Italian Americans
Italian Americans are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, with significant communities also residing in many other major U.S. metropolitan areas.
Between 1820 and 2004, approximately 5.5 million Italians migrated to the United States during the Italian diaspora, in several distinct waves, with the greatest number arriving in the 20th century from Southern Italy. Initially, most single men, so-called birds of passage, sent remittance back to their families in Italy and then returned to Italy.
Immigration began to increase during the 1880s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than had in the five previous decades combined. From 1880 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the greatest surge of immigration brought more than 4 million Italians to the United States. The largest number of this wave came from Southern Italy, which at that time was largely agricultural and where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign rule and heavy tax burdens. In the 1920s, 455,315 more immigrants arrived. Many of them came under the terms of the new quota-based immigration restrictions created by the Immigration Act of 1924.
Italian-Americans had a [|significant influence] on American culture, making numerous contributions to visual arts, literature, cuisine, politics, sports, and music.
History
Before 1880
Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean for the Catholic monarchs of Spain, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. John Cabot and his son Sebastian explored the eastern seaboard of North America for Henry VII in the early 16th century. In 1524, the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci first demonstrated that the New World was not Asia, as initially conjectured, but a different continent.The first Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding to the current United States was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian seaman who, in 1635, settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. A small wave of Protestants, known as Waldensians, immigrated during the 17th century, with the majority coming between 1654 and 1663. They spread out across what was then called New Netherland and what would become New York, New Jersey, and the Lower Delaware River regions.
Enrico Tonti, together with the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Great Lakes region. De Tonti founded the first European settlement in Illinois in 1679 and in Arkansas in 1683, making him "The Father of Arkansas." With LaSalle, he co-founded New Orleans and was governor of the Louisiana Territory for the next 20 years. His brother Alphonse de Tonty, with French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, was the co-founder of Detroit in 1701, and was its acting colonial governor for 12 years. The southwest and California were explored and mapped by Italian Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The Taliaferro family, believed to have roots in Venice, was one of the First Families to settle Virginia; Richard Taliaferro designed much of Colonial Williamsburg. The period from 1776 to 1880 saw a small stream of new arrivals from Italy. Some brought skills in agriculture and the making of glass, silk and wine, while others brought skills as musicians. After American independence, numerous political refugees arrived, most notably Giuseppe Avezzana, Alessandro Gavazzi, Silvio Pellico, Federico Confalonieri, and Eleuterio Felice Foresti. Giuseppe Garibaldi resided in the United States in 1850–51.
File:Francevigovincennes.jpg|thumb|upright|Statue of Francesco Vigo in Vincennes, Indiana, who aided the colonial forces of George Rogers Clark during the American Revolutionary War
In 1773–1785, Filippo Mazzei, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet containing the phrase, "All men are by nature equally free and independent," which Jefferson incorporated essentially intact into the Declaration of Independence. Italian Americans served in the American Revolutionary War both as soldiers and officers. Francesco Vigo aided the colonial forces of George Rogers Clark by serving as one of the foremost financiers of the Revolution in the frontier Northwest.
In 1789–91, Alessandro Malaspina mapped much of the west coast of the Americas. In 1822–23, the headwater region of the Mississippi was explored by Giacomo Beltrami in the territory that was later to become Minnesota. Missionaries of the Jesuit and Franciscan orders were active in many parts of America. Italian Jesuits founded numerous missions, schools, and two colleges in the west. Giovanni Nobili founded the Santa Clara College in 1851. The St. Ignatius Academy was established by Anthony Maraschi in 1855. The Italian Jesuits also laid the foundation for the winemaking industry that would later flourish in California. In the east, the Italian Franciscans founded hospitals, orphanages, schools, and St. Bonaventure College, established by Pamfilo da Magliano in 1858. Las Vegas College was established by a group of exiled Italian Jesuits in 1877 in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Jesuit Giuseppe Cataldo, founded Gonzaga College in Spokane, Washington in 1887.
In 1801, Philip Trajetta established the nation's first conservatory of music in Boston. In 1805, Thomas Jefferson recruited a group of musicians from Sicily to form a military band, later to become the nucleus of the U.S. Marine Band. In 1833, Lorenzo Da Ponte, formerly Mozart's librettist and a naturalized U.S. citizen, founded the first opera house in the United States, the Italian Opera House in New York City, which was the predecessor of the New York Academy of Music and of the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Samuel Wilds Trotti of South Carolina was the first Italian American to serve in the U.S. Congress. In 1849, Francesco de Casale began publishing the Italian American newspaper L'Eco d'Italia in New York, the first of many to eventually follow.
Beginning in 1863, Italian immigrants were one of the principal groups of unskilled laborers, along with the Irish, that built the Transcontinental Railroad west from Omaha, Nebraska. The first Columbus Day celebration was organized by Italian Americans in New York City on October 12, 1866.
Civil War
Between 5,000 and 10,000 Italian Americans fought in the American Civil War. The great majority of Italian Americans, for both demographic and ideological reasons, were in the Union Army, including Francis B. Spinola, the first Italian American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, who served as a general. Some Americans of Italian descent fought in the Confederate Army. They included Confederate generals William B. Taliaferro and P. G. T. Beauregard. Six Italian Americans received the Medal of Honor during the war, including Colonel Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who later became the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York.The Garibaldi Guard recruited volunteers for the Union Army from Italy and other European countries to form the 39th New York Infantry. The 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, with 350 Italian members, was nicknamed Garibaldi Guard in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1861, Garibaldi himself volunteered his services to President Abraham Lincoln. Garibaldi was offered a major general's commission in the U.S. Army through the letter from Secretary of State William H. Seward to H. S. Sanford, the U.S. minister at Brussels.
Period of Italian mass immigration (1880–1914)
From 1880 to 1914, 13 million Italians migrated out of Italy. During this period of mass migration, 4 million Italians arrived in the United States, 3 million of them between 1900 and 1914. They came for the most part from southern Italy and from the island of Sicily. This period of large-scale immigration ended abruptly with the onset of WWI in August 1914. Most immigrants planned to stay a few years, then take their earnings and return home. According to historian Thomas J. Archdeacon, 46 percent of the Italians who entered the United States between 1899 and 1924 permanently returned home.Immigrants without industrial skills found employment in low-wage manual labor jobs. Instead of finding jobs on their own, most used the padrone system whereby Italian middlemen found jobs for groups of men and controlled their wages, transportation, and living conditions for a fee. According to historian Alfred T. Banfield:
Criticized by many as slave traders who preyed upon poor, bewildered peasants, the "padroni" often served as travel agents, with fees reimbursed from paychecks, as landlords who rented out shacks and boxcars, and as storekeepers who extended exorbitant credit to their Italian laborer clientele. Despite such abuse, not all "padroni" were dastardly and most Italian immigrants reached out to their "padroni" for economic salvation, considering them either as godsends or necessary evils.
In terms of the push-pull model of immigration, the push factor came primarily from the harsh economic conditions in southern Italy. Major factors that contributed to the large exodus included political and social unrest, the weak agricultural economy of the South modeled on the outdated latifundist system dating back to the feudal period, a high tax burden, soil exhaustion and erosion, and military conscription lasting seven years. Many chose to emigrate rather than face the prospect of a deepening poverty. America provided the pull factor by the prospect of jobs that unskilled and uneducated Italian peasant farmers could do. By far the strongest "pull" factor was higher income. Immigrants expected to make considerable sums in only a few years of work, enabling them to improve their economic status when they returned home; however, the Italian immigrants earned well below average rates. The result was a sense of alienation from most of American culture and a lack of interest in learning English or otherwise assimilating. Not many women came, and those who did remained devoted to traditional Italian religious customs. When World War I broke out, European migrants could not go home. Wages shot up, and the Italians benefited greatly. Most decided to stay permanently.
Many sought housing in the older sections of the large Northeastern cities—districts that became known as "Little Italys." Such housing was frequently in overcrowded, substandard tenements, which were often dimly lit and had poor heating and ventilation; tuberculosis and other communicable diseases were a constant health threat. The Italian male immigrants in the Little Italys were most often employed in manual labor and were heavily involved in public works, such as the construction of roads, railroad tracks, sewers, subways, bridges, and the first skyscrapers in these cities. As early as 1890, it was estimated that around 90 percent of New York City's and 99 percent of Chicago's public works employees were Italians. The women most frequently worked as seamstresses in the garment industry or in their homes. Many established small businesses in the Little Italys. In spite of the economic hardship of the immigrants, civil and social life flourished in the Italian American neighborhoods of the large northeastern cities. The festa street festival became for many an important connection to the traditions of their ancestral villages in Italy, helping give the immigrants a sense of unity and common identity.
Many of the Italian immigrants also went to more remote regions of the country, such as Florida and California, drawn by opportunities in agriculture, fishing, mining, railroad construction, and lumbering. It was not uncommon, especially in the South, for the immigrants to be subjected to economic exploitation, hostility, and sometimes even violence. The Italian laborers who went to these areas were in many cases later joined by wives and children, which resulted in the establishment of permanent Italian American settlements. A number of towns, such as Roseto, Pennsylvania, Tontitown, Arkansas, and Valdese, North Carolina, were founded by Italian immigrants during this era.
Sarah Wool Moore was so concerned with grifters luring immigrants into rooming houses or employment contracts in which the bosses got kickbacks that she pressed for the founding of the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants. The society published lists of approved living quarters and employers. Later, the organization began establishing schools in work camps to help adult immigrants learn English. Wool Moore and the society began organizing schools in the labor camps that employed Italian workers on various dam and quarry projects in Pennsylvania and New York. The schools focused on teaching phrases that workers needed in their everyday tasks.