Old and New New Englanders: Immigration and Regional Identity in the Gilded Age

Coda: “The Pilgrims Were Illegal Aliens”

201 Coda “The Pilgrims Were Illegal Aliens” If Julian West, the Brahmin time traveler of Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), had awakened not in the utopia of Edward Bellamy’s novel but in the real Boston of today, he would doubtless be surprised by a number of things. He would certainly be impressed by the physical transformation of the city: Boston is obviously much cleaner, taller, and better smelling than it was when he went to sleep in 1887. A confirmed admirer of the female form, he might be even more impressed by the physical transformation of the city’s women. Coming from an era in which New England females were notorious for their poor health and scrawny bodies, he doubtless would be pleased by the sight of the biking, jogging, rollerblading female Bostonians of today, who—like their fictitious counterparts in Bellamy’s utopia—radiate an aura “of health and abounding physical vitality too often lacking” in their “sickly” Gilded Age predecessors.1 But, while much has changed in the Hub and New England generally since 1887, much remains the same. One similarity that might well strike the Brahmin Rip Van Winkle is the uncertain and oftentimes contradictory relation of immigrants to New England regional identity. Sometimes it seems that everywhere one looks—whether it be historic sites, public monuments, or popular culture—one sees immigrants and their histories being scripted into the region’s dominant narratives of itself. The message from those narratives seems clear: New England history is immigrant history, New England values are immigrant values, and New England was built by immigrants. Yet, in an age of resurgent nativism, it also is not surprising to find people—in New England and elsewhere—invoking the culture, history, and heroes of the region in their attacks on immigrants. Regionalism has long provided 202 • old and new new englanders both the friends and foes of the foreign born with a storehouse of emotionally charged symbols and myths. That storehouse is arguably richer in New England than anyplace else, so its prominence in recent debates over immigration is to be expected. In many ways, immigrants are far more integrated into New England’s self-presentation now than they were in Julian West’s day. If Bellamy’s hero were to perambulate Boston today, he would be repeatedly struck by evidence of their incorporation into the region’s historical narratives and iconography . Strolling through the city’s public spaces, he would see the heroic Puritan statuary erected by his contemporaries matched by more recent memorials to Irish American politicians and Irish famine victims. Wandering through the city’s residential districts, he would glimpse preservationists carefully restoring three-decker houses, surely a baffling sight for a man whose Brahmin contemporaries were still doubtful of the need to preserve their own ancestral homes, much less immigrant tenements.2 (West plans to sell his own ancestral mansion, which is “very elegant in an old-fashioned way,” but occupies a neighborhood that has been invaded by factories and tenements.)3 Venturing into the North End, he would likely be disoriented to discover that once-notorious immigrant slum now transformed into Boston ’s Little Italy, a busy tourist destination with a historic appeal to rival the popular Puritan sites nearby. If he stopped to ask about the green and white jerseys adorning so many in the crowd, he would be confronted with yet another reminder of the region’s long-standing identification with the foreign born: the Boston Celtics, an organization whose name was already redolent of both immigrant and basketball history when it was adopted in 1946 and which, along with the city’s other professional sports franchises, now stands among the foremost symbols of regional pride for many New Englanders. For a Brahmin like Julian West, the thought of a professional sports team symbolizing the region would be baffling—the sporting ideal for men of his class was the gentleman amateur, not the crass professional (Bellamy tellingly banishes the latter from his utopia)—and West’s bafflement would turn to amazement when he learned that the team plays in a league filled with foreign-born players and bears the name of the once-hated Irish.4 Times have changed. Or have they? If he spent enough time in contemporary New England, Julian West would likely run across signs that all is not well between immigrants and his native region. Like other parts of the United States, New England has experienced a rise in anti...