Reorganization

After the liberation from slavery, although this was an exclusively legal one and did not foresee any kind of socio-economic integration measures for the former slaves, called "emancipated", the Roma began to participate in the life of the Romanian society: they brought to Romania and developed the crafts of metalworking, they fought in the War of Independence from 1877-1878, they fought in the First World War, they were the second ethnic group to recognize the Union of the Romanian Principalities with Transylvania on December 1, 1918, and they gave the country numerous cultured people, intellectuals, artists and statesmen, as Mihail Kogălniceanu said in the Speech delivered on April 1, 1891, in the solemn meeting of the Romanian Academy organized on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its foundation: "Although since the proclamation of emancipation they have not yet been fulfilled For 50 years, the Gypsies have given us industrialists, artists, distinguished officers, good administrators, doctors and even parliamentary speakers."

The Great Union of December 1, 1918 was the occasion for the Roma to organize themselves, to declare their allegiance and demonstrate their loyalty to the newly formed Romanian state, to think and structure their visions and grievances in relation to the state Romanian, to write and issue political and cultural periodicals and, starting from all these or bringing all these together, to found what, from a modern perspective, we call the Roma movement. The first large gatherings of the Roma and the first Roma organizations were initiated in Transylvania, where the Slavery of the Roma had neither the extent, nor the duration, nor the legislative force of the Wallachia and Moldova.