The United States allows you to practice your own customs, but people wouldn t work hard to keep together. There are no young leaders, he said. It would be hard to organize something today. Before, everything revolved around the church, but today there is no church, no center. Polish people no longer want to work hard to stay together.
Life still continues to center around the church also.
As most of you know, East St. Louis has been an underdeveloped, blighted area for several decades now. As a brief conclusion, I would hope that the vitality of the former Polish community in East St. Louis could somehow be returned to or revived in the city. The African-Americans shared many of the same reasons for coming and for leaving and for staying on in fear. 2 Ibid., 92. 4 Judd et al, 18.