Clair Girsh

“There were two sets of similar people arriving in Chicago and other industrial cities of the North at around the same time in the early decades of the twentieth century—blacks pouring in from the South and immigrants arriving from eastern and southern Europe in a slowing but continuous stream from across the Atlantic, a pilgrimage that had begun in the latter part of the nineteenth century. On the face of it, they were sociologically alike, mostly landless rural people, put upon by the landed upper classes or harsh autocratic regimes, seeking freedom and autonomy in the northern factory cities of the United States.

But as they made their way into the economies of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and other receiving cities, their fortunes diverged. Both groups found themselves ridiculed for their folk ways and accents and suffered backward assumptions about their abilities and intelligence. But with the stroke of a pen, many eastern and southern Europeans and their children could wipe away their ethnicities—and those limiting assumptions—by adopting Anglo-Saxon surnames and melting into the world of the more privileged native-born whites. In this way, generations of immigrant children could take their places without the burdens of an outsider ethnicity in a less enlightened era. Doris von Kappelhoff could become Doris Day, and Issur Danielovitch, the son of immigrants from Belarus, could become Kirk Douglas, meaning that his son could live life and pursue stardom as Michael Douglas instead of as Michael Danielovitch.

...

Ultimately, according to the Harvard immigration scholar Stanley Lieberson, a major difference between the acceptance and thus life outcomes of black migrants from the South and their white immigrant counterparts was this: white immigrants and their descendants could escape the disadvantages of their station if they chose to, while that option did not hold for the vast majority of black migrants and their children. The ethnicity of the descendants of white immigrants “was more a matter of choice, because, with some effort, it could be changed,” Lieberson wrote, and, out in public, might not easily be determined at all.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

“The birth of a legend is the death of a hero. Every man wishes to die a hero. A hero’s death is glorious!”
― Tanya Thompson, Red Russia

“It made natural headlines. Prostitutes being murdered suggested a titillating story. Moreover, citizens, living in nice safe houses, whose wives and daughters were never alone on the streets could be reassured.”
― Ann Rule, Green River, Running Red: The Real Story of the Green River Killer--America's Deadliest Serial Murderer

“I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule.”
― Mark Kurlansky, Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man