History Speaks- From Goosetown to Midtown: How Immigration Shaped a Neighborhood

From Goosetown to Midtown: How Immigration Shaped a Neighborhood with Dr. Kimberly Schutte

The neighborhood around SS. Peter and Paul Church developed as a community of immigrants. At the turn of the 20th century, immigrants from Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, built their impressive church and created a vibrant community where they lived, worked, shopped, and ate and drank, around it. This was Goosetown. By the middle of the 20th century, things were changing; the Eastern European families were moving out and African American families were moving in. Many of these families had come to St. Joseph as part of the Great Migration, the movement of thousands of African Americans out of the rural South looking for lives with more opportunity and less oppression. They created a vibrant community where they lived, worked, shopped, and ate and drank. This was Midtown. This St. Joseph neighborhood has an intriguing story to tell, a story profoundly shaped by the experience of the immigrants and their families who have called it home.