Busting Racism in the 1930s: Greeks Serving African American Patrons

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This almighty photograph changeable astatine a Greek-owned diner successful Pittsburgh’s Hill District circa the 1930s is an affectional reminder of however recently arrived Greek immigrants treated African Americans.

The owners are pictured serving their patrons much than 3 decades earlier the Civil Rights Movement took place.

The archetypal Greeks arrived successful the region of Pittsburgh successful the precocious 1800s. Many of the workers who came to Pittsburgh were typically unskilled and recovered enactment wherever they could.

According to The American Hellenic Foundation of Western Pennsylvania, determination were astir 50 Greek immigrants successful the metropolis by 1893. Most of whom were sailors from the assorted Greek islands. Most began with manual labour but would travel to unfastened their ain businesses.

Many of the archetypal immigrants were men due to the fact that they intended to enactment past instrumentality to Greece. According to the publication They Came to Pittsburgh by Clarke Thomas, it was estimated that determination were “300 to 400 antheral Greeks earlier immoderate women came, the archetypal arriving astir 1903.”

In 1912, it is estimated that 20 percent of the Greek men surviving successful Pittsburgh did instrumentality to Greece to combat successful the Balkan Wars that came earlier World War I.

Those who remained, and those that followed later, rapidly came to recognize that to execute the American imagination they would request to onslaught retired connected their own. Many opened restaurants, confectionaries, and java houses.

African Americans suffered from the Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930s worsened the already bleak economical concern of African Americans. They were the archetypal to beryllium laid disconnected from their jobs, and they suffered from an unemployment complaint 2 to 3 times that of whites. In aboriginal nationalist assistance programs African Americans often received substantially little assistance than whites, and immoderate charitable organizations adjacent excluded Blacks from their crockery kitchens.

In aboriginal years, Greek-Americans forged links with achromatic Americans, arsenic they supported the Civil Rights question of the 1960s.

Greek Archibishop marching with African American rights hero

The best-known lawsuit of enactment was erstwhile Archbishop Iakovos, Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America, marched with achromatic person Martin Luther King Jr. successful Selma, Alabama successful 1965.

Iakovos, who had experienced spiritual oppression himself arsenic a child, was a zealous protagonist of quality and civilian rights and backed King’s origin with his actions — a rarity among the precocious clergy from immoderate denomination successful those days.

He became the lone religion person who had the courageousness to locomotion hand-in-hand with Martin Luther King during that celebrated march successful Selma.

The LIFE magazine screen of March 26, 1965 marked that humanities moment, showing a formidable-looking Iakovos lasting to King’s right. (The full mag is online and tin beryllium read here.)

The New York Times reported: “The striking screen of Time mag that showed Dr. King broadside by broadside with the black-garbed Archbishop Iakovos marked a caller beingness of Greek Americans and the Greek Orthodox Church in American life.”