CLEVELAND – America is the world’s oldest existing democracy, having held presidential elections every four years without interruption for the past 224 years. This year the Republican Party is holding its national convention in Cleveland on July 18-21. In the spirit of welcome, the Ukrainian Museum-Archives prepared an exhibit “Politics and Ukrainian-Americans,” with photographs, campaign buttons, signs, fliers, etc. going back to the 1910s.
The exhibit shows how many Ukrainian Americans, like other immigrant groups, reacted to harsh social and working conditions by bringing their socialist politics with them to the New World. A 1924 newspaper, Molot (Hammer) published in New York mourns the death of Lenin. And yet, many more immigrants saw the value of becoming citizens and joining the political mainstream. Photographs and citizenship manuals from the 1920s and ‘30s show Ukrainians enjoying their ethnicity while learning, becoming naturalized and ultimately voting.
A November 1936 edition of Visti z Ohio (News from Ohio) is studded with political ads for local offices. An ad in a 1944 edition of Svoboda urges Ukrainian Americans to vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt. A 1956, brochure with a photograph of Dwight D. Eisenhower urges voters “to turn the tide against communism” by supporting “the Republican Liberation Policy.”
A 1972 photograph features Richard Nixon with Clevelander Taras Szmagala Sr., who coordinated President Nixon’s national outreach to ethnic Americans. There is a specially designed display box of 25 buttons, each with a different nationality – from Armenians to Ukrainians for Nixon. Other buttons tout Ukrainians for Kerry, McCain, Obama, Gore, Bush, Reagan, Dukakis, etc. There’s a rare “I like Ike” button from 1956, only it’s in Ukrainian.
An entire wall is devoted to posters with “Ukrainian-Americans for….” – you can fill in the blank for a dozen or more candidates. There are also posters for down ballot candidates for Senate, Governor, etc., as well as buttons and posters for Ukrainian American candidates like Chris Boyko, now a federal judge in Cleveland, and for friends of Ukraine like Marcy Kaptur, Robert Taft, George Voinovich and others.
The exhibit concludes with recent photographs of American political leaders supporting the Euro-Maidan revolution in Kyiv along with photographs of Ukraine’s Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko addressing joint sessions of the U.S. Congress.
Those who visit the UMA quickly realize that this is not just a Ukrainian museum, it’s an American museum. It reflects the historical reality that the United States is a nation of immigrants. The exhibit at the UMA is designed to remind delegates and visitors to Cleveland that the city was built by immigrants and that we’re proud of that.