Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Society at St. George’s Church

KSKJ, or Kranjsko slovenska katoliška jednota (“Carniolan Slovene Catholic Union”), is a Slovenian fraternal organization founded in 1894. The English name of the society is the American Slovenian Catholic Union. St. George was a Slovenian Catholic Parish on the East Side. Affiliated with the parish was a men’s KSKJ group, St. Florian’s Lodge #44 and a woman’s group, Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary Society Lodge #80. Ed Kucic, who was born in 1909 to Slovenian immigrant parents and was raised on the East Side, recalled in an oral history from 1990, “In 1894, the American Slovenian Catholic Union started, and we got in with them. So we’ve been with them ever since. Today it’s around a $30 million place [organization], with 30-some thousand members running from California to the East Coast, New York around there. I’m still involved with them. We have a local lodge. We have our meetings at St. George’s Church Hall at 96th. Our lodge was very instrumental in building that church, ’cause the members went from house to house to ask for contributions to build a church.”