Social silence, heartbreak and the dream of safety: 'New immigrants', race and class on Minnesota's Iron Range, 1890--1930

Based on archival sources, historical studies and memoirs, this Project Demonstrating Excellence examines the experiences of new immigrants who came to northeastern Minnesota between 1890 and 1930. Particular focus is directed to how the racialized construct of “white” developed, was internalized, and how questions regarding its normativeness were silenced.; The study suggests that the plurality of the new immigrants' public action was silenced by interconnected factors such as heartbreak arising out of the difficulties of immigrant life, repression of the community-based labor movement by mining companies, and measures of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety directed at social conformity. Public education provided to immigrants of all ages is examined in relation to the training provided to Ojibwe children in government schools and the socialist alternative available at The Work People's College. Designed to transmit the values of the dominant American society, public education afforded new immigrants a way into the broader society that was not available to American Indians because of race. For immigrants, this inclusion carried the cost of loss of language and culture.; A theoretical analysis of historical silencings and the social silence that results is also presented. Whether the result of violent external repression or self-imposed censorship of experience, this work considers the ways in which social silence maintains stability but also keeps people separated from each other on the basis of socially constructed ideas about identity and seemingly unbreachable differences of experience.; Interviews with women who currently live in northeastern Minnesota were also conducted to gain insight into the legacy of this social silence. This work addresses the question of how knowledge about the experiences of these immigrants carried through memory or stories—or the lack of knowledge about these experiences—affects contemporary women in this region, and animates or inhibits their public action.