American History Hit - Italians in America

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

From Columbus onwards, Italians have been a part of American culture. Don explores this rich history with Professor Anthony Tamburri, Dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York.Produced by Sophie Gee and Freddy Chick. Edited by Tim Arstall. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign here for up to 50% for 3 months using code AMERICANHISTORY.You can take part in our listener survey here.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. Way back in the early 1980s, I was a waiter at a hot spot on Manhattan's Upper East Side, an upscale Italian eatery called DeMarcos, which was, for a time at least, the place to be.

We were serving a new culinary trend, northern Italian cuisine. For so many years in this country, Italian food meant heavy red sauces, meatballs, chicken parmesan. You know, godfile. other food. Northern Italian, though, was different. Fresher, lighter, creamier, pasta's handmade, olive oil first pressed, cheeses, you'd never heard of. I spent a lot of time on that job explaining the food, and of course how it all paired perfectly with our more expensive wines. This shift, and me, a non-Italian kid, shamelessly explaining it all to my fellow New Yorkers, marked yet another moment in the endless progression of Italians coming to America.

In this case, one artisanal ravioli at a time. When the moon hits your eye like a big a pizza pie, that's amore. Yes, that's the classic American crooner, Dino Paul Crocketti, singing his famous 1953 hit, That's Amore. And who, you might ask, was Dino Paul Crocketti? Why the one and only Dean Martin, of course, Cruchetti being his original family name, before he changed it for Hollywood. And it all worked out for Dino, almost as if he was never Italian at all. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in America, millions of Italian immigrants came across the Atlantic in waves.

Some before 1880, about 300,000. But the real flood came after that. From 1880 to 1920, when more than 4 million arrived, mostly from southern Italy, Sicily, Calabria, Naples. Today, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 17 million Americans, roughly 5% of the population, claim Italian ancestry. But honestly, you think it was a lot more. Italian Americans have left their indelible mark on every sector of American life, even as those early arrivals coped with racism, prejudice, and cultural exclusion,

struggling to shed the outsider label as they carved a place for themselves here on their own terms. Today we're digging into the pan of lasagna, that is, the Italian-American story. Later with authors Laurie and Michael Buano, who wrote Remembering Italian America, memory, migration, and identity. But first we're joined by Anthony Tamboury, Dean of the John DiColandra Italian American Institute at Queens College. He is the author of recent books, expanding the diasporic identity, a collection of essays published in Italian, and knowledge. What is it good for? Absolutely Something. Bonjourno, Dr. Tambori, glad to have you here, Antonio.

Bonjourno. I'm happy to be here. Delighted. Could there be a more caricatured minority group in America than the Italians? If not stereotyped as ruthless mafioso, then they're a macho over the top, obsessed with gold necklaces and food, and they love their mothers, which is noble. Why has the Italian and America been painted with such a cultural brush? Goes right back to the beginning, doesn't it? It does. And it's an excellent question, something we're asking still today. So there are two groups that Americans will say are okay to sort of stereotype.

One is, of course, the Italians, the subject of our conversation. And the other is the Polish. And the Polish also bear the bread today still of people thinking they're being cute, whatever. But of course, they're being offensive, right? The two groups are the groups that today are still, quote, unquote, okay to bash, let's say. The question really goes back to, I think, how Italians were originally characterized as immigrants. And when you look back and you look at some of the early studies by some non-Italians, Jacob Rees is the name that comes forth more than anything.

In which the beginning of the 20th century, the Italians are basically seen as those who are living, you know, 10-1-bedroom apartment, they're dirty, swarthy, violent, etc. But let me say this. We're not totally innocent today in all of this. There are some Italians who enjoy engaging in the stereotype with, you know, the aforementioned gold chains and things of that sort. And we see where on the one hand, it's sort of cute. On the other hand, to the uninformed viewer, that's what they see as Italian, you know, and they don't get the irony. We're talking about a culture that is the home of the Renaissance, the most brilliant artists in the world, incredible sophistication, I mean, unbelievable achievements of humanity. For that to get dumbed down takes a lot of work. And you know what people don't realize, and this is where this is the part that I think we still have to study as scholars of, you know, Italian-American studies. And that is before mass immigration, in the 19th century, Italy, Dante especially, was a, you know, a real fervent topic of study. In those 90 years, let's say 80 years of the 19th century,

there were something between England and the United States, there were something like 80 or 90 translations of the Divine Comedy. I mean, did we really need 80 or 90 translations of the divine comedy? But it speaks to the respect that the Anglo world, both in Britain and in the United States, had toward Italian culture, whether it's Dante, whether it's, as you mentioned, the Renaissance and things of that sort. And then were the immigrants. immigration, things change. And so much of that heavy lift, you know, to characterize an entire culture in a negative tone, is done by the previous culture who came before them. I mean, the waves of immigration that have happened in America once established, the new folks

are the enemy, or at least the opposition as they meld into American society. In this case, it was the Irish before the Italians. It comes to be the Jews afterwards. And each one of those groups has a job to do, as they see it, to tear down the one that comes after them in a way. One of the most popular media images, of course, about Italian Americans is from the mafia. And that really begins with Hollywood, doesn't it? It does. And what people don't realize is that in 1906, there was an 11-minute film called The Skaiscripers of New York. And it's, of course, you know, this love letter to the people building the skyscrapers of New York.

On the other hand, there's this little side story of a petty thief, and he's Italian. And, of course, there we have the screens that come up with writing, the black screen with white writing. And this little thief is introduced as Daigopi. And so Daego is our N word, basically, right? It's the worst thing you can call in Italian. And it's even worse than WAP. I always like to use that as an example of how the Italian is introduced to the collective through the early years of media, right? But then, of course, we have the two 1930, 1931. We have

Little Caesar, and we have also Scarface, right? 1930, Little Caesar, 1931. And many people, and I tend to agree, see those two films as the one that have sort of solidified the image of the Italian as a gangster. Well, and, you know, it didn't hurt that Al Capone was in the papers a lot back then, you know. No, not at all. Not at all. And he was, he was, he was, was trading on that image in his own way and for his own profit. So it all kind of works together capping as far as Hollywood's concerned with the Godfather's in 1972, two movies that are impossible not to watch because they're so skillfully made and so beautifully done. There was an interesting study done back around 2000, 2003, four, two people that have brought this forward.

One, Bill Delcero, who is a retired high school teacher and lives in Chicago, and the other was a former colleague of mine, then Lawton, and they documented that since the Godfather in 1972, there were hundreds of movies made afterwards. Most of them, of course, just things that nobody looked at, but hundreds of movies that were spurred on by the Godfather. Pritzie's Honor, for example, is one that made it. Goodfellas. Good fellas, right. And the Sopranos. I mean, it just keeps going. I personally think that the legacy of these Godfather movies, if you want to group them into one thing, speaks to the cultural trait among Italians to make fun of themselves,

to play the game with that cultural misidentity for whatever reason. And that's actually a lovely quality about Italians. Don't take themselves so seriously, as opposed to us wasps. Can't stand anybody to make fun of us. Yeah. Christopher Columbus, famously the first Italian in the Americas, born in Italy, still surprising to some people, Genoesean. He is utilized later on, quite a bit later on, in the 20th century, by Italian Americans who need a tool, who need a holiday, a figure to sort of plant themselves here officially. Christopher Columbus becomes that, right? He does.

Columbus is celebrated in 1792 by Americans, by those first, second and third generation Americans, like the children and grandchildren of the initial immigrants from England, escaping, religious persecution, etc. And he's the symbol for America, 1792. In the late 1800s, so 1870, 1872 or three, Columbus is now beginning to be celebrated by Italians. And then, of course, there's the 1893 World's Fair. It's called the Columbian Exhibition, etc. and New York thinks that they're going to get it. And back in 1889, they actually found a sculptor in Italy, a guy named Russo, Gaetano Russo, who does the now famous statue in New York City in Columbus Circle.

And that was contracted, I think, in 1890. And they're hoping that they're going to get the World's Fair, but instead it goes to Chicago, and they don't get it, right? But it's also a moment where Columbus is really solidified. Now, some people will say that Benjamin Harrison declared, Columbus Day in 1892 because of the lynchings in 1891. We don't have any documented proof of that. What we know is that he declared in 1892, October 12th, the day of discovery because of the

feat of Christopher Columbus, right? So this is sort of me as an academic splitting hairs and stuff. You've said something that I didn't realize, and I think listeners would be surprised as well. So that statue that sits at the top of that pillar in Columbus Circle was originally made because New York was pitching itself as the home for the world's Colombian exhibition, that actually went to Chicago. And it went to Chicago. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. And so we could go back to 1889 where we see a little article in the Italian language press, the Progressu Italo-American, where it's announced that there's going to be the statue. Then in 1890, we find out, again, in the Italo-American, a progresso-Itilo-American, a little article all that says it's a sky Gaetano Russo, and the statue is made in Italy and then brought over and then erected in 1892. Each one of these waves of migration that I mentioned at the top changes the quality,

the type of identity of these immigrants who are coming, right? The early version of this is a much higher skilled sculptors, woodworkers, glassbro, all that was sort of that first wave that I mentioned. That then changes as we get into that massive wave after 1880. Right. And remember, so early on, New Yorkers like to talk about Pietro Cheser Alberti, the first Italian, quote, unquote, to set foot on North America, right, in the Americas. Actually, 1637, I think it is, that it's documented. He sets foot in New Amsterdam, in New York. But then later on, around 16, 50, 6, 7, or 8, we have about 300 Italians coming from Piedmont.

They're the Waldensians. They're the Catholics who, they're part of that group that during the Crusades broke away from the church because they found the church to be too violent and too doctrinaire. So they break away and it's because of this English Peter Waldo. But they had a relationship to the French and to the Piemontes in Italy. And so they come in the 1600s, about 300 of them and they go to Virginia, Virginia and the Carolinas. But remember, we also have people who are signing the Declaration of Independent, William Paca. We have, of course, Philippo Macei, the famous sort of political scientists who, we're told, gives Jefferson, all men are created equal.

The phrase all men are created equal, we have also some of our first professors of Italian and French, Carlo Bellini. These are friends of Jefferson's. Jefferson had close ties to Italy and to Italians. And so you're right, there's this, quote-unquote, formally educated. group of Italian immigrants who are coming over. And also, there are a number of travelers and journalists coming over in the 1700s, late 1700s, early 1800s. And then, of course, there's the major wave of immigration that we always identify with 1880 to 1924. And that's when you get the so-called workers, you know, the proletariat's, the sub-proletariat, as some people like to call them. But there's also a significant migration

from Tuscany, Liguria, Genoa, and Veneto. And they're coming over as well. And in the 1880s, they begin the wine industry in California. I mean, you really have to realize that those early city states had their own identities, just as if they were, you know, they were states into themselves. Venice is completely different than Florence, which, of course, is different than Rome, and all of these different identities within the Italian, which to this day is why it's such an amazing culture.

varied in its outlooks and histories that go on. But these guys that came over at that time period, I mean, you mentioned Jefferson, Italian stonemasons build Monticello. He, you know, worship those Italian musicians. Monticello, you love Palladio, for example. He knew the Palladio, you know, he knew Palladio's architecture. He loved Palladion. And we have Monticello. We have a lot of Washington, D.C. that echo you see resonances of Palladio's architecture, yeah. And the U.S. Capitol paintings and frescoes are created by a Tuscan, Constantine Bermudy. It's the first opera house is built by Lorenzo de Ponte. I mean, this incredibly respected, understood to be on another level altogether as well they were.

Everything kind of changes as America changes, essentially. Let's remember that the demand is causing the supply in so many ways because a whole different kind of worker is needed past the 1880s. And that contributes to who arrives. A more working class Italian, also economic conditions, have a lot to do with this back home. Who's coming to America has everything to do with what they're looking for, some stability in the world. Exactly. And remember, and many of them are coming from areas of farming and they're leaving this sort of farmland in Italy and especially in southern Italy, where you have a lot of mountains and stuff. So the whole idea of terrorist farming is still not developed the way it is.

right, today, and they're coming over and they're ending up in a place like New York City, and all of a sudden they're building skyscrapers or they're building brick walls or they're building fireplaces and so on and so forth. They have to become from farmers, they're becoming bricklayers, they're becoming stonemason, they're becoming carpenters, clammers, etc. I've always been curious. Two things. One, you're an Italian male, probably in most cases, sitting in Italy thinking about a new life. Were there ads that said, hey, come to America or come down to this gathering place. We're going to teach you how to come to America. How much was this driven by recruitment? There was a good deal of recruitment because, as you mentioned, the labor market

needed, it requested it, and required it. Remember, soon after slavery, for example, when there was what we call it in the United States the great migration, that is the Africans, the emancipated slaves who then, you know, go north. They go north to the Midwest, they go north to the northeast, etc. those jobs they did as slaves are now replaced by new immigrants. Many of those new immigrants are Italians. So in that southern area of the United States and New Orleans and some of the southern states, we find Italians. Now we find the times in New Orleans because a lot of them are from Sicily,

a lot of them are fishermen, and so they come over and they can create their industry and fishing industry. But many of them also took over the jobs that the slaves had. And so they ended up literally picking cotton and things of that sort. And a chicken and the egg question for me has always been this. We traditionally think of, certainly promoted in the movies, these downtown New York, you know, ghettos, essentially of Italian immigrants living in very close proximity to each other. That couldn't have been by choice. I mean, those are pretty miserable conditions they're living in.

How much was that driven by U.S. immigration telling them that they are going to this neighborhood? Or was it because they knew people and all was kind of organic? I think it was more organic and I think it was more due to what we call chain migration. So people, one person would come and then they'd call over their sibling. They'd call over their cousin, their relative, whatever. And so we have that chain migration that goes on. We have it two generations past in my family. One of my grandmothers had a dress factory.

In a 30-year period, a 30 to 35-year period, she ended up bringing something like 200 women from her small. village in Lazio that eventually came over and worked in her dress factory. And at that time, it was fairly easy to bring people in to work. They can get a work permit. It wasn't anything like it's been the last 20, 30 years where it's much more difficult. So there was that as well. People were coming over. We find that there are clumps of people from one village in Lower New York or now in Stanford, Connecticut, or in Toronto. This is one little village where my father's family comes from, right? And today, of course, they're connected through the internet,

if not going back during the summer, because in this one village, there was a big feast, a big feast of the Madonna, and so people go back. So by 1920, tail end of the great wave of migration, there's about four million Italian Americans in the United States. And there's this kind of push-pull dynamic with the culture, pushed away by internal violence, sort of social chaos, poverty, disease, all sorts of things affect this as it does with any immigrant population. The pull towards America comes from the affordability of this situation and also the great promise of resources and prosperity. This becomes its own engine. But there's a good sector of these people who are kind of coming in and sort of revolving door, right, going back to Italy at the same

time. There's something like close to 50 percent of the 4.2 million people figure came over in that period through up to 1924 when then we had the Johnson Act and all the doors were closed, right? Something like close to 50% went back. And some of those came back again, but basically went back. They sort of made their fortune, quote unquote, with regard to what they can do back in the old country and in their little village, et cetera. And so yeah, they did that. And so much of this immigration goes through Ellis Island, of course. I mean, We want to call it, you know, it seems like a stereotypical situation, but it really is true. I mean, amazing amounts of people went through that process on that island.

And what people don't realize is that when the boats came to America, they would dock, led off the people in first and second class. Then they go to Ellis Island and led off to people in third class in steerage. And the other unknown fact is that the average amount of time spent on Ellis Island was something like six hours, six, seven, hours. 80% of the people who passed through Ellis Island only spent about six or seven hours there. Then, of course, there were those who were kept over because of maladies, because of some sort of illness they may have had and things of that sort. There was the infamous quarantine, the 40 days that people were kept, et cetera. But most of them pass through within hours. And this is something you learn at Ellis Island. You know, the Rangers will tell you this as they bring you on your big

tour around. But I want to emphasize or underscore exactly what we were talking about before that these folks that are coming over are very identified with the regions that they're from within themselves and their families and communities. Suddenly they're in this vast land where they're going to be painted with a very general brush. And they have to then rebuild their identity based on that new identity. And so you end up with Knights of Columbus. You end up with these social organizational tools that become kind of fictions. of the land they came from. This is a new kind of way of behaving in America. And the other thing, though, that happens is that we get these mutual aid societies that people have forgotten about.

The other sons and daughters of Italy in America, for example, was a mutual aid society founded in 1905. Now it's a sort of cultural group, et cetera, but with lodges across the country. But it was a mutual aid society. There was a mutual aid society in Stanford, Connecticut, where my family's from. And I still had the little booklet where my grandfather paid something like five or ten dollars a year. And it was the Victoria Manueli, the third mutual aid society. And they would give you six weeks of full unemployment. If you were unemployed, they would give your family $100 to pay for your funeral. This is like 1910, 1912, where it cost $100 to bury somebody, right? So you had these mutual aid societies. Then, of course, in the United States,

they develop into the welfare system. And the irony is that many second and third generation conservative Italians look at the welfare system as something totally negative, free loading, etc. But it already existed as a mutual aid society and you paid into it. And depending on how much you made what your annual salary was, that's how much you paid into it. Yeah. The original mutual aid society is the Roman Catholic Church. Well, exactly. And that is going to present quite a challenge in this new land, which was so defined by other religions at the time. And indeed, it is that Catholicism and that adherence to that system and, you know, allegiance to the

Pope, that will turn out to be a hugely controversial problem for these folks in this country. There's a wonderful book and film that gives a critical view of the church in the little village. It's called Christopter-Ebboli. And it's both a book by Kado Levy, and it's a film. I forget who the directorates, but it stars Jean-Maria Volonte. And you see the figure of the priest that really sort of, the church is not a friendly agent to the locals, right? And so what happens is, while the Italians are believers, when they come over, they don't trust the system, right? So they look at the church as a man-made institution, as opposed to something divine or heavenly. And they become, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they become the Italian. They become the Italian.

in problem for the church because they're not tithing, they're not contributing, they're not going to church and so on and so forth. And that's an interesting part of our history that we find in a couple of essays by some people. So many Italian immigrants remain in New York area. I mean, it is still to this day a bastion of Italian-American life. That has a lot to do with the culture of that sort of village cohesion, right? That's the idea of sticking with your own that keeps people within the realm of New York City. To this day, I live in northern Westchester County, and there are people who live, you know, their third generations, fourth generations, who move from Lower East Side to the Bronx, then the Bronx to Westchester. And it's each generation

moves just within a day's drive of the other. That's all. Right, right. Westchester Connecticut or New Jersey. Those are the three. Can't get far from home. Exactly. Yeah. And we are, of course, in New York City, as it's called, as you well know, the greater New York metropolitan area, right? So that encompasses Northern New Jersey, encompasses Westchester County encompasses Connecticut, lower Connecticut. There are like 2.6 million Italians. There are close to 3 million, I think, within the state of New York. They're about 80 or 900,000 in New York City right now. About 3,400,000 still use Italian as a daily language. it's still there. It's still there. What we don't have is the later generation, those who went to college, those who became professionals, they look back at Italian culture more through the lens of

nostalgia and through the lens of anecdotes as opposed to learning the history. Well, so many of these folks up here, I mean, there are whole dams, you know, the water system that was built for New York City. You will talk to somebody and they'll say, yeah, my grandfather, you know, laid those pipes or built those highways or so much of that early infrastructure of, certainly the New York area, but I'm sure it goes elsewhere, came from Italian Americans who were, by definition, unskilled. Of course, they weren't. But that was where the jobs were, those municipal projects. Exactly. Yeah. And the subway, let's not forget the subway system. I mean, they built the subway, you know. And then the shoemakers, the masons, the bartending, you know, there's the restaurant business,

the pizzas, everything. There are two famous shoemakers, right? There's one of Texas. and Van Zeta, that shoemaker. And then there's also Ferragamo, the shoemaker. And Ferragamo is friends with Sacco. And at a certain point, Ferragama says, I'm going to California. You want to go? Something out of fact.

And Sacco says, no. And he stays and, of course, you know, has the unfortunate light that happens. But Ferragamo was this Calabrian immigrant who ends up going to Hollywood, starts making shoes for actresses, and becomes really famous. And now people have identified Ferragamo in Florence, Italy, because that's where his family is.

That's where his descendants are, you know, in this whole Ferragano industry in Florence. But he was a Calabian immigrant at the beginning of the 20th century who ends up right making choose. Was it the confidence of these people that created the prejudice towards them? Was it their sort of bold endeavor that they were under? Was that where the pushback came from? You know, that's a good question. It was definitely the confidence of them getting on a ship, you know, at the turn of the 20th century, spending 20, 30 days on a boat coming over, not knowing where they were coming over. One of my grandfathers, one of my two grandfathers came here at 15 years old from this little town in Lazio and begin sweeping floors for Con Edison.

And 40 some odd years later, he's sort of a mid-level manager for Con Edison. And it's that type of thing, knowing there was someone here, of course, they had a contact, right? Because of that chain migration, that connection that remained with the village. But you just take of the courage that it took back then to get on a boat. And for some reason, we can't as a culture translate that into modern day. You know, the courage of someone doing that is the same as someone marching up the isthmus of Central America. I mean, it takes an incredible amount of courage because God knows those Italians. weren't all legal, you know, they were all getting all their stamps done and everything else.

There was plenty of gray areas all over the place. Exactly. There are stories of some who used to jump off the boat. When they got to the Bay of New York, they'd jump off the boat because they knew they weren't going to get in. There were actually people waiting for them. There was a system that was set up. Those horrible illegals. Now we celebrate them as heroes.

Right. Exactly. Double standards everywhere. Yeah. Mike, when I talk about racism towards Italian Americans, it's, extreme. I mean, we're 1890s, very famously, 20 Italians were lynched. Catholic churches, charities were burned. A lot of KKK, which, you know, comes out of the Civil War, obviously, has a lot to do with anti-Catholicism, right? Yeah. 20, I don't know about, I know about the 11

single lynching of 11 in New Orleans. It's called the lynching. Not all of them were literally hung, but some of them were. There is that. There's, as you mentioned before, the new group takes over that negative space that the old group had that now has, if not, assimilated at least acculturated itself into the host country's culture. So there is that. There is, in fact, in the 19th century, there are numerous job advertisements that say Italian need not apply. There's a significant advertisement for minors, and it says no colors or Italians need apply. And so they're actually blacks in Italian-Americans or Italian-American immigrants are clumped up together. And there were differences between the treatment of Northern and Southern Northerns have

much lighter complexion. And where they went, less so in Northern California, in California, you know, and as I said before, they developed basically the wine industry. Andreas Barbarro, the Italians was colony. It's not sure why they call it Swiss. I'm saying because some of them were from the Ticino area, which is near Switzerland. Some said, well, they thought Italian-Swiss to Swiss would mollify a little bit. The discrimination against Italian, it's up in the air still. But, yeah, there's a great deal of racism in the late 19th and early 20th century. There's a famous case out of the Supreme Court.

I've written briefly about it. About 1922, an African-American is found guilty of miscegenation, and he peels and he gets off because the woman was Sicilian. And therefore, as the court said, it was not possible to either prove or disprove that this person was not white. And it was her Sicilian heritage that got the African American off the hook as far as miscegenation was concerned. So, you know, there was this great ambiguity of Italians.

And our colleagues in 2003, Jennifer Gullel, and Salvatore Salerno put a book together of essays, both sort of scholarly and anecdotal essays, personal essays, about Italian Americans in racism. And it's entitled, Are Italian Americans White? And it deals up those issues. But I mentioned this really to drive the point generally of this entire episode home, which is to say the Italian Americans had to figure it out,

had to build a network and an infrastructure and an organization that was not even based on what they knew at home because that didn't even exist at a time. And here they were in this new land figuring it out for themselves to the point that we now have a holiday about it. At least we did, you know, celebrating this entire effort. We can't let this go either. A huge role in the wars that we fought. The Italian Americans were enormously important. World War II, one million Italian American serve in the armed forces, five percent of our army, millions more, of course, in the war industries. And yet all the way along, they were branded enemy aliens because we were fighting against them. And some of them were in the war and their parents were considered enemy aliens.

That was the other thing. And of course, the famous one of the Domajo brothers, Joe DiMaggio and, you know, his parents were enemy aliens. And yet here he is, you know, this athletic hero, but then also becomes a war hero. Well, you're tilting towards the, you know, the feel good aspect of this is that things get a lot better. Two words. Frank Sinatra. I'm kidding, of course, but it really does have something to do with. And Dean Martin and the Rat Pack and all these people who create this sort of new persona, who's very sophisticated, very boiled into an American society. That's what happens after a while.

And you make sure Frank Sinatra to be a very interesting cultural figure because in addition to his singing as a younger entertainer, he was first of all, he came from a democratic family. His mother was the equivalent of an alderman in New Jersey, and he was very much involved in quelling racial violence, fighting against racism in the late 40s, and continued to do so. You know, he gets heat for Sammy Davis Jr. to some degree. Some people give him heat for that because they tease him. But also, Sammy Davis Jr. wouldn't be where he was at that time because Frankson

had refused to work in those hotels without Sammy Davis Jr. being able to know. number one, walk in the front door, and number two, stay in the hotel. And so we forget that about Frank Sinatra, because then, of course, later becomes a Republican. And so a lot of the Democrats get all upset about that. No, no, he was very progressive. Big Kennedy guy. Yeah, exactly. The story of the San Francisco earthquake and fire afterwards and the emergence of the Bank

of America is such a fascinating Italian story. I bring it up to say that in building an immigrant population and the, infrastructure of that culture. There's so many subtler aspects to this in terms of business, hiring, business leadership. The banking industry has a lot to do with it. Yeah, Janini created the bank. They've created the brand system, basically. It was the bucket Italia, and he goes down to Ella and he finds this little fledgling bank called the Bank of America, and he buys it. And then it becomes the Bank of Italy and the Bank of America. Now it's my favorite skyscraper in Manhattan.

And I remember being in Italy in the 70s and seeing Bank of Italia and America. And it was the bank, what we knew then already is the Bank of America. And here it was still the Bank of Italian Bank of America. The other thing is people don't realize there'd be no Walt Disney without Janine. He bankrolled Walt Disney. He bankrolled Hollywood. You know, Hollywood would be totally different if Janini hadn't bankrolled Disney and company. This conversation is taking back to a very personal.

personal experience, which had to do everything about Italian Americans in that I am not Italian American at all. But there I was as a waiter on the Upper East Side of Manhattan serving what was called Northern Italian cuisine in the 1980s. It was suddenly this very chic thing. Oh, no, it's not tomatoes, ma'am, I would be saying. It's much more about creams and cheeses, a much finer flavor. And there I was, you know, basically propagandizing for Italy, you know, and saying, no, no, it's not like you think, it's like something else, right into the 1980s. Well, that was the period of, so to get a little bit local here, that was the period where the fine restaurants were basically jambelis.

He had two restaurants on Belis. They had two restaurants, one on 50th and 1 and 37, both on Madison Avenue. And then, of course, there was the most popular family restaurant that I'm sure you remember, Mama Leonez, which was instead the family. But you're right, there was the jambelis, there was a, Another one called the Red Devil, there were these restaurants where the matriads were tuxedos and things of that sort. And when you came from the local neighborhood, wherever you were, in my case, Stamper, Connecticut,

the local Italian restaurant, the matri d was either, you know, the son, the wife, whatever, somebody who was part of the family, the ownership, and they did not wear tuxedos. Little would Christopher Columbus recognize the land he was from, right here in America. Yeah. Anthony, thank you so much for this. You know, even as we speak, this sense of joy overtakes me. Whenever I speak of Italians and Italian Americans, it's an amazing quality to Italy that it makes you feel so happy, you know?

Well, it's Italy. It's the food. It's the food. It's Italy. It's Italy. It's the food. It's Dante. It's Petrarca.

It's Calvino. You know, it's Umbertoeco. It's all of that. Well, it's a very happy turn in this. story that goes from such a dark place to one of such joy and cultural appropriation, frankly. You know, we all now feel, we're on some level in Italian-American. Because then we go get pizza. Of course we do.

Why else would we be alive, if not for pizza? Anthony Tambori is the dean of the John de Calandra Italian-American Institute at Queens College, part of the SUNY campuses. He is the author of the recent books expanding diasporic identity and a collection of essays. published in Italian as well as knowledge. What is it good for? Absolutely something. Grazie, Dr. Tambore. Trego. Trego. That was great talking with Anthony. Do check him out and his work. And if you ever find

yourself in Midtown Manhattan, as recommended, visit the Calandra Institute on West 43rd Street, order an espresso. After the break, we'll be back with one family's story. Brother, sister, authors, Laurie and Michael Buenano, who wrote, Remembering Italian in America, memory, migration, identity. And we're back with our exploration of Italian-American history. We tracked the great arc of Italians in America, starting with Columbus to the modern day, with Professor Anthony Tambori. Now, to round off this episode, I want to share my chat with Laurie and Michael Wenano,

sibling authors of remembering Italian America, memory, migration, identity. We talked about their family story, one of the millions that comprise the amazing history of Italians in America. Laurie is a political science professor at the Buffalo State University in Buffalo, New York. Michael is a folklorist and befitting a subject where family matters so much, they are siblings, brother, and sister.

Ciao, Buenanos. Nice to meet you. Ciao. Hello. Chao, Don. Thank you. Glad to be here. Grazie for coming. That's it. You've gone through all my entire Italian language capabilities. First question. What possessed you to write a book together? I have four sisters and enough trouble check with Christmas presents every year. You know, it was almost by accident. Our grandmother

actually was the person in the neighborhood who cured the evil eye, our grandmother from Italy. And so back in, oh my gosh, Mori, would it have been, 1982 or three, we started interviewing our grandmother about her evil eye, you know, her curing practice. And it just started to really grow from there. So our grandmother would heal those individuals who had been looked on with envy, and she had a pretty long ritual that, with a lot of imagery borrowed from baptism, from Roman Catholic baptism, as she would use this imagery along with a special incantation that she was given by her godmother on Christmas Eve in New York State. And with the incantation, as one of our uncles sent, Once she spoke that incantation, it was like, pang, the curse of envy would explode and would be replaced by, like, Jesus's grace, Christ's grace.

So, Lori, Michael, tell me about your grandparents and how they arrived in America. In the late 19th, early 20th century, you have hundreds of thousands of people arriving in America, many being pulled by ideas of freedom and fortune. Was that the case in your family? Well, a lot did come for freedom and some were very disillusioned. Let's remember 50% of Italians returned. Let's remember that. They had a lot of children, but 50% is the second and third generation. But 50% returned.

Our father's father went big and forth many, many times and forth, back and forth. But my grandmother wouldn't follow him. He would stay for months. He would write letters, bring the children, and she wouldn't do it. Did he go to Ellis Island? Was he an Ellis Island guy? Yes. Yeah.

Both were. Yeah. How do they describe that experience for you? They don't. My grandfather used to say Minajah Alice Island All the time. Minaja Alice Island.

And my grandmother just said it was a horrifying. She was so scared on the crossing. And my grandfather and her brother met her at Alice Island. I mean, they wouldn't let single women off the island because they'd be, you know, how that was. So they would be exploited. So they would make sure a male relative would come get them. So it was humiliating?

And what was the feeling that they're so... Yeah, he thought it was like a cattle call. And he had to go through it more than once because it's going back and forth. And he never, remember, our situation, our experience a little different because our grandparents refused to become American citizens. They just wouldn't do it. So this is why we qualify very easily for Italian citizenship. There's some reasons why we've decided not to do it. A lot of our friends have. So it's a little different experience in World War II they had to register as enemy aliens. So our experience is a little different in terms of in our family, Neapolitan was only spoken.

English just was not spoken in the household. Where we were raised was a very Italian community. They loved Italy. Don't give me, they loved Italy. They hated the government. Interesting. They used to say that all the time. What year did they come?

Yeah, around 1918. Oh, they're later on. My grandfather. So they were later. They got under just before the quota law. Where did they go? Who did your grandparents know and was their experience typical? Yeah, ours was definitely network migration or as some people say chain migration.

There's no question that they went where they knew other villages. In my grandmother's case, it was an arranged marriage. So they found someone from the Naples region, her brother and sister-in-law were there, found her husband. Wow. Your grandfather? Yeah, my grand. They didn't know each other.

No, they only met at Ellis Island. Oh, my Lord. And they were already married. They used to get married by a substitute situation so that they would already be committed when they came over. And then they would remarry in the United States. So they remarried in Auburn, New York, which is in the Finger Lakes region. So they liked each other. That's good.

Well, that affirms because he was 10 years older than her. Yeah, she complained. My grandmother. Married me off to an old man. Yeah, no, she complained. They came to like each other. Well, they had six children. There must have been something there.

But, you know, she complained that she complained that. She thought they could have done a better job. And he complained that she was of a lower. In Italy, you know, it was very class-based. So he was an artisan and she was a contadina, which meant farmer. And so he felt he married down. He felt he did her a favor. She felt they could have found someone more attractive and younger.

Oh, gosh. She had upward mobility in Italy because she was apprenticed as a dressmaker before she left. So even she was, you know. And they were literate. At their time period, they were literate. This is very important. the original, the first wave, were often illiterate. But by then, because of Italians being in America and seeing that the Irish were the foreman because they could read and write, they learned very quickly and they sent word home, get our kids educated.

And, yeah, so it's a big difference within 20 years of who's coming. That's why the literacy law didn't work because they already could read and write. So this is where we end up with this patchwork of folks. I mean, you have all these people getting off the ship. As far as the immigration officers are concerned, you're just a bunch of Italians who come, you know, and let us get you into America as soon as possible, into your neighborhoods.

They're still Neapolitans, Sicilians, Calabrians, Syracusians. These people have identities. Does it ever tip over that they feel, okay, good, we're here now and we can make an Italy out of America? Or is that not part of the impulse? I think at first it is, right? Because our neighborhood, our grandmother's neighborhood, really, it was a small city, but it really was a little Italy.

Our grandparents didn't speak English and they were here 60 plus years and didn't need to speak English. There were shops in the neighborhood. There were restaurants. There were stores. The second generation always destroys the hopes of the first generation, though, because, you know, they want to be American. They want to try to marry Americans if they can. I mean, sure, a lot of second generation Italians married other Italians. But you look at some of the ambitious ones and they're doing everything they can to find someone who's non-Italian to marry.

One of the things, Lori and I wanted to point out is Italian-American identity is something that is slipping away in the United States. And even the knowledge of exactly what happened to immigration is slipping away. Italians were treated horribly when they came here, really bad, as were the Irish, as were Haitians today, for instance. And Mexicans today and Central Americans today. They were really treated badly. But in our interviews, a lot of people, Italian Americans would rewrite it and say, we were welcomed with open arms and they needed us. And they, you know, sometimes those kind of miscomprehensions, I think, allow past immigrant community to distance itself from current immigrant communities. And so one of these more, and I continuously tried to underline was this was the same.

The stories that I hear from my Italian grandmother are eerily similar to what I hear from Haitian friends today because I'm in Florida actually. So what I hear from Asian immigrants today, food anxiety, political oppression, danger, altogether, as Lori Idios are coming from Haiti today. And the Italians truly were hungry idios. They did want freedom. but sometimes we forget that in the process. Well, we also forget how much America grows from absorbing new populations into it and the cultural effects and influences that they bring.

It's a wonderful thing. The book we're talking about is titled Remembering Italian America, Memory, Migration, Identity. It is written by these two, this brother and sister team, Laurie and Michael Buonano. Thank you so much for talking. It's going to be a lot of your books under the Christmas tree this year.

I know it. Thank you, Don. Thanks, Don, for the great conversation. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.