I certainly do not consider them 'pests' and in my long life have never heard them described as anything but people - just like everybody else. Question: How many Gypsies are in the US, and are they considered pests?Īnswer: It is estimated that we have one million Gypsies in America. My primary source for this article is The Gypsies by Sir Angus Fraser. There have been six World Romani Congress forums held, from 1971 to 2004, to discuss how best to press for rights for the Gypsy people. There is even a Gypsy Evangelical Church, with over 200 churches in France alone. One new development is the rise in Pentecostalism among Gypsies. 222,000 of them were counted in the 1966 census, and 9 percent of all babies born that year in Czechoslovakia were Gypsies. The Czech people looked down on Gypsies as a primitive, backward, and degenerate people. Violators had their horses killed and wagons burned. In Czechoslovakia, a law was passed in 1958 that forced Gypsies into settlements. This law was strictly enforced, and within two years 80 percent of Gypsy children were enrolled in school. Therefore, Gypsies were forbidden to travel in caravans in 1964. Starting in the 1950s, Poland offered housing and employment to Gypsies, but most continued to wander. Work in Soviet factories and farms held little appeal to Gypsies.
There were 134,000 Gypsies in the Soviet Union in 1959 by the census of 1979 they numbered 209,000. But entrepreneurial activities were illegal in Communist states, and these were the specialties of Gypsies. One would expect that Gypsy people would have fared well under Communist regimes, what with their stated philosophy of equality for all.
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