Immigration is American
Emily K. Yates
The first photograph is of my great grandfather Anthony Sakavicius taken around 1940 in Baltimore, MD. He was a notorious story teller who always had his dog close by (also pictured). The second is of his family. The boy in the center is my granddad, Vincent Anthony Sakievich.
Immigration is American. Many of us can count the several countries that make up our bloodlines. People came here to pursue the original idea that we could be the commander of our life; we decided what we could be. I am aware of the many exclusions and exceptions to this but generally that was the consensus. In my own family history I see many of the same issues then as there are now; issues such as integration, language, religion and culture.
My own family, Anthony Sakavicius and his family first moved to the U.S. in 1898, from the Catholic Punskas Parish, near Kalvarija (Calvary), Lithuania. After two years or so my great great grandmother was so homesick for the homeland they returned to Lithuania. In 1905 she picked up an illness that Lithuanian doctors said could only be taken care of America. So, they returned and settled in Baltimore, Maryland for good, even after she overcame her illness.
In time Anthony and Anna Sakavicius changed the family name to 'Sakievich' – because, so my grandfather told me, it was to make it easier for the Americans to pronounce. A few months after they returned my great grandfather, Vincent John Sakievich, the fifth child, was born in 1904, also in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1926 he met and married Helen Hedwig Grajauskas, also a first generation American, whose family were Lithuanians.
Baltimore had and has communities built around immigrant cultures, such as German, Irish and Italian cultures. My family lived in a Lithuanian community. Descendents, including my spit-fire Great Aunt Joanna, continue to celebrate Lithuanian heritage and history at the annual Lithuanian festival held in Baltimore (Avizienyt 2009).
Anthony and Anna did not learn English, they found it too difficult and they had little motivation to overcome
this challenge. Their neighbors, friends and the merchants they patronized, all spoke Lithuanian. ‘Talking About the Reading’ (Reading Culture, Chp. 9, Pg. 97) discusses an advertisement promoting a single shared language as an important key for success in immigrating to America. A common language means better communication, and understanding. It would also be harder for people to exploit immigrants when they are better able to detect it.
Their son, Vincent, and his family did learn to speak both English and Lithuanian. Vincent made do but it
was my Granddad, his son, Vincent Anthony Sakievich who decided to become ‘American’ and truly learned to speak English. He ran away from home and joined the army at fifteen. To get in he lied and said he was sixteen years old, which was the earliest one could enlist. A side note is that his tombstone reflects his age according to their records and shows him a year older since he had an Army burial.
The army sent him west for training and while there he met and married a non-Lithuanian, non-Catholic, my Grandmother, Juanita. She was from Arizona and part Indian. These choices were considered very ‘rebellious’ on his part.
My family history and the many stories I listened to growing up were about the struggle of moving to a new country; a young country still in the process of defining itself and in a historical time of great change. This was the age of the automobile, the telephone, mass electricity. They moved here and intentionally did not ‘blend in’. Like many other immigrants, then and today, they created communities that were mini-versions of their home country.
This is something I have long thought interesting. I have met many people who similarly come to America with the passion to pursue and acquire success and personal independence but are unwilling to integrate with the society they hope to gain so much from. My own family followed this path for some time.
The images I choose show my family; proud of their culture and accomplishments and holding on to what they left behind. I believe in remembering my family, their challenges and their lives; they have beautiful and defining stories to tell. I also believe in loving my America. Sometimes flawed and forced, still confusing and young, America is my home. This is a country whose health care, even then, gave my great great grandmother the ability to live a long life. America was our refuge as other family members would later come here fleeing the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States.
I see many cultures who come here and who also hold on to where they came from. Some of this is valuable, enlightening, expressive, artistic, and religious but some parts, such as language barriers intentionally held onto, may hold some new citizens back. If we are to be welcoming to our new friends and neighbors, we must find ourselves welcomed back. I believe that because history is incredibly complex, its retelling is sometimes overly simplified. It is easy to forget when there is so much to remember. Integration, language and cultural challenges are not new. However, the welfare programs that exist today are ‘new’ and these programs are heavily used by immigrants, up to 52% of households headed by legal immigrants used at least one (Camarota) (2011).
I see newcomers and neighborhoods built on the premise of what inhabitants find familiar, including ethnic markets and similar persons at the same coffee shop, etc. A generation or two of my family also held out on learning the English language or mixing family relations with non-Lithuanians, but in the end, we embraced the country that is our home, America, and all its mix matched traditions.
I have had the opportunity to live in many places around this country, from a childhood in New Orleans, California and Maryland, to my adulthood in the Northeast and now here in Utah. This is an amazing country with much to overcome but filled with diverse variety of people who have the will to do it.
Works Cited
Avizienyt, S. (2009) ‘Baltimore Lithanians’ Web. 19 June 2011 http://baltimorelithuanians.blogspot.com/
Camarota, S. A., (2011) Center for Immigration Studies, ‘Welfare Use by Immigrant
Households with Children’ Web. 20 June 2011: http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011
George, D. and Trimbur J., Reading Culture, 7th Edition, Chapter Nine, Page 97, Talk about the Reading “They knew they had to learn English to survive”, 2010. Print.
Camarota, S. A., (2011) Center for Immigration Studies, ‘Welfare Use by Immigrant
Households with Children’ Web. 20 June 2011: http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011
George, D. and Trimbur J., Reading Culture, 7th Edition, Chapter Nine, Page 97, Talk about the Reading “They knew they had to learn English to survive”, 2010. Print.