So I Come to America: Detroit Pre-World War I Immigrants August 5, 2012

Between 1890 and 1914, tens of millions of people left their homes to make new lives in the United States. Thousands of these immigrants settled in the city of Detroit, Michigan. Between 1980 and 1983, Robert Gordon, a professor and Library Director at Siena Heights University in Michigan, photographed and interviewed 50 Detroit-area pre-World War I immigrants. All but 3 of these entered the U.S. through Ellis Island. Many of them were from the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, and Ottoman Empires. This exhibit consists of 15 of Gordon's portrait photographs featuring immigrants from Central Europe along with excerpts from his oral histories.