Before those major waves, there was a small but steady trickle of migrants from Poland to the Thirteen Colonies and early United States, mainly comprising religious dissenters, skilled tradesmen, and adventurous nobles.

[14] At the time, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was failing and being gradually stripped of its independence due to military partitions by foreign powers, a number of Polish patriots, among them Casimir Pulaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, left for America to fight in the American Revolutionary War.

Leopold Moczygemba, a Polish priest, founded Panna Maria by writing letters back to Poland encouraging them to emigrate to Texas, a place with free land, fertile soils, and golden mountains.

[35] By coincidence, the first soldiers killed in the American Civil War were both Polish: Captain Constantin Blandowski, a Union battalion commander in Missouri who died in the Camp Jackson Affair,[36] and Thaddeus Strawinski, an 18-year-old Confederate who was accidentally shot at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island.

The Waverly Emigration Society, formed in 1867 in Walker County, Texas, by several planters, dispatched Meyer Levy, a Polish Jew, to Poland to acquire roughly 150 Poles to pick cotton.

He cited instances where Polish farmers called their landlords massa,[45] denoting a subordinate position on level with slavery, and, when asking a woman why she left Poland, she replied 'Mudder haf much childs and 'Nough not to eat all".

[54] Similar circumstances developed in the following decades: during the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II; and further, in the communist period, under the Soviet military and political dominance with re-drawn national borders.

In 1886, Otto von Bismarck gave a speech to the Lower House of the Prussian Parliament defending his policies of anti-polonism, and warning of the ominous position Silesia was in with over 1 million Poles who could fight Germany "within twenty four hour notice".

"[83][discuss] A novel set in 1901 written from the perspective of a young Polish American in a coal mining family, Theodore Roosevelt by Jennifer Armstrong, reflects the poor conditions and labor struggles affecting the miners.

[102] In a historical text examining Poland, Nevin Winter described in 1913 that "an extremeness in temperament is a characteristic of the Slav" and asserting this view as an inborn and unchangeable personality trait in Poles as well as Russians.

[103][discuss] Future U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called Poles, Hungarians, and Italians, in his 1902 History of the American People, "men of the meaner sort" who possessed "neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence."

Frequently she is not allowed to leave the house except in company with those who will watch her; she is deprived of all street clothing; she is forced to receive any visitor who chooses her to gratify his desires, however vile or unnatural; she often contracts loathsome and dangerous diseases and lives hopelessly on, looking forward to an early death.The American public felt a deep connection to the issue of white slavery and placed a high moral responsibility on immigration inspectors for their inability to weed out European prostitutes.

Roman Catholic churches built in the Polish cathedral style follow a design that includes high ornamentation, decorative columns and buttresses, and many visual depictions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus.

In one example, Bishop Ignatius Frederick Horstmann, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, ordered a Polish American priest, Hipolyte Orlowski, to appoint church committeemen instead of holding elections.

Polish customs taken into American churches include the Pasterka (a midnight mass celebrated between December 24 and 25), the gorzkie żale (bitter lamentations devotion), and święconka (blessing of easter eggs).

Reportedly, Francis Hodur, a Catholic priest serving a few miles away heard the stories from Polish parishioners and said, "Let all those who are dissatisfied and feel wronged in this affair set about organizing and building a new church, which shall remain in possession of the people themselves.

Historian Adam Urbanski drew an observation through The Immigrant Press and its Control, which stated, "Loneliness in an unfamiliar environment turns the wanderers' thoughts and affections back upon his native land.

In White Deer, Texas, where Poles were virtually the only ethnic minority, Polish children had near-daily fights with other schoolchildren, and southerners imitated their parents in calling them "Polocks and damn Catholics".

To defuse the situation, a meeting at a local courthouse between Anglo, German, and Slavic leaders created laws requiring funeral services, church sermons, and business transactions to be conducted in English only for the next few months.

Leo Krzycki, a Socialist leader known as a "torrential orator",[170] was hired by different trade unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations to educate and agitate American workers in both English and Polish during the 1910s to the 1930s.

Byrnes and Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov both were making speeches expressing support for an economically and politically unified Germany, and both invoked the "provisional" nature of the Oder-Neisse line in their talks.

After the war, however, some higher status Poles were outraged with Roosevelt's acceptance of Stalin's control over Poland; they shifted their vote in the 1946 congressional elections to conservative Republicans who opposed the Yalta agreement and foreign policy in Eastern Europe.

Poles were not cooperative with government incursions into their neighborhoods; in Pittsburgh's Model Cities Program, tax money paid by the residents was used to tear down blocks of a Polish community to build low income housing for blacks and Hispanics[citation needed].

As the black population of Detroit grew, many also saw their longtime neighbors partake in white flight: Having lived here since her exodus from Poland at age fourteen, my grandmother is bombarded daily with phone calls from high-pressure realtors who tell her she better hurry and sell before "they" all move in and the house becomes worthless.

[197] While race relations between white and black populations were still generally poor, through the progress of the Civil Rights Movement, anti-Black discrimination began to be seen as highly offensive within more socially conscious circles.

[210] John Paul II's theology was staunchly conservative on social and sexual issues, and though popular as a religious and political figure, church attendance among Polish Americans did slowly decline during his papacy.

Bush's announcement was politically risky because it promised trade and financial credit during a tight U.S. budget, and for placing the White House, and not the State Department, as the key decision maker on foreign diplomacy.

Fictional Polish-Americans include Barney Gumble, Moe Szyslak, Banacek, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Brock Samson, Walt Kowalski of Gran Torino, The Big Lebowski, and Polish Wedding.

"[219] In the 1961 film West Side Story, the character Chino takes issue with the caucasian Tony, who is of mixed Polish and Swedish heritage, and has a line in which he said, "If it's the last thing I do, I'm gonna kill that Polack!"

[220] Barrick stated that "even though the Polack joke usually lacks the bitterness found in racial humor, it deals deliberately with a very small minority group, one not involved in national controversy, and one that has no influential organization for picketing or protesting.