Macedonian Americans ( are Americans of ethnic Macedonian heritage.
History Review Macedonian national feelings had shifted throughout the 20th century.Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Ethnologia Balkanica Series, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, , p. 127: " During the 20th century, Slavo-Macedonian national feeling has shifted. At the beginning of the 20th century, Slavic patriots in Macedonia felt a strong attachment to Macedonia as a multi-ethnic homeland. They imagined a Macedonian community uniting themselves with non-Slavic Macedonians... Most of these Macedonian Slavs also saw themselves as Bulgarians. By the middle of the 20th. century, however Macedonian patriots began to see Macedonian and Bulgarian loyalties as mutually exclusive. Regional Macedonian nationalism had become ethnic Macedonian nationalism... This transformation shows that the content of collective loyalties can shift."Zielonka, Jan; Pravda, Alex (2001). Democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 422. : Unlike the Slovene and Croatian identities, which existed independently for a long period before the emergence of SFR Yugoslavia, Macedonian identity and language were themselves a product of federal Yugoslavia, and took shape only after 1944. Again unlike Slovenia and Croatia, the very existence of a separate Macedonian identity was questioned—albeit to a different degree—by both the governments and the public of all the neighboring nations (Greece being the most intransigent).Sperling, James; Kay, Sean; Papacosma, S. Victor (2003). Limiting institutions?: the challenge of Eurasian security governance. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. p. 57. . "Macedonian nationalism Is a new phenomenon. In the early twentieth century, there was no separate Slavic Macedonian identity.""The Macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world," Loring M. Danforth, Princeton University Press, 1997, , pp. 65-66: "At the end of the First World war there were very few historians or ethnographers, who claimed that a separate Macedonian nation existed... Of those Slavs who had then developed some sense of national identity, the majority considered themselves to be Bulgarians, although they were aware of differences between themselves and the inhabitants of Bulgaria... The question as of whether a Macedonian nation actually existed in the 1940s, when a Communist Yugoslavia decided to recognize one, is difficult to answer. Some observers argue that even at this time it was doubtful whether the Slavs from Macedonia considered themselves to be a nationality separate from the Bulgarians."Titchener, Frances B.; Moorton, Richard F. (1999). The eye expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 259. ; On the other hand, the Macedonians are a newly emergent people in search of a past to help legitimize their precarious present as they attempt to establish their singular identity in a Slavic world dominated historically by Serbs and Bulgarians... The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one".Kaufman, Stuart J. (2001). Modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. New York: Cornell University Press. p. 193. : "The key fact about Macedonian nationalism is that it is new: in the early twentieth century, Macedonian villagers defined their identity religiously, depending on the affiliation of the village priest. While Bulgarian was most common affiliation then, mistreatment by occupying Bulgarian troops during the Second World war, cured most Macedonians from their pro-Bulgarian sympathies, leaving them embracing the new Macedonian identity promoted by the Tito regime after the war." According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, almost all of Macedonians in the U.S. until World War II classified themselves as Macedonian Bulgarians or simply as Bulgarians. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian national identification during the late Ottoman Empire, from where most of the emigrants arrived, was based on ethno-religious principles and still ambiguous.Noel Buxton, Europe and the Turks, (London: John Murray, 1907), 50-51: "Noel Buxton wrote in 1907 that "no one can understand the outlook in Macedonia without realizing that nationalities are identified with churches…religion is degraded to the level of a pretext for exciting national zeal."Jacob Gould Schurman, The Balkan Wars, 1912-1913 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1914), Pg. 80: Jacob G. Schurman noted in 1914 that race identification in Macedonia could be changed as easily as religion. He stated that "a Macedonian may be a Greek today, a Bulgarian tomorrow, and a Serbian the next day."H.N. Brailsford, Macedonia; Its Races and Their Future (London: Methuen & Company, 1906), (Reprinted by Arno Press in 1971), 18-19:In 1906, Brailsford wrote that the average Macedonian peasant "was an ardent Macedonian nationalist, rather distrustful of Bulgaria, and profoundly hostile to Russia. The description [is] good and accurate." Macedonian immigrants identified also as Macedonians.Dusan Sinadinoski, "Macedonians" in Ethnic Groups in Michigan, ed. James M. Anderson and Iva A. Smith, The Peoples of Michigan Series, (Detroit Ethno Press: 1983, Pg. 196. Early 20th century census documents and newspaper articles mention Macedonian language/mother tongue and race/nationality,"Proclaim Clean Up in Three Tongues", Harrisburg Telegraph (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania) · Tue, May 5, 1914 · First Edition · Page 7. In 1914, Burgess Wigfield of Steelton decided to go on a ten-day cleaning spree of the town. He requested from the city council for the City to allow him to print and distribute hundreds of circulars in three languages. "In English, Slavish and Macedonian languages that fact will be proclaimed throughout Steelton today," wrote the Harrisburg Telegraph.Sample of US World War I draft cards with Macedonians listing their race/nationality as Macedonian: "United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K6NW-D22 : 12 December 2014), Vany Echoff, 1917-1918; citing Stark County no 1, Ohio, United States, NARA microfilm publication M1509 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,851,188. "United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K6D5-R39 : 12 December 2014), Christ Bogedan Slavoff, 1917-1918; citing Madison County no 2, Illinois, United States, NARA microfilm publication M1509 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,614,327. "United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K66P-LT7 : 12 December 2014), Thomas Slavoff, 1917-1918; citing Calhoun County, Michigan, United States, NARA microfilm publication M1509 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 1,675,130.1920 US Census showing in Granite City that hundreds of Macedonian-Americans put Macedonian as their mother tongue: "United States Census, 1920," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJHF-H7Y : accessed 14 July 2017), Anastas Mitsareff, Granite Ward 5, Madison, Illinois, United States; citing ED 85, sheet 4B, line 84, family 84, NARA microfilm publication T625 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), roll 390; FHL microfilm 1,820,390."Macedonian at Embury Church", The Scranton Republican (Scranton, Pennsylvania)31 Oct 1908, Sat Page 12. Mr. Vishanoff (an educated Macedonian-American in the late 19th and early 20th century) would give speeches to crowds of Americans in the Macedonian tongue. Announcements for his lecture often read like this one from 1908: "He will appear in his nobleman’s costume, will sing in Macedonian and Bulgarian language, and will also exhibit some Macedonian and Bulgarian curiosities after his address." but that designation was used then mainly as a regional identification.It is clear that even in the pre- 1945 period a large segment of Macedonia's Slavs declared themselves to be "Macedonians," although it would be completely premature to assume that this label stood for a national, as opposed to a regional identity. Victor Roudometof, Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, , p. 109 The sense of belonging to a separate Macedonian nation did not get strongly established until after World War II, following the founding of the People's Republic of Macedonia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the codification of a distinct Macedonian language.Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans, Vol. 2: Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press, 1983, , pp. 320-321.
Late 19th and early 20th century The first Macedonian immigrants to the U.S. arrived in the late 19th century from the Bansko region of what is today Bulgarian Macedonia. These Macedonians had often been educated by American missionaries and were encouraged to migrate to the United States for higher education or to attend missionary schools. But the first large swath of Macedonians came in the early 20th century from the border regions in the north of what is today Greek Macedonia, primarily the regions near Kastoria (Kostur), Florina (Lerin), and the south-west of North Macedonia, notably around Bitola. These Macedonians had faced the greatest retributions from the Ottoman military because the 1903 Ilinden uprising was centered in these areas.South Slavic immigration in America, Twayne Publishers. A division of G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, George Prpic, John Carroll University, 1976, Chapter 18, The Bulgarians and Macedonians, pp. 213-218.
In the 1910 United States census, enumerators were instructed not to record "Macedonian" as a mother tongue, but use Bulgarian, Turkish, Greek, Serbian or Romanian, as the case may be. Despite this directive, some Macedonian immigrants declared their native language as "Macedonian" in the census.
In December 1918 a congress was held in Chicago, lasting a week, where attended. Given events in the First World War, and the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, local organizers prepared a proposal about the eventual after-war status of Macedonia. By a great majority, the delegates supported a proposal for annexation to Bulgaria. In January 1919, after Bulgaria lost the war, the Macedono-Bulgarian Central Committee in the US sent a report to the Great Powers. They explained their view of the real motives of Bulgaria to enter the war and demanded that Macedonia be joined to Bulgaria.Trendafil Mitev, The United States of America and Macedonia: 1834-1945, Issue 41 of Macedonian library, Macedonian Scientific Institute, Sofia, 1999, p. 28.
Between the World Wars In the 1920s, many Macedonian-Americans became very suspicious that the main Macedonian organization at that time – the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, existed to advance Bulgaria's political interests. Some Macedonian-Americans began to form smaller clubs and societies whose members were limited to fellow villagers. Members of these small groups could trust the others in their group, and they knew that they were not being taken advantage of by the leaders of the MPO.