Hamtramck, Michigan: An Evolving City Of Immigrants
Pick a street corner in downtown Hamtramck, Mich., and you'll be struck by the incredible mix of cultures crammed into this tiny, 2-square-mile city.
A Catholic church across the street from a mosque. Polish pastry shops, sausage factories, and grocery stores promising "the best Polish food, shipping to Eastern Europe," side by side with Bengali clothing shops that sell richly embroidered dresses and headscarves. And you'd be remiss if you didn't stop in the many Yemeni restaurants serving fragrant lamb and discs of flatbread the size of hubcaps.
What has united all of the immigrant groups who've come to Hamtramck? Good jobs in the auto industry. Hamtramck is surrounded by Detroit, and for decades, car manufacturing was its lifeblood.
Polish immigrants started coming to Hamtramck starting in the early 1900s, lured by the promise of jobs at the . At its peak, nearly 75 percent of the city's residents were
