The Center for Southwest Research and the Office of the State Historian are sponsoring a lecture titled, “The Greeks of Albuquerque, 1900-1952.” Presented by Katherine Pomonis, an independent scholar from Albuquerque, the lecture will be held Wednesday, June 10, at noon in the Willard Reading Room at Zimmerman Library.
Photo: Katherine Pomonis
Her lecture will discuss the Greeks who arrived and settled in Albuquerque in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This lecture explores why they came to Albuquerque and what their role was in the economy.
There were no known Greeks in Albuquerque until 1896. By that time Greek names can be found in the city directory. Some worked for the railroad. Others had tuberculosis and came for the cure. They bought homes and by 1917 were opening businesses in the downtown area. The Greeks in Albuquerque sometimes brought wives from Greece or intermarried with other Greeks, and by 1906 were petitioning for naturalization status.
In 1937, the Greeks in Albuquerque opened a national sanatorium for indigent Greeks, and in 1944 the Hellenic community established an Orthodox church.
Pomonis has degrees in anthropology and history from the University of Rhode Island and has done post graduate studies at the University of New Mexico. For 20 years, she worked at UNM’s Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.
Her lecture is free and the public is welcome.
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu