Because research in the Polish American women's history remains in its infancy,
still little is known about the lives of Polish immigrant and second generation
women and these women's issues. This gap in our knowledge extends into the area
of basic biography. Whereas names like Kolasinski, Moczygemba, Smulski,
Kruszka, Dabrowski, Krzycki, and those of perhaps several dozen other male
Polish immigrants are at least passingly known among scholars throughout the
field of immigration and ethnic history, not so the case for those equally
prominent, efficacious, and outspoken immigrant and second generation women who
co-built Polish American community life.
One woman whose activities have earned her a place in Polish American
history is Clara Swieczkowska, former editor of Detroit's Rekord Codzienny
[Polish Daily Record] and longtime Catholic social worker. Born in Detroit on
September 1, 1892,1 of immigrant parents from Pomorze,2 Swieczkowska grew up on
the city's old east side and became active in immigrant social life as she
reached maturity.
________
This Polish American heroine served the Polish community for sixty
years.
_________
Swieczkowska reportedly started her career of service by raising funds for
Detroit's Dom Polski [Polish Home], and for relief of the 1914 Polish flood
victims.3 During World War I, Swieczkowska aided in the recruitment of Haller's
Polish American troops4 and between 1914 and 1923 served as a secretary of the
Polish American Ladies Relief Committee,5 the women"s division of the
Polish Relief Committee,6 for which work she was decorated twice by the Polish
Army.7
After the war, at the behest of Detroit's International Institute, some
members of the committee escorted and assisted Polish war brides and
"picture brides" [mail order brides, Ed.] upon their arrival in the
city. Thereafter, rather than disbanding, they turned to a more general and
ongoing social service activity.8 Whereas we do not know if Swieczkowska
herself participated in the former, in the early 1920s9 she was instrumental in
founding the Polish Activities League in the USA, serving as its general
secretary (1923-25) and first president (1925-35).10 During her years of
service with the League, the organization spawned two social work facilities,
St. Ann"s Community House (1921) at 2441 Andrus Street in Hamtramck,
Michigan, on the city"s east side, and St. Elizabeth Community House
(1923) at 5251 Tarnow Street in the Delray section on the city's west side.11
The furnishings of the houses were improvised, with League members themselves
donating linens, curtains, tablecloths, and dishes. Resourceful organizers
meanwhile persuaded the Detroit police department to turn over to them two
wagon-loads of furniture seized in raids on illegal saloons during this
Prohibition era.12 But the community houses nonetheless operated along modern,
professional lines. By policy, St. Elizabeth's, for example, recruited for its
first staff only "trained social workers," specifically, members of
the Polish Gray Samaritans, a group of young Polish American female volunteers
trained by the YWCA who had performed relief work in Poland after the First
World War under the auspices of the American Relief Administration, directed by
Herbert Hoover.13
Yet however clear their actual operation, sources consulted for this
preliminary biography do not immediately yield a distinct picture of their
organizational relationship with each other. One internal source reported that
St. Elizabeth Community was organized independently under the League of
Catholic Women, independent from the Polish Activities League;14 another
described a tripartite division of social work among Polish Catholic girls in
Detroit during the mid-1920s, with St. Ann's administered by the League of
Catholic Women taking charge of Hamtramck and North Detroit; a Polish Aid
Society given rights to Detroit's east side; and St. Elizabeth's taking the
west side and specific referrals made by priests or by the League of Catholic
Women.15
In 1926, through Swieczkowska's efforts the Polish League on its own part
did establish a camp for Polish youth at Wanda Park near Utica, Michigan, which
moved to Memphis, Michigan, in 1941 when the former property was converted for
use for a Polish veterans home.16 During these years, Swieczkowska also edited
the League's bilingual Polska Kobieta [The Polish Woman]17 and in 1931 became president
of the Polish National Welfare Association, which she also had helped found.18
From these various accomplishments and activities, clearly Swieczkowska had
achieved enough prominence and respect to be honored, in the early 1920s, with
the first "woman of the year" award bestowed by the recently revived
Sodality of the Immaculate Conception at SS. Cyril and Methodius Seminary in
Orchard Lake, Michigan.19
Polonia"s professional and amateur historians need to compile
biographies of immigrant and second generation activists like Clara
Swieczkowska, those who aptly have been called "the last of the
first." This is especially true for Polish American women, about whose
lives we know the least, yet whose role in the making of the ethnic group deserves
attention.
Swieczkowska continued to minister to her fellow Poles into the 1930s, as
the Depression descended. Tied in with the Advisory Council of the Detroit
Community Union, a citywide private umbrella organization, in early 1932 St.
Elizabeth Community House helped set up a local Scotten [area] District Relief
Council to serve, "in the spirit of small town neighborliness," as
"a clearing house for all persons needing aid of one kind or
another."20 During this time, St. Elizabeth Community House, together with
St. Ann"s, reportedly fed as many as eight hundred persons a day, and
Swieczkowska herself handled casework for between forty and fifty families.21
For her steady charitable service, in 1934 Swieczkowska received a Papal medal,
Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, from Pope Pius XI "for work done for the Church
and God," the only Polish American woman ever so honored. 22
________
In 1937, Swieczkowska served on a citizens" committee that
investigated conditions surrounding the 1937 cigarmakers" strike on the
east side, a labor dispute that involved large numbers of female Polish
immigrant and second generation workers.
________
Despite this signal recognition, Swieczkowska faced a mounting pile of work,
her activities stood chronically short of funds, while problems mounted owing
to the continuing Depression. Under these already difficult circumstances, in
1936 Swieczkowska stalled an attempt by the League of Catholic Women to
abrogate a ten-year-old agreement, made at the request of the Bishop, and
assume the responsibility for "protective work" among Detroit Polish
girls that had been assigned to Swieczkowska. She, in turn, sought to
consolidate the two Polish community houses, St. Elizabeth"s and St.
Ann's, with the Polish Aid Society, not under the authority of the League of
Catholic Women but rather of a "joint Polish Board" that,
Swieczkowska argued, thereby would eliminate "intra-group and intra-church
disputes."23 Apparently, in large measure she succeeded in pressing her
case. On November 15, 1940, her Polish Activities League took over the
administration of St. Ann's Community House from the League of Catholic Women,
presumably by decision of the Detroit Archdiocese and the tacit approval of the
United Community Fund.24
While Swieczkowska campaigned to retain Polish control over Polish Catholic
relief work, her involvement in dealing with the effects of poverty propelled
her into other civic arenas. In 1935, for example, she organized and chaired a
westside committee to address delinquency among Polish youth.25 But her
interests, position, and Catholic social activism also brought her to the
problems of Polish working women. In 1937, Swieczkowska served on a
citizens" committee that investigated conditions surrounding the 1937
cigarmakers" strike on the east side, a labor dispute that involved large
numbers of female Polish immigrant and second generation workers.26
Swieczkowska became one of four persons, the others all male, to sit on the
permanent fact finding committee subsequently convened to probe conditions in
the industry.27
During World War II, Swieczkowska resumed her relief work in aid of Poland,
helping to organize the Polish American Relief Committee, the Catholic
League,28 the Blue Star Mothers, Wives and Sisters Organization,29 and the
Polish Goodfellows.30 After the war, she aided the "Polish Lapins,"31
or Polish victims who had survived the medical experiments at the Ravensbrck
concentration camp, when they visited Detroit in the late 1950s.32 But the
efforts of the Polish American Relief Committee, to train social workers for
postwar Poland, foundered as a result of the war"s outcome, about which
Swieczkowska remarked, "the Communists took over and we never did get a
chance to go to Poland."33 Her work on behalf of the Church also saw her
serve as secretary to the chairman responsible for organizing the Archdiocesan
Council of Catholic Women.34 She was also the first woman elected a vice
president of the Polish Roman Catholic Union, the large Polish American
fraternal.35
While engaged in these various social work activities, Swieczkowska also
became involved in Detroit and Michigan politics. In 1937, she became the first
Polish American woman appointed by the governor to the Detroit Recorders Court
Jury Commission,36 and reportedly was the only Polish woman then serving in
such a capacity anywhere in the United States.37 While her Polish League
sponsors expressed some concern about her assumption of a second paid position,
inquiring about her duties and hours,38 she apparently retained the support of
the St. Vincent de Paul Society and had consulted the Bishop"s secretary
(and her friend and confidant), Monsignor Stephen Wonicki, before accepting the
Jury Commission assignment.39 This political tack now taken, the next year she
put herself forward as a candidate for a position as delegate to the Democratic
Convention. Endorsing "the principles of our Democratic party and
President Roosevelt's New Deal program" and endorsing "our liberal
and progressive" candidate, Michigan Governor Frank Murphy, Swieczkowska
argued,
. . . I feel that I can give the people better representation than anyone
else. I was born and raised in this district, therefore am familiar with the
needs and problems of the people and I know that I can render them the service
that they are rightfully entitled to.40
After her mother's death in 1939, Swieczkowska seems to have become even
more active in politics. Murphy later named her to a board that held
responsibility for writing social security laws in the state, and in 1960
Republican Governor G. Mennen Williams placed her on the Michigan Welfare
Commission.41
Through her various Catholic and Polish relief activities, Clara
Swieczkowska, like some of her Polish American coethnics, became a loyal
soldier in the Cold War era "Poland lobby." But unlike some of her
impossibilist (and revanchist) contemporaries, "Miss Clara,"as she
was known throughout her life,42 did not forswear all contact with her
ancestral homeland until the Iron Curtain lifted. In March 1957, League
president Anna Rychlicka and League secretary Genevieve Winiewska, both
Swieczkowska associates, wrote a stiff letter to Senator Knowland denouncing
his position on barring aid to Soviet-occupied Poland:
As a free person in a free country, you are entitled to your opinion, but as
a Senator and a member of the Senate, you should consider the reasons and
circumstances that made Poland politically what it is today. During this holy
lenten season, it would be a good idea for all Americans to make a political
examination of conscience, to see whether the United States itself had not
surrendered Poland, its best and proven ally, to Communism. The Polish people
had no choice. We, the Americans, decided the issue for them. In the light of
the examination, Mr. Senator, don't you think the United States owes Poland all
the help and support it can give? If it does this, it will save the Polish
people from a blood bath such as occurred in Hungary.
In the name of 2,000 American women of Polish descent [members of the
League, Ed.] we urge you to change your view and agree to give aid to the
Polish people in the name of humanity and justice.43
Presumably Swieczkowska agreed with the League's stated position. By her
actions, she seems to have endorsed a strategy for liberating Poland by using
greater humanitarian contact in order to draw this satellite out of Soviet
orbit. In early April 1957, Swieczkowska joined a group of sixty-two Polish
Women's Alliance members on a tour of Poland; the twenty-four Detroiters who
made the trip, according to the Detroit News, constituted "the first
touring delegation of Detroiters to Poland since the Iron Curtain began
cracking."44 In Poland, the delegation toured sixteen cities and was
received by Poland"s primate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyaski, who had been released
from prison the previous fall.45 Her communiqués from her trip, which
were published in Dziennik Polski, seemed to show much more retrospective
interest in the record of Nazi atrocities perpetrated in her homeland than in
the travails of Soviet hegemony there.
An inventory of Swieczkowska materials at Orchard Lake needs to be
undertaken. Swieczkowska lived out most of her life on the city's old east
side, remaining committed to civic causes. In her newspaper columns, she
pressed upon her fellow Polonians the duty to send their children to religious
instruction.46 Upon her return from Poland, she led a drive to collect toys to
send to blind Polish orphans.47 Meanwhile, she continued work on behalf of the
Polish Activities League, organizing what the newspapers termed a "United
Nations-type" dinner at the eastside Polish Home, for example, in order to
raise funds for a swimming pool at the League's summer camp near Memphis.48
Nonetheless, by the late 1950s Swieczkowska&'s neighborhood was changing
steadily in its demographic and racial composition. By this time, the
combination of an influx of African-Americans and the dying off and
outmigration of the Polish population was transforming the latter into the
decided minority.
While, Swieczkowska remarked in 1959, "I've never done anything but
work for the Polish cause and there is still much to be done," as her
surroundings changed, the focus of her activities shifted to the immediate
vicinity.49 The previous year, Swieczkowska had helped organize the Federated
East Side Improvement Association, an organization of property owners
headquartered at the Polish Home.50 In the next few years, Swieczkowska and
Rev. Boguslaus Poznaski, pastor at the east side Polish Roman Catholic parish,
Sweetest Heart of Mary, attempted to secure housing for the elderly in the
neighborhood, but reportedly "no Poles got in" to the Forest Park
Senior Citizens Homes built across the street from the church.51 All the while,
Swieczkowska herself remained fiercely rooted to her neighborhood; when asked
why she did not move out, she replied, "I don"t want to live anywhere
else. This is my place.52 In the early 1970s Swieczkowska could only comment
ruefully about the less than cordial race relations between the area"s
African American newcomers and the east side"s remaining Poles and about
the impact of "white flight" on the neighborhood.53 In progressively
faltering health, Swieczkowska reportedly left the east side in the early
1980s, spending the remainder of her life in elderly care.54 In August 1986,
Clara Swieczkowska died, apparently leaving no close relatives.55 Of this
Polish American heroine, one friend of hers commented:
She was the outstanding Polish woman of her generation in metropolitan Detroit
.... For sixty years, she had been in the forefront in serving the Polish
community. Indeed, her loyalty to Polish culture and language was only
surpassed by her devotion to Catholicism.56
Clara Swieczkowska possessed enough interest in Polish American history that
in 1945, the year after the establishment of the Polish American Historical
Commission (later Polish American Historical Association), she joined that
organization.57 The bulk of Clara Swieczkowska's own personal papers and
historical documents reportedly were acquired by the archives at St.
Mary"s College in Orchard Lake, Michigan, but as of recently, remained
unprocessed and inaccessible to researchers.58 What has come to light, however,
is that a small stash of correspondence, miscellanea, and artifacts remained in
Swieczkowska"s modest East Forest Street home when she moved out.59 As of
recently, these documents still were in the possession of the current owner of
that property on Forest and DuBois, Mr. Jerry Cooper, a collector and longtime
African American resident of the city's east side.
In 1991 Dr. Peter D. Slavcheff, then Assistant Professor of History at
Northern Michigan University, and I visited Mr. Cooper in order to examine his
Swieczkowska holdings.60 In the event that the Swieczkowska papers in Mr.
Cooper's possession never find their way into a public archive, it seems
important for the historical record to describe this small but unique holding.
The Swieczkowska materials in Mr. Cooper's hands comprise about 2-3 linear
feet in volume. Though preserved in cellophane sleeves, much of the collection
was in fairly brittle condition and badly in need of de-acidification. The ink
used in a few letters from the early 1910s, meanwhile, had faded to near
illegibility, owing to the baneful effects of sunlight. By way of overview,
nearly all of the correspondence consists of letters written to Clara
Swieczkowska rather than by her. Nuns and priests make up most of
Swieczkowska's correspondents in this collection of letters; most of their
letters consist of ordinary conversational subjects, viz., health, mutual
acquaintances, travel, the weather. Many of these appear to express gratitude
for financial contributions made by Swieczkowska to charitable purposes;
indeed, in addition to these personal letters, the collection contains a
considerable number of what can only be called "form letters"
acknowledging Swieczkowska's benevolence. Meanwhile, perhaps as much as twenty
percent of the collection (the figure is admittedly a guess) consists of
letters, most fairly formulaic, and items (wake register, memorial and mass
cards) pertaining to the death in 1939 of Swieczkowska's mother. Finally, it
should be noted that the great majority of the letters held by Mr. Cooper were
written in Polish.
The conditions under which we inspected the collection allowed only a
cursory examination of its contents, but this did reveal a number of items
possessing greater historical interest and hence deserving more extensive
commentary. Of the letters, several allow a better reconstruction of the public
life of Clara Swieczkowska than can be gleaned from the sparse archival record
I have consulted thus far. One from 1937 briefly makes reference to her service
on the citizens" committee investigating the cigarmakers" strike. A
copy of a letter from the 1950s urges her appointment to the state"s
Displaced Persons Commission. Drafts or carbon copies of three or four letters
written in the late 1960s and addressed to various city officials, virtually
the only substantive documents in the collection authored by Swieczkowska
herself, bluntly complain about the collapse of municipal services in
Swieczkowska's neighborhood. These probably carry most historical value because
they impart a sense of Swieczkowska's public voice.
Our superficial survey of this collection suggests that, save for
underscoring her charity and religiosity, the letters reveal relatively little
standard biographical fare, little about her personal life. One 1939 letter
does comment about the deep sense of loss she apparently had reported feeling
at the death of her mother, who seems to have been the central person in her
life. One letter cites her friendship with a Cecilia Kanka, but leaves the
latter otherwise unidentified; this ellipsis not surprisingly characterizes
much of the incoming correspondence. The documents show that Swieczkowska owned
an automobile (one on which, during the late 1940s, she spent the considerable
sum of over three hundred dollars to operate during the course of a single year).61
The collection contains a receipt for an "RCA," presumably a
television set, and also about twenty years of cancelled checks, presently
bundled, which I did not examine. Of largely antiquarian note, the collection
also holds three personal letters from her old friend, by the auxiliary Bishop
of Detroit, Stephen Wonicki, largely conversational in content.
Given the nature of the correspondence, it is the artifacts included in the
collection that hold the greater fascination if still only little historical
information. Perhaps a dozen newspaper clippings from 1934 (one featuring a
photograph of Swieczkowska, several unidentified as to place and date of
publication) chronicle Swieczkowska"s receipt of the Papal medal that
year. Also preserved are about twenty signed, one-page compositions on this
important community event, all in Polish and of fairly uniform content, that
were written by school children, presumably from one of the local Polish
parochial schools. The collection contains a couple of Swieczkowska's dues
cards denoting her membership in good standing in a local group of the Polish
Roman Catholic Union, the large, Chicago-based Roman Catholic insurance
fraternal. Also held by Mr. Cooper is the personal prayer card (embroidered,
with religious medals attached, about 3" x 7" in dimension) depicting
a representation of Jesus and a brief personal prayer. The collection contains
a few photographs, not well identified, and a dozen or so pieces of original
sheet music written by Clara Swieczkowska, seemingly religious hymns which
might be of special interest.
In addition to the Swieczkowska papers that found their way to Orchard
Lake,62 Mr. Cooper himself earlier had donated a few letters from the
collection to The Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library.
These letters, written to Swieczkowska to congratulate her on her appointment
to the Detroit Recorders Court Jury Commission, also remain unprocessed. The
Detroit Public Library already holds a box of material that bears on Swieczkowska"s
work in the Polish Activities League, including a folder of clippings of pieces
she wrote for Dziennik Polski in the late 1950s.63 The Bentley Library at the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, meanwhile, possesses one archival box of
photographs (largely unidentified) taken at the Polish Activities League's
summer camp and of other League events.64 A casual search conducted at Madonna
College in Livonia, Michigan, has turned up no other Swieczkowska materials. By
contrast, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne
State University in Detroit possesses Polish Activities League documents and
records from both the St. Elizabeth and St. Ann's community houses in the
United Community Services Central File Collection.
From the foregoing description of Mr. Cooper's slim collection of
Swieczkowska materials, to which public access might never be achieved, and
from the materials available now, and in the future, in archival repositories,
perhaps we now can glean more about the life and work of this middle class
Detroit Polish American than we have come to know, through similar detective
work (and some measure of serendipity), about her working class Detroit
counterpart and contemporary, the 1930s labor organizer, consumer activist and,
later, Hamtramck City Council member, Mary uk.65
To be sure, Clara Swieczkowska deserves a longer biography than can be
accomplished in one essay, and certainly more than the cursory examination of
her life that I have assayed here. But, if this brief sketch holds any lesson,
it is that Polonia's professional and amateur historians need to compile
biographies of immigrant and second-generation activists like Clara
Swieczkowska, those immigrant survivors who, their numbers now severely
diminished, aptly have been called "the last of the first." This is
especially true for Polish and Polish American women, about whose lives we know
the least, yet whose role in the making of the ethnic group deserves far
greater examination.
But an antecedent and more urgent task demands our attention. In order to
write such histories and biographies, we all must encourage the preservation of
the records, personal papers, artifacts, photographs, and oral histories of
Polonia's anonymous pioneers, veritable treasures often lost in closets,
cellars, garages, attics, and basements. Only by such acts of rescue and
writing will we someday achieve a richer and more complete history of Polish
America, of our history.
John J. Bukowczyk is Professor of History at
Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.
I would like to thank Benedict Markowski of the Detroit Public Library"s Burton Historical Collection and Margaret Raucher of Wayne State University"s Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs for help in locating Swieczkowska materials. I also wish to thank Peter Slavcheff for his consultation on the Cooper holdings, David R. Smith for general research assistance and, especially, Nora Faires for her incisive comments on the manuscript.
1 Another source reported her birthdate as
September 25. "From the desk of Clara Swieczkowska:" an unsigned and
undated note in the collection of Mr. Jerry Cooper, Detroit, MI.
2 Her parents" native town was Sianowa,
located about three miles from Gdansk [called Danzig at that time]. It is possible
her parents were Kashubs. When she visited there in 1957, she remarked: ".
. . one of the main things I want to do in Poland is to investigate the
conditions of the Kashubs, living along the Baltic Sea . . . . I want to make
sure the Polish government is giving them the proper recognition. The Kashubs
were the first Poles to come to Detroit." See "Vacation in
Poland," undated (March 1958?); and James K. Anderson, "24 Detroiters
Depart Detroit for Tour of Poland," Detroit News (?), (c. April 8, 1957?),
clippings in "Polish Activities League [hereafter PAL]: Clippings: Clara
Swieczkowska" folder, Box 4, Anne Wosachlo Rychlicki Papers, Burton
Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan [hereafter
cited as Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL]. Her father, Jzef wieczkowski,
reportedly was an immigrant journalist. I have not been able to substantiate
this information, which came from a conversation with Burton Collection
archivist Benedict Markowski.
3 James K. Anderson, "Miss Clara"
Aids Polish Americans" (Detroit News, November 20, 1959), Burton, DPL. 4
Ibid.
5 "Madam Chairman and members of the
Federation of Women"s Clubs," typewritten manuscript in United
Community Services Central File Collection, Box 53, Folder 20, Archives of
Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, hereafter cited as UCSCFC.
6 Ibid.
7 "Miss Clara Swieczkowska - Woman of
Achievement," undated clipping, Hamtramck Biography - S folder, Clipping
File, Hamtramck Public Library, Hamtramck, Mich., hereafter cited as HPLCF.
8 "Madam Chairman," UCSCFC, Box 53,
Folder 20.
9 The actual organization of the Polish
Activities League therefore took place considerably earlier than previously
thought; cf. The Poles in America, 1608-1972: A Chronology & Fact Book, ed.
Frank Renkiewicz, (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana Publications, 1973), 25.
10 She later served as executive secretary and
staff social worker; 1937 is listed as the year of her election as president at
the group"s Pittsburgh convention in: Rev. Francis Bolek, ed., Who"s
Who in Polish America, 3rd ed. (New York: Harbinger House 1943), 441. See also
"Madam Chairman," op.cit; Wytrwal, Polish Experience in Detroit
(Detroit: Endurance Press 1992), 193; J.K. Anderson, "`Miss Clara"
Aids Polish Americans," op.cit; The League, if might be noted, received
financial support in the 1930s from the Detroit Community Union. See George M.
Morrison to Clara Swieczkowska, August 26, 1931, in UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 20.
11 "Vacation in Poland," undated
(March 1958?) clipping in PAL: Clippings: Clara Swieczkowska" folder, Box
4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL; (Rev. Joseph Swastek), A Quarter Century of
Social Service (Detroit: Conventual Press, 1948), 20-21, in Box 4, Rychlicki
Papers, Burton, DPL. For a description of the latter, see "St. Elizabeth"s
Community House," mimeograph in UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 20.
12 "Madam Chairman," in UCSCFC, Box
53, Folder 20.
13 Ibid. On the activities of the Polish Gray
Samaritans in Poland, see Robert Szymczak, "An Act of Devotion: The Polish
Gray Samaritans and the American Relief Effort in Poland, 1919-1921," Polish
American Studies 43, no. 1 (Spring
1986): 13-36, hereafter cited as PAS.
14I have not yet been able to clarify this
apparent discrepancy. See "Madam Chairman," op.cit.
15 Memorandum from Irene Murphy to Mr.
[Percival] Dodge, November 5, 1936, UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 21.
16 "Miss Clara Swieczkowska - Woman of
Achievement," op.cit. The land at Wanda Park, located on the Clinton
River, had been donated by State Senator Cass Jankowski. The Memphis site was
purchased from the St. Vincent de Paul Society. See "Madam Chairman,"
op.cit; 30th Anniversary Banquet of St. Mary's Camp, in PAL: St. Mary"s
Camp folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL.
17 (Swastek), Quarter Century of Social
Service, 23.
18 "Madam Chairman," op. cit; Joseph
A. Wytrwal, The Polish Experience in Detroit (Detroit: Endurance Press, 1992),
193.
19 Frank Renkiewicz, For God, Country, and
Polonia: One Hundred Years of the Orchard Lake Schools (Orchard Lake, MI: Center for Polish Studies and
Culture, Orchard Lake Schools, 1985), 75.
20 "First District Relief Formed,"
Detroit News, January 19, 1932, clipping furnished by Benedict Markowski,
Burton, DPL.
21 Memorandum from Irene Murphy to Mr. Dodge,
op. cit.
22 The medal (a depiction of which apeared on
the invitation) was conferred by Detroit"s Bishop Michael J. Gallagher at
a banquet held in her honor on November 11, 1934. See "Miss Clara
Swieczkowska - Woman of Achievement," op. cit; copy of banquet invitation
furnished by Benedict Markowski, Burton, DPL.
23 Memorandum from Irene Murphy to Mr. Dodge,
op. cit.
24 Rev. James J. O"Mara, Archdiocesan
Secretary for Charities, to Mr. Percival Dodge, Detroit Community Fund,
November 7, 1940, in UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 21.
25 "Prevention of Delinquency Meeting
held at St. Elizabeth"s Community Home [sic], Monday, January 20,
1935," typewritten text, in UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 20.
26 Sources list an Anna Swiezkowska [sic] as
one of the strike leaders; I do not know whether she might have been related to
Clara. See Patricia A. Cooper, Once a Cigar Maker: Men, Women, and Work
Culture in American Cigar Factories, 1900-1919 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1987), 261.
27 Margaret Collingwood Nowak, Two Who Were
There: A Biography of Stanley Nowak
(Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1989), 37, 40.
28 "Miss Clara Swieczkowska: Woman of
Achievement," op. cit.
29 Organized in 1942, the Blue Star Mothers,
Wives and Sisters Organization, according to writer Joseph A. Wytrwal, aimed
"to serve and honor World War Two servicemen... by sending packages to
those in hospitals and prison camps" and presenting twenty-five-dollar
bonds to returning veterans. See Wytrwal, Polish Experience in Detroit, 335.
30 Joseph Wytrwal, "Notes and
Comments," PAS 17, nos. 3-4
(July-December 1960): 122.
31 Literally, "rabbits." Presumably,
if the origins of the name may be inferred from the use to which they were put,
in English this would be rendered Polish "guinea pigs."
32 Wytrwal, "Notes and Comments,"
122.
33Anderson, "`Miss Clara" Aids
Polish Americans," op.cit.
34 "Miss Clara Swieczkowska - Woman of
Achievement," op. cit.
35 Anderson, "`Miss Clara" Aids
Polish Americans."
36 Mrs. Irene Murphy to Mr. James Fitzgerald,
St. Vincent de Paul Society, June 16, 1937, in UCSCFC, Box 53, folder 21;
"Miss Clara Swieczkowska - Woman of Achievement," op.cit.
37 Bolek, Who"s Who, 441.
38 Mrs. Irene Murphy to Mr. James Fitzgerald,
June 16, 1937, UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 21.
39 James Fitzgerald to Irene Murphy, June 19,
1937, UCSCFC, Box 53, Folder 21.
40 Campaign form letter from Clara
Swieczkowska, September 7, 1938, in private collection of Mr. Jerry Cooper,
Detroit, Mich.
41 Joseph A. Wytrwal, "Personalia," Polish
American Historical Association Bulletin, no. 187 (March 1960): 1; Wytrwal, Polish Experience in Detroit, 193.
42 Anderson, "`Miss Clara" Aids
Polish Americans."
43 "Protestacyjny Telegram Ligi Spraw
Polskich Do Sen. Knowlanda," unidentified clipping, March 14, 1957, in
"PAL: Clippings, Clara Swieczkowska" folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers,
Burton, DPL.
44 Swieczkowska reportedly was "one of
the few making the trip who was born in the United States." See James K.
Anderson, "24 Detroiters Depart Detroit for Tour of Poland," Detroit News
(?), (c. April 8, 1957?), in "PAL: Clippings Clara Swieczkowska"
folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL.
45 Ibid.
46 Klara Swieczkowska, "Tygodniowe
Wiadomoci Ligi Spraw Polskich," January 22, 1957, in "PAL: Clippings,
Clara Swieczkowska" folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL.
47 James K. Anderson, "Precious Toys Will
Cheer Blind Orphans in Poland," Detroit News, June 8, 1958, in "PAL: Clippings, Clara
Swieczkowska" folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL.
48 Anderson, "`Miss Clara" Aids
Polish Americans."
49 Ibid.
50 "Wydatna Praca Federated East Side
Improvement Association," Dziennik Polski, January 13, 1959, in "PAL: Clippings, Clara
Swieczkowska" folder, Box 4, Rychlicki Papers, Burton, DPL.
51 Marco Trbovich, "Poletown: Its Joys,
Its Sorrows, Its Fate," Detroit Free Press, March 23, 1973, 4C.
52 Marco Trbovich, "Polish Life,"
Detroit Free Press (1971?), in "Clippings (Mounted and Undated)"
folder, Box 4, Poletown History Project Papers, Burton, DPL.
53 About the African American newcomers, in
1971 she remarked: "Our people couldn"t stand them." See Marco
Trbovich, "Polish Life," Detroit Free Press [1971?], in Clippings (Mounted and Undated) Folder,
Box 4, Poletown History Project Papers, Burton, DPL.
54 I have not yet been able to establish the
facts surrounding her last years.
55 See Doug Bradford, "Clara
Swieczkowski, once honored by Pope Pius XI," Detroit News, 20 August 1986,
7B; Stanisaw Krajewski, "Klara Swieczkowska zmara w wieku lat 96,"
Dziennik Polski (Detroit), 22 August 1986, 5; also see Richard Willing,
"Miss Clara, 85: Grande dame of Detroit's Polish Politics," Detroit
News, 5 September 1977, 1.
56 Antoinette Staniszewski, quoted in Wytrwal,
Polish Experience in Detroit, 193.
57 See "Membership List of The Polish
American Historical Association as of November, 1945," PAS 2, nos. 3-4 (July-December 1945): 127.
58 See Roman Nir, "The Central Archives
of Polonia," PAS 51, no. 1
(Spring 1994): 72.
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