Evolution of Our Ethnic Community in New York City

The Jan Hus Presbyterian Czech Brethren Church had a prominent reverend Vincent Písek who kept extensive church records of the parish meetings. In 1914 the space was too constrained and the church built to its east side a six story addition, the Jan Hus Neighborhood House. With club facilities it promoted an atmosphere of a Christian home. Furnishings for the gymnasium, reading room, two pianos, assembly room, dining room, girl’s room, kitchen and ten bedrooms cost $4,380.

Shortly after the Neighborhood House opened, the Home Mission Committee of NY Presbytery appointed the Rev. Kenneth Dexter Miller to be in charge of the House and also to be a church treasurer. Miller was educated at the Princeton University where he probably first met Tomas Garryk Masaryk.

Here starts a very interesting story. Rev. Miller spent 16 months (1912-1913) in Bohemia in preparation for his mission in New York. In 1915 the Church celebrated the martyrdom of Jan Hus in 1415 in Konstanz/Kostnice. After the address of Rev. Písek and performance of Czech music by the church choir, the young Rev. Miller reported on his life with Bohemians in Bohemia and documented this with stereopticon slides.

Shortly thereafter, the War Council of YMCA delegated Kenneth D. Miller to accompany the newly formed Czechoslovak Legions in Siberia in 1917-1919. Harsh combat and weather, together with political uncertainty about the fate of the Legionnaires’ mission enabled Miller to become intimately familiar with the mentality of the Czech and Slovak soldiers. He recorded this unique experience in a detailed diary. In 1922 Kenneth D. Miller published a book entitled The Czecho-Slovaks in America. In 192 pages he provided scholarly and fairly exhaustive information on the Czech and Slovak community in America. The value of this unique report is in the close up on our ethnic community after World War I, but especially because in being a critical, non biased account of an American who spent several years in close contact with the Czech and Slovak mentality.

In addition to a review of the communities’ religious and political party allegiance, Miller analyzed the Czech and Slovak ethnic press that molded the public opinion of the immigrants. Of interest are the ethnic relations, not only between the Czechs and Slovaks, but also (astonishingly) quite positive contacts between Czech and German and between Slovak and Hungarian immigrants.

Both the Czech and Slovak immigrant political leaders were very active in educating their communities in supporting the Czecho-Slovak idea, contributing to the birth of the new Czechoslovak state. There is a pervasive impression of a critical attitude of ethnic religious protestants toward the “free thinkers” and Catholics.

Miller devoted much attention to the ethnic social organizations, benevolent (meant of an insurance type) or non-benevolent and to the lead role of Sokol. Moral standards of our communities were also analyzed. The Czechs quarreled vigorously among themselves but their family life was essentially very stable. Slovak industrial workers who lived in squalid and degrading surroundings, mostly in mountainous Pennsylvania, were prone to submit to episodic drunkenness and occasional brawls. However, Miller found the Slovak community to be more cohesive, albeit much less integrated with the American environment. On the other hand, he had much praise for the liberating influence of American ideals, strongly embraced by the American Slovaks after many decades of ethnic suppression in the Upper Hungary. The Slovak Americans’ transformation to the spirit of freedom was remarkably expressed in the rise of the social position of their immigrant women.

Throughout his long life in New York City, Miller continued his devotion to Czechoslovak cause. When the older daughter of TGM, Alice Masaryková, escaped the German occupation of Prague and when in a profound misery, she sought after 1939 an exile and shelter in New York, Miller proved immensely supportive. Alice in her memoirs called him the “Uncle from America.”

The Jan Hus Church remained essentially Czech until the 1950s when the diaspora started to take its toll. These days the church serves other ethnic communities and few who walk around it, just one block north of the reconstructed Bohemian National Hall, are aware of its prominent past. The only reminder of its fame are its name, the bronze memorial plaques on the wall facing the side walk and scattered religious banners inside, related to Czech religious history.