Czechast Special: Czechs in Oklahoma

You can meet them wherever you go in America, from New York in the East, to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the West, from Chicago in the North to Houston and Miami in the South. But it is in the Midwestern states where you can find whole cities and towns with a very kind of pronounced feeling of Czech Heritage. 

Chicago used to be called the second largest Czech city after Prague. Then there is Cedar Rapids in Iowa, where the Maggie and Tom Slepičkas, whom you could hear in the previeous episode, live. It is also the place where Czech and Slovak presidents, Václav Havel and Michal Kováč, together with American president Bill Clinton opened the new building of the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library back in 1995.

National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids|Photo: Klára Stejskalová, Radio Prague International

As a Czech National Public Radio correspondent in the United States I visited many places where Americans with Czech roots live. And I thought it might be a good idea to present at least one of them from which I reported and produced the following package as we call it for Radio Prague International. It is about Czechs in Oklahoma and I think it complements nicely the last Czechast episode with the Slepičkas.