Mesabi histories: Immigration, industry, and identity in American historical memory during the twentieth century

This dissertation examines how historical understandings of European immigration shifted during the course of the twentieth century, devoting particular attention to important changes that occurred during the period of the white ethnic revival. I argue that whom and what histories included or silenced were inherently political activities that reflected contemporary divisions of power. Further, I contend that this attribute requires historians to devote greater attention to immigration and ethnicity during the 1960's through 1980's, a period that has traditionally been understudied in the immigration historiography. Present-day understandings of the immigrant past are as much cultural representations of these later decades as they are reflections of the earlier time periods that they purport to document. In exploring these topics, this dissertation takes Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range as a case study. Not only was the Mesabi historically the world's single most important iron-bearing district, but its population also generated a remarkably rich historical record that offers a lens into broader processes of history production that occurred throughout the United States. During the early twentieth century, histories constructed on the Mesabi advanced consensus interpretations that marginalized southern and eastern European immigrants while celebrating Anglo-American contributions to the region's progress and development. Such narratives served to legitimize Anglo-American social and cultural hegemony on the Mesabi. As ethnic European Americans claimed greater influence in social and industrial matters by mid-century, however, they also began to reshape understandings of the region's past. Academic historians studied immigration and ethnicity, oral history interviews described a heroic immigrant mythology, and heritage tourism and public celebrations commemorated the immigrant past. These new interpretations produced a more inclusive version of history, albeit one that was still racialized and gendered. With immigrants becoming the focus of historical narratives, regional cultural identities underwent significant changes at the same time. By the 1960's, ethnic European Americans were central to the Mesabi's collective identity, expressed most clearly by the notion of an "Iron Range" ethnicity. These changes had important implications for later events in the United States, such as the nation's "culture wars," which have involved contests over American history and culture.