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Clarke Thomas: Pittsburgh -- multicultural before it was hip

Clarke Thomas: Pittsburgh -- multicultural before it was hip

The rich legacy of our ethnic heritages is getting a new twist

Ethnicity is alive and thriving anew in Pittsburgh -- in a year in which various significant anniversaries in Pittsburgh's ethnic heritage are being celebrated. Moreover, Pittsburgh's heritage aspects are becoming a mini-economic generator in their own right, buoyed by the end of the Cold War and globalization.

On Memorial Day weekend, the Pittsburgh Folk Festival will celebrate its 50th annual event, this time at the Downtown convention center. Then on June 11, the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh will observe the 80th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the Cathedral of Learning. The Nationality classrooms were an integral part of the design.

   
Clarke Thomas is a Post-Gazette senior editor (clt34@pitt.edu).
  

Furthermore, one of Pittsburgh's smaller ethnic communities is celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian-Macedonian Cultural Center in West Homestead. That institution with its museum and round of food and dancing activities has become one of Pittsburgh's major destinations for charter tour groups and an economic generator model that other ethnic groups are emulating.

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The first Pittsburgh Folk Festival was launched by six ethnic groups in June 1956, and held at the Syria Mosque in Oakland. This year's event from May 26 to 28 will include 24 heritage groups with a continuing theme, "Unity in Diversity."

The Nationality Rooms at Pitt, launched under the direction of Ruth Crawford Mitchell, have expanded to 27; seven of them since E. Maxine Bruhns became director in 1965 -- African Heritage, Armenian, Austrian, Indian, Israel Heritage, Japanese and Ukrainian. They constitute a major tourist destination, along with a program of scholarships abroad. In the planning stages are Danish, Finnish, Latin American/Caribbean, Philippine, Swiss, Thai, Turkish and Welsh rooms. The Czechoslovak and Yugoslav rooms remain intact, though the countries broke apart in the 1990s.


I came to the Pittsburgh heritage scene over three decades ago, delighted to learn of the variety and depth of ethnicity. That prompted me to write a series of 35 Post-Gazette articles, which the newspaper in 1983 published as "They Came to Pittsburgh" (now out of print). I had watched the upsurge of interest created by the 1977 television series "Roots," where the struggles of African Americans to recapture their heritage caused white ethnics to reconsider their own roots.

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That intensity faltered somewhat in the succeeding decades as the younger generation's interest waned, and the Folk Festival lost its Robert Morris College sponsorship and moved from venue to venue -- Monroeville Expo Mart, Station Square, Heinz Field. The fading of lodge attendance (just as with other fraternal organizations hurt by TV and people's increased busyness) and the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh's consolidation-caused closure of some ethnic churches also strained the fabric.

But new factors have been coming to the fore. Joseph Makarewicz, retired director of the Pennsylvania Ethnic Heritage Studies Center at Pitt, believes that the baby-boom generation is rediscovering history and beginning to be more interested in family roots. On the other hand, he notes that, with so many mixed-ethnic marriages, there are fewer families carrying on the tradition. Among too many ethnics, the emphasis is on "fun, food and famous [current] personages," rather than on language, literature and history.

Clearly, the end of the Cold War has been an important factor in smoothing rifts in many nationality groups. The typical conflict was whether to rebuff Communist governments under Soviet Russia's heavy thumb or to deal with them as the only practical way to reach and help people in those countries.

The positive impact has been especially strong in the Carpatho-Rusyn community, removing one barrier to unity for a group whose homeland is not administratively distinct but, rather, is situated at the crossroads of Ukraine, Slovakia and Poland. Moreover, the Carpatho-Rusyns, sometimes known as Ruthenians or even "Rooshians" in Pittsburgh parlance, are divided along various Orthodox and Catholic faith lines.

In 1993, American and Canadian groups formed the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, with John Righetti of Ohio Township as current national president. Nationality pride has been enhanced by worldwide attention to Rusyn-descended Andy Warhol, with a ninth annual Carpatho-Rusyn event at the Andy Warhol Museum on July 29. The society has purchased for its national headquarters the former St. John's Greek Catholic Cathedral on Dickson Street in Munhall.

Mr. Righetti says the renovated building will include a National Carpatho-Rusyn Cultural and Educational Center, with program activities and a museum with costumes, banners, diaries and other memorabilia from across the country. In that endeavor, the organization is taking a leaf from the successful Bulgarian-Macedonian center, founded in 1936.

The latter institution, with a museum, a soup-selling endeavor and programs such as dancing instruction (starting at age 4), has become a destination mecca for charter bus tours from across the country. Its status as an economic generator has been heightened by inclusion in a tourist guide, "Routes to Roots," published by the Rivers of Steel National Heritage Area.

Patricia French, president of the Bulgarian-Macedonian Center, welcomes the idea of the initiation of other museums to further Pittsburgh ethnicity as a tourist drawing card. For instance, in October, the Ukrainian community will open a museum in St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church at Seventh and Carson on the South Side (famous for its golden dome). Second, the National Slovak Society next year will open a museum in Peters.


One reason that the Bulgarians, one of the smallest Pittsburgh ethnic groups, have been successful, Ms. French says, is because in 1980 the center began stressing the younger generation and, moreover, opened its ranks beyond Bulgarians. That explains the presence there of a steady volunteer of Polish extraction, Thomas Wieloch of Pine.

Mr. Wieloch, a Community College of Allegheny County faculty member, cites another major reason for the upsurge in ethnic interest -- globalization. Many Pittsburgh corporations are increasingly involved in international trade, including sending employees to live abroad. "They need to know the customs of a country, realizing that's a key to keeping people over there," he says.

Clearly, Pittsburgh's ethnicity has something refreshing to offer in an otherwise standardizing world. It's another thing that makes Pittsburgh special.

First Published: May 17, 2006, 4:00 a.m.

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