“The one primitive people who contact with civilization has failed to exterminate”: New York and “Gypsy” Madness in the 1920s

The 1920s marked a decade of American economic growth, mobility, and the rise of popular culture. Increased immigration before the First World War also meant that cities across the country were filled with new people not previously seen by Americans. In New York City, decades of immigration and mobility had brought large groups of Roma (sometimes called Gypsies) to the city in increasing numbers. But it was not just the Roma who were making New York their home; instead, there was another figure who exploded onto the cultural scene: the “Gypsy.” This paper explores the “Gypsy madness” that swept New York City in the 1920s where non-Roma Americans played “Gypsy” at the same time that they actively racialized Roma as backward, untrustworthy, and “primitive.” Putting on the guise of the “Gypsy” allowed Americans to assert their “Americanness” while denigrating and vilifying actual Roma and targeting them with increased policing throughout the city. In the end, “Gypsy madness” followed the trend of other racial performances in the early years of the twentieth century, yet also revealed the anxieties of increased immigration and complicated the ideas about deviance and propriety in the multi-ethnic metropolis of New York City.