Community Corner

From the Vaults: Working out an Identity

Sokol groups kept Czech immigrants healthy and preserved their heritage.

Artifact: A group shot of nicely dressed residents sitting with American flags, bands and a sign that reads “Northern Sokol Societies.” A caption on the lower right-hand corner dating the photo to 1927 reads. “First Annual Sokol Festival at Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

Back-story: Gymanstics today is often considered the domain of children and sprightly athletes. But a Czech gymnastics association was an important source of identity for many early Hopkins residents.

Sokol—from the Slavic word for falcon—was ostensibly a gymnastics and calisthenics training program for boys and girls ages 6 and older. The first Sokol was founded in Prague in 1862 and emphasized physical fitness activities such as weightlifting, fencing and marching.

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But the period was one of burgeoning Czech nationalism, and Sokols quickly came to sponsor lectures and literature about Slavic culture. “Slets”—giant gymnastics festivals named after the Slavic word for a flock of birds—became a way to cultivate Czech identity against the Germanic influences of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Sokol members would eventually play an active part in encouraging defections from the Austro-Hungarian empire’s military after World War I started in 1914.

The heritage component of the Sokol movement remained when the first American chapter started in 1896. Czechs—back then called Bohemians—had actually first arrived in Hopkins in the 1850s. About 60 percent of the community’s settlers were Bohemian, according to an official response to a 1978 University of Minnesota survey of the state’s ethnic heritage.

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But the opening of Minneapolis Threshing Machine Co. in 1887 brought a fresh wave of Czech immigrants to Hopkins at about the same time Sokols were exploding in the old country. It was not a coincidence that the Hopkins Sokol was founded around this time—in 1905, although some documents say that it started in 1906.

Like its sister organizations across the pond, Sokol groups in Hopkins focused on both physical fitness and celebrating Czech culture. They also provided important civic functions for immigrants. The stateside Sokol organization had a life insurance component and sponsored camps and social activities, according to the .

The group’s popularity is evident in the society’s numerous photos from about 1910. The photos show boys with tight tanks tops and bulging biceps frowning into the camera—and girls wearing more-demure dresses with neck-high collars and giant bows across their chest.

By at least 1939, the organization was also partnering with other Czech groups to sponsor “harvest festivals” with Czech food, Czech costumes, Czech music, Czech dancing and, of course, gymnastics displays.

The organization’s popularity ebbed and flowed over the years, but the 1940s would prove to be the last hurrah for Sokol in Hopkins. The organization lost the use of the school gymnasium and faded rapidly afterward—a fate common to Sokol units that lost their home. By 1952, Sokol activities were “non-existent,” one man noted recorded. The sense of a Czech community disappeared almost as rapidly.

 

“Yes, the Bohemians are still here, but they are our doctors, lawyers, school teachers, business men; members of Rotary, Lions, Chamber of Commerce; living in our better suburban residential area. They are totally a part of a modern metropolitan community, unidentifiable as Bohemians or Czechs,” the unknown respondent to the 1978 survey wrote.

Sokol did not disappear entirely, though. Czech and Slovak Sokol Minnesota still operates out of St. Paul’s historic Česko-Slovanský Podporujíc í Spolek (C.S.P.S.) Hall built in 1887.


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