1.  The Melting Pot - Nostalgic Approaches

Between 1884 and 1924 the largest number of immigrants ever entered the United States seeking economic, political and religious relief.  They came primarily from the European nations ? east and west and the Mediterranean basin including the failing Ottoman Empire in the Levant.  Limited numbers came from Asia, Latin American and the Caribbean. They settled in communities centered on church, shops, clubs and athletic clubs in urban and rural areas; they also came as individuals.  Their goal was to create a new life; the goal of their host country was to homogenize everyone into a new creation ? an American.  This was the great melting pot into which the greatest wave of immigration was to Americanize.

One significant, often overlooked, piece of this great movement to create a unified nation was a series of  ?Homelands? exhibits aimed at celebrating the differences while embracing the great assimilation process.  This was a time of suspicion and misunderstanding, distrust of these different newcomers who were going to take away jobs of native-born Americans.  What better way to break down these barriers than to display - through exhibits, musicales, sports events ? the riches the newcomers brought with them.  It was a way also to encourage the newcomers to put those riches to the side while they assimilate to their new socio-cultural, economic setting.  Throughout the Eastern seaboard and close-by industrial centers well into the 1930s, these displays celebrated the new diversity of the United States.[1]

There was some movement among immigrant ethnic communities to continue this movement by establishing their own museums.  The Polish Museum of America was established in 1935 as the ?Museum and Archives of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America.?  The establishment of this museum was an outgrowth of the World?s Fair of 1939 in New York City, from which cultural displays could not be returned to Europe on the edge of war.  This museum was not unique, but there were not many others. 

African American Museums.  The movement to create museums recognizing the contributions of African Americans seemed to coincide in several communities.  This movement followed those in other communities because of the political nature of the African American community of the United States.  The African American Museum of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Ebony Museum of Negro History and Art (known as the DuSable Museum since 1968) in Chicago, Illinois, two major northern, industrial cities vie for being the oldest museums of African American history in the United States. 

The former was, for many years the dream of Icabod Flewellen.  He established a ?museum? in his home in 1953, which was incorporated in 1960.  By the early 1980s, Mr. Flewellen had gained enough community support to move the not-insignificant collection to a historic neighborhood building.

[1]See Eaton, Immigrant Gifts to American Life.