Introduction

Abstract

Roman Conrad Pucinski was born into the Polish American community in Buffalo, New York, in 1919. Moving to Chicago as a child, he grew up in the Polish Downtown neighborhood before enrolling in Northwestern University in nearby Evanston in 1938. After graduating in 1941 he served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II, during which he was the lead bombardier on the first B-29 mission to Tokyo. Following the war, he attended John Marshall Law School in Chicago from 1945 to 1949 while simultaneously pursuing a journalistic career with the Chicago Times, later to become the Chicago Sun-Times. As a reporter, he covered city hall, which one observer described as “a plum assignment that included covering the city's Byzantine politics and a host of characters, many crooked but nearly all colorful.”1Pucinski's first appearance on the national stage came in 1952 when he took a leave of absence from his position with the newspaper to accept an assignment as chief investigator for a special committee of Congress formed to investigate the mass murder of Polish officers and officials by the Soviets during World War II, a topic of singular interest to him given his Polish ancestry and ties to the ethnic community. Not only did the Katyń investigation vault Pucinski's name into national prominence, it also solidified his position in the Polish ethnic community that would form the basis of his political support in his rise to national influence. The 11th Congressional District in Illinois, from which Pucinski gained election to the House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1959, has been characterized as “the ultimate ethnic American district.” The 1970 census revealed that nearly half of its 454,329 residents had been born outside the United States.2Pucinski's fourteen years in Congress (1959–73) spanned some of the most turbulent and transformative times in postwar America with him taking a leading part in a host of important initiatives. Likewise, after leaving Congress he served for eighteen years (1973–91) as a Chicago alderman at a time when the city was also undergoing significant, economic, ethnic, and political change. Not only did he take a leading part in addressing the resulting issues, he also engaged as a leader in the local and national Polish American community. Seldom has a person been presented with opportunities to make substantial contributions within an ethnic community, on a citywide level, and on the national level and risen to the occasion in each instance.In this special issue of Polish American Studies, we begin with an original primary source prepared for this issue, a memoir of Roman Pucinski's daughter, who shares her recollections of her father, his work in the Polish community, and his feelings and motivations during his career in Congress and as alderman. Since Pucinski's well-developed sense of Polishness (Polskość) was formed early in life, we next move to an article on his mother, Lidia Pucińska, herself a prominent Chicago radio figure and ethnic leader, contributed by historian Joanna Wojdon, who conducted extensive research in the Pucińska Papers in the Polish Museum of America in Chicago.Pucinski's Congressional years marked a turning point in many important domestic concerns in which he was intimately involved. His leadership in these is examined by James S. Pula, while his interactions with the Polish American community, both during his congressional and subsequent years, is the topic of an interview with Richard Owsiany, who worked closely with him in the Polish American Congress and on various community projects. In the closing article, Dominic A. Pacyga delves into the world of Chicago politics to examine Pucinski's role during the critical changes the city underwent while he served as alderman. We hope that this special issue will shed light on an important figure in Polonia who also wielded considerable influence in local and national politics.We wish to thank the editor, Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, and the members of the editorial board for their support in this project, as well as Richard Owsiany and the Polish Museum of America for permission to use photographs from the museum collections.