their first loyalties lay with the United States, but many of them still gave moral and monetary support for a free Poland. Large numbers of Polish American men served in the European and Pacific theatersmany women worked in the factories throughout the war.

Following the war, a new wave of Polish immigrants came to America fleeing communism in Eastern Europe. The new migration was split between the well-educated who found their way into the fields of education, medicine, and business and became leaders in the Polish American community, and the less educated who took the routes of their predecessors into factories and mines as common laborers. However, members of both groups picked up the banner of maintaining Polishness in the United States through cultural and arts societies. They also became leaders in the anticommunist movement in the United States.

From the mid-1950s through the 1970s, Polish immigration to America was severely curtailed due to the Cold War. Following the crushing of the Solidarity Labor Union in 1981, a fresh wave of Polish refugees made their way to the United States. These new immigrants did not blend well with the older generations of immigrants. The new immigrants were, for the most part, well-educated and saw their predecessors as frozen in time—not seeing the world or Poland as it actually was, but as it once had been. Many of these newcomers would return to Poland after 1989. They resembled the early Poles in America’s mindset around the turn of the twentieth century.

With each new generation, the Polish American community has moved farther from its Polish cultural roots. Although fraternal organizations continue to operate local organizations and Polish language newspapers, they are quickly disappearing as more and more Poles begin to see themselves not as Poles in America or Polish Americans but as Americans of Polish descent. As of 2022, around 8.81 million individuals of Polish heritage lived in the United Statesalthough most of these individuals report a mixed heritage. Additionally, only 412,797 were foreign-born, with nearly 200,000 reported only speaking English slightly well.

In the 2024 U.S. presidential elections, the Polish American vote gained prominencemany analysts suggested it could play a decisive role in the tightly contested race. Kamala Harristhe Democratic Party candidateactively courted the Polish American vote in Pennsylvania, routinely categorized as a key "battleground state." In 2020, Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by a threadbare 80,555 votes. Polish Americans in Pennsylvania comprised 6 percent of the state populationdemonstrating its potential importance as over 30 Pennsylvania counties had significant percentages of this community. Harris' messages targeted historical Polish leeriness toward Russia in emphasizing the aggressive tendencies of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Harris also highlighted Putin's implied threats against the Polish government as it was a key supporter of Ukraine in its fight against Russian occupying forces.  

This message was also suggested to be effective in the state of Wisconsinhome to 500,000 people of Polish descent. In 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden won Wisconsin by the slim margin of 20,000 votes. Another 2024 battleground state where analysts projected the Polish American vote could be decisive was Michigan.

Other analysts suggested while Polish Americans had an affinity for their historical homeland, they tended to vote as other native-born American groups. These individuals downplayed the decisive role of the Polish American electorate in battleground states. 

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