"Negrov Lyn ovanie" and the Unbearable Whiteness of Slovaks: The Immigrant Press Covers Race

Near the end of Thomas Bell's novel of Slovak steelworkers, Out of This Furnace, the Americanized union organizer, Dobie, takes his immigrant grandpa for a visit to "the old neighborhood," Braddock, Pennsylvania's Slavic First Ward. Passing the vacant storefronts, he rattles off the name of departed ethnic shops. "Wold's torn down, Gyurik gone, Spetz gone, Dzmura, Veroskey, Finish's grocery, Froehlich's dry goods, Pustinger the undertaker—they're all gone now, hey, Dzedo?" Within the memory of the old-timers, however, the First Ward lives on. Dzedo and Dorta, his oldest friend, get misty-eyed for their vanished tight-knit neighborhood. "Every Sunday two or three weddings. Every Sunday without fail. All you had to do was walk along the street until you heard the gypsies playing and there was your wedding." Dorta comments, "You should've seen it twenty years ago when it was full of stores. On payday nights it was almost as crowded as Main Street." "It was better than Main Street," Dzedo proclaims. "Everybody knew everybody else in those days, It's not like that now anywhere . . . There was more friendliness. It was good then." "We had good times," Dzedo says, sucking on his pipe. "Good times." Then the old-timers sigh and blame the usual suspects. "So it goes," Dorta says. "It's too bad the niggers had to come." (While Dorta might have hurled an