USA

Steve Kaslov (ca.1888Kaslov (ca.-1949) ) is an emblematic figure in the history of Roma elite and Roma civic emancipation in the United States.Some sources identify him more broadly as a leader of Kalderaš -"famous for their skill in working copper and gold" (Cotten, 1950, p. 17).Other sources place him more specifically as "a leader of the Rusuya 'Russian' Rom group" (Kaslov, 1995, p. 15).Although Kaslov was sentenced to federal prison for making false statements to a draft board in New York City, he was generally regarded as a visionary leader of his people, seeking to improve the civic status and rights of Roma individuals and communities in the United States.Recognition of Kaslov extended even to the White House, which reinforces his inclusion in a book of leading representatives of Roma history during the interwar period.Reliable biographical details of Kaslov's life are elusive.One of his earliest promoters was Victor Weybright -considered one of "the more informed observers of American Rom" (Sutherland, 1975, p. 1).In a piece written for the influential New York Times Magazine on how "Reality Overtakes the Gypsy", Weybright called attention to Kaslov as "a remarkable though unlettered man, [who] has demonstrated that at least a certain group of nomads can cooperate" to improve "the condition of the nomad gypsies" and "to preserve their native talents yet adapt them to a changing world" (New York Times Magazine, 1938, p. 14).Several years later, in the pages of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Weybright romantically -but falsely -claimed that "Kaslov was born fifty years ago [i.e., ca.1895 -authors note] beside a green lane in Lowndes County, Georgia.He grew up in tent and caravan, always on the move.Married at an early age, he never spent a day of his life in school" (Survey Graphic, 1938, p. 142).However, what Sheila Salo determined through research in census and immigration records is that "Kaslov was born in Russia in 1888" and emigrated with his family in 1901 -first to New Brunswick, Canada, and subsequently to the United States (Salo, 1995, p. 38).During his twenties, Kaslov married a woman "of the Gunarešti lineage", and lived in northeastern Pennsylvania, coastal South Carolina, the Texas-Mexico border, and Baltimore, Maryland, before settling in the area of New Jersey and New York City in 1919 (Ibid., pp.38-39).Once he arrived in the New York area, Kaslov's activities are easier to document.According to Rena Cotten Gropper's ethnographic work, based on two decades of direct observation, Kaslov "had organized the Kalderaša into a Red Hat Association" ca.1931, and by 1939 he had "managed to convince city and federal authorities that he was 'King of James I.

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