9 Greeks
Greeks Before the Great Migration
Greek mass immigration into the United States was a predominantly 20th-century affair; however, as was the case for Italians, isolated instances can be found of Greeks having arrived in North America centuries earlier. For instance, as early as 1528, a Greek by the name of Doroteo Teodoro landed in Florida. Known by the Spanish as Theodoros Griego or Theodore Greek, Teodoro accompanied explorer Cabeza de Vaca’s group on their adventures in North America during the early 16th century, as evidenced by the fact that de Vaca mentions Teodoro in his book Relacion, first published in 1542. Another famous 16th-century Greek adventurer was Juan de Fuca. As with Doroteo Teodoro, de Fuca’s Spanish sounding name obscures the fact that he was actually a Greek, named Ioannis Fokas (or Phokas). A navigator in the service of Philip II of Spain, Fokas is best known for his exploration, in 1592, of the passage now known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca that runs between Vancouver Island, Canada and the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.[1]
In 1768, with Florida under British control, Greeks established a short-lived colony at New Smyrna Beach, and when it failed, many of the inhabitants moved to neighboring Saint Augustine. A stable Greek community also sprang up in New Orleans in 1866. A number of Greeks are also known to have participated in both the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War.[2]
However, immigration from Greece did not begin in earnest until about 1890, and the numbers were small compared to countries like neighboring Italy. According to Immigration and Naturalization Service data, for example, “approximately 421,000 Greeks immigrated to the United States between 1890 and 1921.”[3] By comparison, as previously noted, more than 4.1 million Italians entered the United States from 1880–1920.
Greek Pride
As Daniels has noted: “Greeks who immigrated to the United States generally had a fierce sense of their own Greekness,” partly because of their awareness of the past glories of Greek civilization, but also because for centuries Greece had chafed under the Ottomans, a powerful state that originated in what is today Turkey and that once controlled much of southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa. The Ottoman domination of Greece evoked in Greeks a fervent nationalism and a desire for self-determination, which in 1821 erupted in the Greek War of Independence and led to the establishment of an independent modern Greek state.[4]
Traits such as “Greek pride” have been humorously caricatured in popular cinema, a notable example being the 2002 romantic comedy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, (see clip below) in which Gus Portokalos, the patriarch of a Greek American family, repeatedly offers evidence to prove that “everything comes from the Greek.”
Features of Greek Migration
In some respects, the characteristics of the first Greek immigrants mirrored that of many other groups comprising the “new i