St. Louis, Missouri: The Early Greek Community

Abstract

The Greek migration history and heritage is rich, dating back to antiquity. However, Greeks were relatively minor participants and latecomers in coming to the United States. This study’s general focus is early twentieth century Greek immigrant American communities. The specific concentration is on the Greek settlement in St. Louis, Missouri, including the Greek padrone system, the odious indentured servitude and exploitation of early Greeks by other Greek immigrants. The study expands the scant written history of the early St. Louis Greek immigrant community. Further, examining early Greek immigrants’ imported values, this study reconciles the amoral Greek padrone system to the usually positive and moral business and family attributes ascribed to first and second generation Greek-Americans in the existing historiography and in other cultural portrayals. Finally it demonstrates that attributes of the Greek padrone system are very much akin to those of twenty-first century human trafficking. How the Greek padrone system was combatted and ended contains lessons for confronting the present-day immigrant exploitation found in human trafficking.