“The culture of the Iron Range Fourth of July is a fascinating topic, and Nemanic has begun to elucidate its importance.”
Minnesota History
“Nemanic begins by explaining how Independence Day developed nationally as a holiday and how it shifted from one of carnivalesque rituals that inverted the social order to one that focused on conformity and stability. Celebrations in the Iron Range, however, were slower in making this shift, which Nemanic explains by pointing to the region’s ethnic diversity, class tensions, and harsh physical environment.”
Michigan Historical Review
“The author uses the historical background of the American Revolution and early nineteenth-century Independence Day festivities to situate her twentieth-century Iron Range celebrations within rowdy Old World carnival traditions of resistance. Native-born members of the middle class were equally determined to transform the holiday into a venue of unity and decorum....”
The Annals of Iowa
Just before the turn of the twentieth century, immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who had settled in mining regions of Minnesota formed a subculture that combined elements of Old World traditions and American culture. Their unique pluralistic version of Americanism was expressed in Fourth of July celebrations rooted in European carnival traditions that included rough games, cross-dressing, and rowdiness.
In One Day for Democracy, Mary Lou Nemanic traces the festive history of Independence Day from 1776 to the twentieth century. The author shows how these diverse immigrant groups on the Minnesota Iron Range created their own version of the celebration, the Iron Range Fourth of July.
As mass-mediated popular culture emerged in the twentieth century, Fourth of July celebrations in the Iron Range began to include such popular culture elements as beauty queens and marching bands. Nemanic documents the enormous influence of these changes on this isolated region and highlights the complex interplay between popular culture and identity construction.
But this is not a typical story of assimilation or ethnic separation. Instead, One Day for Democracy reveals how more than thirty different ethnic groups who shared identities as both workers and new Americans came together in a remote mining region to create their own subculture.
Mary Lou Nemanic is an associate professor of communications at Penn State Altoona. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers and have been broadcast on television. More info →
Retail price:
$49.95 ·
Save 20% ($39.96)
US and Canada only
Availability and price vary according to vendor.
Share 
Permission to reprint
Permission
to photocopy or include in a course pack
via Copyright Clearance
Center
Click or tap on a subject heading to sign up to be notified when new related books come out.
Hardcover
978-0-8214-1730-0
Retail price: $49.95,
S.
Release date: February 2007
45 illus.
·
270 pages
·
6 × 9 in.
Rights: World
Building on a Borrowed Past
Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota
By Sally J. Southwick
Why is there a national monument near a small town on the Minnesota prairie? Why do the town’s residents dress as Indians each summer and perform a historical pageant based on a Victorian-era poem? To answer such questions, Building on a Borrowed Past: Place and Identity in Pipestone, Minnesota shows what happens when one culture absorbs the heritage of another for civic advantage.Founded
An Amulet of Greek Earth
Generations of Immigrant Folk Culture
By Helen Papanikolas
The boys and men who left their Greek valley and mountain villages in the early 1900s for America came with amulets their mothers had made for them. Some were miniature sacks attached to a necklace; more often they were merely a square of fabric enclosing the values of their lives: a piece of a holy book or a sliver of the True Cross representing their belief in Greek Orthodoxy; a thyme leaf denoting their wild terrain; a blue bead to ward off the Evil Eye; and a pinch of Greek earth.In
Sales and Celebrations
Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940
By Sarah Elvins
Between the two world wars, the retail world experienced tremendous changes. New forms of competition, expanded networks of communication and transportation, and the proliferation of manufactured goods posed challenges to department store and small shopkeeper alike.In western New York, and in Buffalo and Rochester in particular, retailers were a crucial part of urban life, acting as cultural brokers and civic leaders. They were also cultivators of area pride.
Contours of White Ethnicity
Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America
By Yiorgos Anagnostou
In Contours of White Ethnicity, Yiorgos Anagnostou explores the construction of ethnic history and reveals how and why white ethnics selectively retain, rework, or reject their pasts. Challenging the tendency to portray Americans of European background as a uniform cultural category, the author demonstrates how a generalized view of American white ethnics misses the specific identity issues of particular groups as well as their internal differences.Interdisciplinary
Sign up to be notified when new History titles come out.
We will only use your email address to notify you of new titles in the subject area(s) you follow. We will never share your information with third parties.
