Becoming American, Becoming Suburban: Norwegians in the 1920s

1 Becoming American, Becoming Suburban: Norwegians in the 1920s by John R. Jenswold On Monday, June 8, 1925 - almost halfway through the decade Americans popularly call "the Jazz Age" or "the Roaring 20s" - a crowd numbering between 60 and 100 thousand gathered at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds to mark the centennial of organized Norwegian immigration to the United States. The climax to several weeks of festivities in cities across the country, the gathering, like other ethnic festivals in this century, represented a particular point in the historical process of group self-definition. In the words of one organizer , it was an opportunity to "take stock of what the Norwegians in America have done during the past century in order that we, as Norwegian Americans, may better understand our heritage, that we may better appreciate our pioneer fathers, and that we may get a more just recognition from our American neighbors, and that we may better face the future."1 The group's most prominent American neighbor, President Calvin Coolidge, broke his celebrated silence that day in St. Paul to strike the event's keynote. In his speech, he paid lavish praise to Norwegians in America. He acknowledged the Viking discovery of North America as the beginning of the transplantation of such strong "Nordic traits" as individualism and industriousness. A New Englander, Coolidge compared the arrival of the sloop Restauration in 1825 to the land3 4 John R. Jenswold ing of the Mayflower immigrants two centuries before and set the Norwegians squarely into the heroic epic of American westward expansion. And he paid tribute to NorwegianAmerican participation in American wars.2 Evoking the familiar idea of the "melting pot," Coolidge told Norwegian Americans that their qualities fused with those of other ethnic groups to create "a spiritual union accompanied by a range of capacity and genius which marks this nation for a preeminent destiny." Since 1825 the Norwegians had transformed America, but perhaps more importantly, the President claimed, America transformed the Norwegians. "They have been rapidly amalgamated into the body of citizenship while contributing to it many of its best and characteristic elements." Despite their European origins, the President concluded, the group's historical identity was "in its essence and its meaning . . . peculiarly American."3 Among those who cheered Coolidge's speech that summer day were Norwegian- American leaders who viewed such testimonials as elegies. By 1925 immigration from the old country had seemed to come to an end, thanks to the World War, a short depression in the early 1920s, and the passing of the immigration restriction laws of 1921 and 1924. While no one then could have envisioned the effects of the Great Depression and World War II in further curtailing European immigration, the message seemed clear enough by 1925: that the great migration was over, and the centennial celebrants and their children were the sole custodians of Norwegian culture in America. Some doubted that the younger generation could be trusted with continuing the immigrant traditions. Leaders cited the abandonment of regional dialects, the increased use of English in worship and conversation, and a declining interest in ethnic club activities among the American-born young as indices of Americanization. So a cloud of fatalism hung over the centennial, a morbid feeling that the 1925 festivities represented a "last rally" of the Norwegians before the group sank into the American mainstream. Of course, the group did not sink into an American main- Becoming American, Becoming Suburban 5 stream. Nor did it retain a culture insulated against the influences of the mainstream. Rather, in the period between World War I and the Great Depression, Norwegian- American leaders redefined their group's identity in the face of challenges presented by a rapidly changing American society and culture around them. By the time of the 1925 centennial, Norwegians had already participated in a major trend in American social history, the rise of an urban nation. The 1920 census established the United States as a nation of city dwellers, as for the first time more than 50 percent of its people were counted among the urban population. Despite their enduring reputation as the most rural of immigrant groups, Norwegians joined the migration to American...