Czechs

Chicago has been home to one of the largest diasporas of Czech citizens outside of central Europe, but there aren't many Czech restaurants left here. What's the cuisine like?

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the future mayor of Chicago Anton Cermak was born in an area of Austria-Hungary that is now part of the Czech Republic. The above photo of him with Franklin Delano Roosevelt was taken in 1932, a year before Cermak’s death as a result of his relationship with Roosevelt. FDR won the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate against Herbert Hoover at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Chicago had the third-largest Czech population in the world, behind only Prague and Vienna. Czechs were deeply involved in the labor movement, politics, and more, as the producers of a new documentary on Czechs in Chicago explain.