Sweet Greeks: First-Generation Immigrant Confectioners in the Heartland

Abstract

Before reading this book, I mistakenly believed that the author was writing a family hagiography. A self-described “independent scholar,” I assumed that Ann Flesor Beck would not be up to the task of writing a well-documented, researched, and quality study of successful Greek immigrant confectioners to small-town central Illinois during the early twentieth century. I could not have been more wrong. Clearly, Beck has done her research, as evidenced by the fifty-six pages of notes and thirty-one-page bibliography, which includes many prominent immigration historians. She effectively uses a rarely explored rural niche to broadly discuss Greek immigration. As part of the Heartland Foodways series on “midwestern food traditions and practices” (p. ii), this book encourages the reader to investigate their other seven offerings.The first five chapters present an appropriate background for the following three that cover local Illinois history. Within those beginning chapters, Beck captures the essence of Greek immigration by discussing Greek history and geography, the reasons for leaving the homeland, the importance of the Greek Orthodox Church, the negative reception endured by southern Europeans in the United States, “Americanization,” and the initial immersion in an urban environment. By reviewing only arrival in Chicago and St. Louis, the way stations en route to central Illinois, Beck successfully traces the history of many Greek immigrants that acquired capital by laboring in those respective cities to eventually begin businesses in rural areas. This introductory portion also encompasses many well-known immigrant experiences including chain and circular migration, places such as Hull House in Chicago, and “padrones” like those included in Gunther Peck's Reinventing Free Labor.The fifth chapter, “Greeks vs. Goblins,” presents a comprehensive history of the Ku Klux Klan and particularly the organization's impact in central Illinois. Beck adeptly characterizes the Klan by emphasizing the “ordinariness” of members within small-town communities. Klan believers dominated many of these small towns throughout the Midwest by capitalizing on fraternal interest as well as the “100-percent Americanism” ideology that emanated during the post–World War I era in reaction to “foreign” peoples and ideas. Resultingly, many Greeks suffered discrimination, but others were able to withstand this offensive by becoming viable economic and social members of the community.The final three chapters provide detailed information about Beck's grandfather, the originator of the family confectionery in Tuscola, Illinois, in addition to a thorough review of both small cities and towns in the central portion of the state. Although the depth of reporting through the use of personal interviews, publications, census and draft records is impressive, it is also exhausting and confusing due to the overlapping of communities and families. Beck has compiled a wealth of information, but a more focused approach on a few personalities and less speculation may have made for a more readable book. Nonetheless, Greek migration to small-town America is the most original and important aspect of Beck's study.While Beck and her sister appear to have successfully rejuvenated the family business in Tuscola after a thirty-year absence, this is not the case in most small towns across the Midwest, if not the United States. Growing up in a northern Illinois small town and working in retail management from the 1970s to the early 2000s, I have personally witnessed this demise many times over. While opening stores and malls during the 1980s and 1990s, I observed downtown businesses similar to Beck's in Tuscola pay the price of “progress.” Moreover, just as Beck is encouraged that this dynamic may be changing with the advent of more emphasis on local economies during the last two decades, I concur based on movements generated by “farm-to-table” restaurants and other local initiatives. Beck mentioned that some of this localism resulted due to fears associated with 9/11; perhaps the COVID-19 pandemic and fears of urban unrest will add to this anxiety as people return to their hometowns in rural communities.