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Diversity

THE WAY WE LIVED

BY SHARI FINNELL

Published: May 9, 1999

During the 1920s, Frank Zgonc left his home in Slovenia for Indianapolis - an American city full of promise, jobs and, as he would soon find out, a strong distaste for immigrants

For along with opportunity came taunts about their odd clothing and accented speech. And a city that pretended they didn't exist

Political and civic leaders of the day touted Indianapolis as an ideal city made up almost entirely of white, native-born residents. They didn't want immigrants or blacks to tarnish that image

"There is almost a total absence of the foreign floating element," the Commercial Club, later renamed the Chamber of Commerce, boasted in 1910. Historian Robert R. LaFollette wrote in 1929 that Indiana was barely affected by the "deleterious influence of the new immigrants." Marian College history professor James J. Divita said those early, misguided ideals would shape the city for decades

"Indianapolis has had a long history of resisting diversity," he said. "There's been an insistence on conformity and uniformity

I don't know of another city being so concerned about being 100 percent American." In 1910, civic leaders claimed that nine out of 10 residents of Indianapolis and its suburbs were native-born Americans, Divita noted

And the city did have fewer immigrants than other northern cities in 1910. Just 8.5 percent of Indianapolis' residents were foreign-born whites, compared to 36 percent in Chicago and 40 percent in New York

Yet Indianapolis still teemed with diversity

For what civic leaders failed to mention was that nearly 30 percent of those native-born residents had at least one foreign-born parent or were black

In 1910, Indianapolis had the highest percentage of blacks of any major northern city. Census figures show 9.3 percent of Indianapolis residents were black, compared to 1.9 percent in New York, 2 percent in Chicago, and 1.2 percent in Detroit. That number continued to climb as blacks left nearby Southern states in search of jobs

Together, these new residents created a diverse landscape in Indianapolis, rich in the cultures of Germany, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece - and that of native-born blacks

Many of the city's Germans lived on the Southside; others lived in an area called "Germantown," now Lockerbie Square. The Germans, many of them well-educated, were the largest ethnic group in the city

In 1907, The Indianapolis Star reported Germans were "the least objectionable to the Hoosier mind" because they had money

The city's second-largest ethnic group was the Irish, many of whom labored at the Kingan meatpacking plant. They tended to live on the Eastside in "Irish Hill," just south of Washington Street and west of Shelby Street

Areas slightly north and west and northeast of the city's center were filled with black residents. Indiana Avenue was their source of pride

In 1916, the area listed 142 residential units, 33 restaurants, 33 saloons, 26 grocery stores, 17 barber shops and hair stylists, 16 tailors and clothing stores, a medical facility and a hotel to serve the city's growing black population

The area southeast of the Circle was home to Italians. The Near Westside was filled with Serbs, Macedonians, Romanians and Greeks

Farther out on the Westside was Haughville, home to hundreds of Poles, Hungarians and Slovenes. It was here that Slovene immigrant Frank Zgonc moved in the 1920s

Zgonc's dreams of success were short-lived. He died of pneumonia at the age of 42, leaving behind a pregnant wife, Josephine, who would die just a few years later. The couple's only daughter, Mary, was orphaned at the age of 5 - her closest relatives thousands of miles away

A neighboring Slovenian couple took Mary in and raised her. It was a testimony to the village life the Slovenes had created in Haughville

"Everybody who walked down the street, you would call them uncle and aunt," recalls Zgonc's daughter, Mary Barbarich, now 68

However, the world outside that village wasn't so kind. People threw rocks at the Slovenes, taunted them when they spoke their native language in public. And when they weren't treated badly, they - like many other immigrants - were ignored

Long-time Haughville librarian Vera Morgan described the Indianapolis attitude toward foreigners during the 1920s in this way: ". . . if you were so impolite as to press the subject and ask if we really had no foreigners, we would have to say, `Oh, yes, there are a few hunkies out in Haughville but we don't know anything about them.' " "I knew I was a hunkie," said Mary Barbarich, who moved from Haughville to Avon with her husband, Pete, in 1976. "It probably was degrading, but at the time I didn't realize it. I just thought that was our name." Ethnic, racial and occasionally gender tensions persisted in Indianapolis long after the first wave of immigrants

Women fought opposition to suffrage rights in the 'Teens

During the '20s, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Curtis (D.C.) Stephenson wielded great power in state politics

World War I brought discrimination against Germans, and the city banned German language instruction in public schools. Das Deutsche Haus (the German House) became the Athenaeum

Although second and third generations of white immigrants had assimilated with the descendants of "white, native-born" residents, black people - no matter how long their families had been in America - continued to stand apart because of their skin color

Housing and job discrimination were against the law, but white residents took extreme measures - sometimes death threats and cross-burnings - to keep black people out of their neighborhoods

As late as the 1970s, civil rights activist Rev. Ralph Abernathy reminded local blacks they had a long way to go

"He talked about Indianapolis being `up South,' " recalled state Rep. William Crawford, D-Indianapolis. "He reminded us that blacks in Indianapolis weren't much better off than blacks in Alabama, Georgia or rural Mississippi." The ethnic neighborhoods established in the early years of the century started to deteriorate as later generations moved out

However, even this migration had a pattern, historian Divita noted

Slovenes moved farther west from Haughville. The Irish generally moved farther east. Black people tended to move northeast and northwest

"Ethnic groups seldom moved to the other end of town," Divita said. "The black population on the Southside is nearly nonexistent." Construction also eroded ethnic communities. The black mecca along Indiana Avenue fell apart during the '50s and '60s after the city rezoned it, making way for Interstates 65 and 70 and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Foreign immigration continued to slow, but Indianapolis eventually claimed residents identifying themselves as Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Chinese, Hungarians, Japanese, Koreans, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Australians, New Zealanders and Southeast Asians

Hispanics are the largest recent ethnic group to arrive in Indianapolis

During the 1970s, the city at last began to celebrate the ethnic groups that settled here. Ethnic festivals and special events cropped up, including Indiana Black Expo, reputed to be the largest black event of its kind

And more residents started taking interest in their ethnic ancestry. Among them is the grandson of Slovenian immigrant Frank Zgonc

Paul Barbarich, a member of the American Slovenian Catholic Union, traveled in 1987 to Studenec, Slovenia, where he met many of his mother's relatives. He also has been studying the language

Historian Divita said the city has made progress in recognizing diversity. "We can glory in what it means to be American, but we are one people out of many. We're all a nation of immigrants."

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