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Abstract
From 1890 to the 1960s there was a significant increase in the numbers of “undesirable” people coming to New York City from afar. These “undesirable” people were affected by immigration concerns involving those “likely to become a public charge”, which was revitalized prior to World War One with the massive influx of immigrants into New York. Immigration officials, often lacking a completely cohesive or comprehensive federal policy, were tasked with establishing practices and policies which would ensure the “right kind” of people entered the City of dreams. In turn, officials utilized existing racial sciences and emerging technology to categorize groups of people based on often murky understandings of their origins and histories. Romani people or what officials called “Gypsies” were one of these oblique categories of people deemed “undesirable” and persistent strangers. Utilizing visual representations, popular culture, and accounts by “Gypsyologists”, this research argues that “Gypsies” became a unique American stereotype in the pivotal period between 1890 and the 1960s, at the same time that ongoing discourses around racial fitness, citizenship, domesticity, and culture were shaping American identity.
American “Gypsies” became both despised New York “ethnics” and a representational means of escape for burgeoning middle-class values through racial performances where Americans “Played Gypsy”. This research examines the ways in which “Gypsies” like other racial “undesirables” formed relationships on the streets, in neighborhoods, and were discursively portrayed in popular culture. More than just a story about the history of “Gypsies” and Roma in, what one “Gypsyologist” called, “the Gypsy Capital”, this dissertation examines how from New York “Gypsies” became a legible American category of strangerhood and race. Importantly, this dissertation argues that “Gypsies” were and have been a part of the American discourse of race and belonging for hundreds of years. “Gypsies” have been left out of the larger historical and anthropological narratives which clump together smaller demographic populations into the category of “others” or “undesirables”. The lack of information about “Gypsies” in the United States and their novel “stranger” status led to their outsized role in shaping New York’s racial formations and impacting popular culture’s power in the country’s debates about American identity, race, and citizenship. This work amends the historiography by examining the forces and discourses which shaped Americans' understanding of “Gypsies” at the same time that it exposes a long history of Romani participation in and with New York City. Far from being a small minority population amongst the masses, American Roma influenced the practices and policies of immigration officials, lawmakers, police officers, and lay people alike.
