Donna R. Gabaccia has remarked that scholarship once “approached ethnicity as primordial, essential, and unchanging.” Such an interpretation, however, is no longer viable. Following Werner Sollors, subsequent research has pointed out that ethnicity is a social construction that undergoes a continuous process of renegotiation as some individuals assert the sense of peoplehood that they share by classifying other members of the same society as aliens according to a criterion of inclusion and exclusion based on allegedly inherited biological or cultural differences. [1][1] Donna R. Gabaccia, “Liberty, Coercion, and the Making...

This article represents a case study of the reshaping of ethnic identities. It focuses on Italian immigrants and their American-born offspring in the United States [2][2] For the sake of synthesis, the term Italian Americans... and examines how they re-elaborated their self-images between the late nineteenth century and the end of World War II.

Italy achieved unification late. The process of state building began in the mid-nineteenth century and was not completed until the end of World War I. Notwithstanding the rhetoric of the Risorgimento, the somehow elitist movement for the political unity of the peninsula, this delay let most Italians long retain a parochial sense of regional, provincial, and even local affiliation. Such an attitude, which is better known by the term campanilismo after the Italian word for bell tower, usually confined people’s attachments to their respective hometowns or—as the Italian expression suggests—within the earshot of the bells of their villages. [3][3] Ruggiero Romano, Paese Italia: Venti secoli di identità...

The Italian expatriates who reached the United States primarily from northern regions before the beginning of mass migration in the 1880s included a few political exiles with a strong national consciousness. This awareness, however, did not characterize the bulk of their fellow countrymen from southern provinces who followed in their footsteps en masse in the subsequent decades. Thus, most immigrants hardly thought of themselves as members of the same nationality group between the late nineteenth century and the outbreak of World War I. [4][4] Donna R. Gabaccia, Italy’s Many Diasporas (London:...

Used to considering their hometowns as “a little world unto itself,” as Italian consul Luigi Villari once put it, newcomers generally defined themselves by their association with their native villages rather than with their country of origin. Intraregional rivalries, along with disparate dialects and traditions, estranged Italian immigrants. Maria Laurino, for instance, has remarked that even “towns only about forty miles apart […] had a distinct dialect, nurtured for centuries by separate cultural influences and foreign rule.” Likewise, Joseph Napoli has recalled that his Sicilian mother—who was born in San Biagio, in the province of Messina—could not stand fellow Sicilians from Palermo. She also included people from other southern-Italian backgrounds in her maledictions:

Her special detestation was reserved for the Neapolitans. […] She hated them openly. […] With the index and little finger of her left hand she threw “corni”—horns—at their home or when she saw them in the distance. She crossed the street to avoid walking near the house or near them, thus eluding their malice and their own potent evil eye. She hoped the horns would cause the malefactors to be stricken with indescribable diseases, the unmarried daughters to be impregnated by devils, and the family reduced to beggary. [5][5] Luigi Villari, Italian Life in Town and Country (New...

In addition, most immigrants came to the United States through chain migration based on family and village connections. Those who had already settled in America were instrumental in persuading relatives and friends into making their way across the ocean and supplied them with lodging in their own homes or in the vicinity of their houses. Thus, fellow villagers and people from the same region or province ended up clustering together in self-segregated neighborhoods within the broader Italian settlements. Actually, with regard to New York City’s Italian-American community, Luigi Villari remarked in 1912 that

Some neighborhoods are inhabited exclusively by newcomers from a given region; we can find only Sicilians in a street, only people from Calabria in another street, and immigrants from Abruzzi in a third one. There are even streets where only individuals from a single town live: a colony from Sciacca here, a colony from San Giovanni in Fiore there, a colony from Cosenza somewhere else. [6][6] John S. MacDonald, “Chain Migration, Ethnic Neighborhood...

Since previous immigrants also helped newcomers to find jobs generally where they themselves were employed, Italians usually grouped with fellow villagers and shied away from people from other regional backgrounds in the workplace, too. This was, for instance, the case of Angelo Pellegrini, an immigrant from Casabianca in Tuscany. His uncle, an assistant foreman for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Washington State, provided him with a job in his own gang of eighty workers. When Pellegrini joined the other laborers, he discovered that “the men of that gang were all Tuscans, people like yourself; several of them were from Casabianca and adjacent communities.” [7][7] Angelo Pellegrini, American Dream: An Immigrant’s Quest...

Subnational divisions extended to religious life as well. Although the great bulk of Italian immigrants were Catholics, residual paganism and the absence of formal observance distinguished the practices of southern Italians from the more orthodox rites of the northerners. These differences contributed to exacerbate regional antagonism within Italian parishes and to split congregations along lines of local loyalties. As a result, for instance, in New York City, northern Italians refused to attend the same mass services as southern fellow countrymen from Naples. Likewise, Sicilians boycotted the church of St. Ambrose in St. Louis, Missouri, because immigrants from Lombardy allegedly controlled the parish. In Providence, Rhode Island, cleavages between northerner and southerner Italian Catholics were so disruptive that these latter repeatedly petitioned their bishop to have their pastor from northern Italy replaced with a priest from the South. [8][8] Emilio Franzina, Gli italiani al Nuovo Mondo: L’emigrazione...

Social life, too, reflected the subnational identifications of the Italian immigrants. Embodying the romantic ideals of its founder, Vincenzo Sellaro, the Order Sons of Italy in America—a nationwide organization with lodges in most Italian-American settlements—accepted for membership individuals of Italian descent regardless of their, or their parents’, place of origin in the mother country. Yet campanilismo and the ensuing localistic antipathies generally prevented immigrants from establishing nationally integrated ethnic societies. Julian Miranda has recalled that his grandfather, an immigrant from Sicily, founded a “society [that] was composed of people from his home town” only because he “was resentful of the behavior and attitude of non-Sicilian Italians.” Indeed, at their inception, most Italian mutual-aid and fraternal associations admitted exclusively those Italians who had come from a specific region, province, or even village, and barred from membership all the people who had been born elsewhere. For instance, only immigrants from Abruzzi and their offspring could join the Fratellanza Abruzzese in Providence, and the Ateleta Beneficial Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, included solely newcomers from the village of Ateleta and their children. The local denomination of a number of Italian-American associations in Chicago in the 1920s (Sicilian Union, Tuscan Club, Turin Society, and Pisa Society) also demonstrates the subnational concentration of their members. [9][9] Louis C. Anthes, “‘The Search for Order’: The Order...

Organizations named after prominent Italian figures revealed memberships shaped by local origins as well. For example, the Società Guglielmo Marconi in Providence was composed of people from the island of Ischia alone. Regionalism affected even associations that intended to help immigrants supersede the legacy of their ancestral country and accommodate within U.S. society. This was, for instance, the case of the Americanization Club in Jeanette, Pennsylvania. As an informant has recalled:

The Americanization Club didn’t take members for a long time if they weren’t northern Italians. […] It was an irony [that] you could not get into the Americanization society if you were not northern Italian or married to one. [10][10] Circular letter by Sabino Giordano, secretary, Società...

Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent and other immigrant minorities usually failed to realize the existence of subnational differences among the newcomers from Italy. The Wasp establishment and the members of the ethnic groups that had preceded the mass arrival of Italians in the United States usually made the latter victims of intolerance because of their national origin on the grounds that Italy was a backward country. Thus, Italian immigrants from disparate regions ended up sharing a common experience of widespread discrimination and bigotry regardless of their different local extractions. The image of individuals from Italian backgrounds as members of a single inferior people enjoying gregarious life, substandard living conditions, and prone to violence and criminal activities was commonplace in public opinion at large. Rosario Ingargiola has remembered that “the Irish were prejudiced against the Italians and they thought themselves superior to the Italians because they knew the language and controlled the politics.” Geraldine Ferraro has similarly recalled that

Italian immigrants, especially from the south, were considered inherently lower class by other Americans, and they were a common target of abuse. In New York, where the Irish were more established and controlled the Catholic Church and the political machinery, discrimination against Italian Americans was codified—expressed both formally and informally. [11][11] Salvatore J. LaGumina, ed., Wop! A Documentary History...

Federal and state statistics initially distinguished northern from southern immigrants. Yet the 1921 and 1924 Quota Acts discriminated against prospective Italian newcomers by granting them only 42,057 and 5,802 immigrant visas per year, respectively, without taking into account their regional backgrounds. As many as 349,042 Italians had arrived in the United States in 1920 alone. But legislators wanted to curb immigration from Italy as a whole because they regarded the Italians as undesirable people. [12][12] John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American...

Ethnic prejudice affected individuals of Italian ancestry especially on the job market. “No Guineas” was a common sign at places of employment in order to discourage Italians and Americans of Italian descent from applying by using a derogatory term to refer to them. Those who managed to get work were usually relegated to low-paying positions. For instance, in the laundry where Rose Vigilante worked in the 1910s,

The Irish girls worked upstairs on the street level, ironing rich people’s fancy clothes. We Italian girls worked in the basement, doing the flat work, folding pillow cases, handkerchiefs, and sheets. [13][13] Marie Nigro, “The Changing Roles of Nicknames in a...

Frank Sgambato, a textile worker from Providence, had analogous recollections for the 1930s:

There was an opening for a hand-twister’s job in the Esmond Mill. […] The boss in the finishing room wouldn’t transfer me to the weaving room […]. I knew it was a skilled craft; the job was more or less noted to be an English job, they had very few mixed nationalities, and an Italo-American going into a twisting job was a little hard to accept. [14][14] Frank Sgambato as quoted in Working Lives: An Oral...

However, Italian Americans, too, began to close ranks across subnational lines in the interwar years. These two decades witnessed the appearance of a U.S.-born second-generation of individuals who had loose ties to the land of their parents and could hardly understand the local divisions and petty rivalries that had separated their fathers and mothers. Furthermore, the end of mass immigration from Italy by the late 1920s in the wake of the passing of the 1921 and 1924 Quota Acts and the enactment of Fascist anti-emigration policies after 1927 discontinued the influx of newcomers from Italy that had until then helped fan the flames of localistic divisions among people from Italian backgrounds. [15][15] Irving Child, Italian or American? The Second Generation...

The companies that employed foreign-born workers and agencies such as the Foreign Language Information Service devoted their efforts to promote the Americanization of immigrant minorities in the war and interwar years. Yet the persistence of the nationalistic feelings that had emerged following the outbreak of World War I and the rise of fascism to power in Italy led to a further development of the national Italian identity of the newcomers and their offspring. [16][16] Ferdinando Fasce, Tra due sponde: Lavoro, affari e...

World War I made a major contribution to the demise of local loyalties. As Italy’s declaration of war on Austria in 1915 enabled ethnic leaders, organizations, and newspapers to set off a wave of nationalistic fervor, the rank and file members of Italian-American communities discovered that they had something in common despite their different places of origin in the mother country. In addition, after decades of ethnic stereotyping in their adoptive society, Italian Americans realized that their national extraction was no longer a stigma when the United States became an ally of Italy in the conflict. The war-induced nationalistic sentiments were strong enough to overcome the pacifist propaganda of a few radical groups and persuade tens of thousands of reservists to go back to their fatherland and enlist in the Italian army. Analogous feelings led many Italian Americans who remained in the United States to raise money for the war efforts of their ancestral country and Italian soldiers’ families. [17][17] Baldo Aquilano, L’Ordine Figli d’Italia in America...

In a few years, Italy’s alleged accomplishments under the Fascist regime further encouraged Italian immigrants and their offspring to identify with their motherland. Benito Mussolini’s seizure of power revitalized radicalism in the “Little Italies” after leftist movements had undergone a decline in the wake of the Red Scare of 1919. Yet the Duce’s opponents remained a minority within Italian-American communities until Italy’s entry into World War II ended the appeasement toward fascism that both the Republican and Democratic administrations had pursued in the 1920s and 1930s. Mussolini’s popularity in the United States as a modernizer and a Bolshevik buster, along with the status of Great Power that Italy enjoyed under the Duce, let people of Italian descent take pride in their national origin because their ancestral land did not seem a backward country any longer in the eyes of American public opinion. In a wartime exculpatory interpretation of Italian Americans’ attachment to the regime of their ancestral country, Constantine Panunzio contended that “Italian Americans, being human and needing a prop to sustain them in a world where many people with whom they had to deal regarded them as inferior, looked on fascism as their savior.” Even anti-Fascists agreed. As one of them acknowledged with reference to Mussolini:

You have got to admit one thing: he enabled four million Italians in America to hold up their heads, and that is something. If you had been branded as undesirable by a quota law you would understand how much that means. [18][18] Fraser Ottanelli, “‘If Fascism Comes to America We...

Italian Americans’ support for fascism and their sense of national pride reached a climax when Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935 and established its own colonial empire in May 1936. At that time, many Italian Americans made a point of challenging the economic sanctions that the League of Nations had passed against Mussolini’s government. During the seven months of the Italo-Ethiopian War, Italian Americans raised money for the Italian Red Cross (which was nothing more than an ingenious way of funding the Duce’s military machinery under a humanitarian cover-up) and donated their wedding rings and other gold objects to the Fascist war chest. Such financial contributions amounted to $700,000 in New York City, nearly $65,000 in Philadelphia, about $40,000 in San Francisco, and over $37,000 in Providence, while roughly 100,000 gold rings were sent to Rome from New England, New York State, and New Jersey. [19][19] Il Popolo Italiano 31 January 1936; La Libera Parola...

Italian Americans enthusiastically participated in such drives in small towns, too. In Norristown, Pennsylvania, for instance, the S.S. Salvatore Society donated the Italian Red Cross $336. For the Fascist regime such amount of money was obviously a drop in the ocean. But it was more than a fourth of the funds which that mutual-aid association had saved to assist its own members. [20][20] Minutes of the meetings of the S.S. Salvatore Society,...

Fascist-induced nationalism made inroads even into working-class strongholds that should have been the most immune to jingoistic sentiments. Luigi Antonini, the general secretary of the Italian-language Local 89 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was one of the most vocal Italian-American opponents of Mussolini’s colonial venture. But his anti-Fascist appeals often fell on deaf ears. Remarkably, a member of Local 89, John Milazzo, maintained:

I collected money for the Italian Red Cross twice in the factory where I work and shall initiate additional fund-raisings until our beloved Duce orders our brothers who are bravely fighting in Africa to lay their arms. […]. I am not and shall never be a Fascist, but I am Italian, an unrepentant Italian. [21][21] Philip V. Cannistraro, “Luigi Antonini and the Italian...

Girolamo Valenti’s socialist-oriented La Stampa Libera, too, was the target of the resentment of its own readers for its stand against the Italo-Ethiopian War. For instance, Santo Farina retorted in a letter to this newspaper that “celebrating the victory of our soldiers” against Ethiopia was “our duty as real Italians” and added that “wishing Italy’s defeat to displease Mussolini was ridiculous.” Against this backdrop, American Labor Party Congressman Vito Marcantonio decided not to attend a rally against the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia for fear of losing the votes of his large Italian-American constituency in East Harlem. [22][22] La Stampa Libera 19 May 1936; Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio:...

The spread of such patriotic and nationalistic feelings contributed to defuse campanilismo and caused changes in the membership requirements of many Italian ethnic organizations. The elaboration of these new rules gives further evidence of the transformation of the subnational self-images of people from Italian backgrounds into a single Italian identity in the interwar years. By the mid 1930s, most Italian ethnic associations, including those that chose to retain regional denominations, opened their doors to individuals from anywhere in Italy. As Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the leading Italian-language daily in the country, pointed out in 1934 “there cannot be differences between a Lombard and a Roman, between a Venetian and a Sicilian, between a Piedmontese and a Neapolitan. The increasing difficulties in our lives require solidarity, not divisions.” [23][23] “Programma ricordo della Loggia Piave no. 364,” Luigi...

The renegotiation of ethnic identities affected religious life, too. In New York City, for example, devotion to the Virgin of Mount Carmel superseded the cult of local patron saints by the late 1920s. In addition, many Italian-American Catholic priests embraced fascism after the 1929 covenant between the Vatican and Mussolini’s government and contributed to the nationalization of their parishioners by spreading patriotic ideals among them. [24][24] Robert Anthony Orsi, The Madonna of the 115th Street:...

The American-raised offspring of the Italian immigrants was more tolerant of regional diversities and more inclined to join forces with fellow Italians than their parents had been. Moreover the extolment of nationalism by Fascist propaganda played a role in the breakdown of provincialism. In Providence, for instance, the local Italian-language weekly Italian Echo urged its readers to follow the example of Mussolini’s regime and disband all village-based and regional associations in the community. A number of mergers across local divisions actually occurred in the city’s Italian-American social clubs. [25][25] Italian Echo 23, 30 March 1934; Providence Evening...

However, the American environment also played a significant role in reshaping the ethnic identity of Italian immigrants and their offspring. Indeed, defensiveness against discrimination was the main force that bound together people from different Italian regional backgrounds in the United States. The calls for unity usually resulted from the awareness that the children and the grandchildren of the Italian newcomers had to close ranks regardless of the place where their ancestors had been born in order to stand up for their rights and to compete successfully with other immigrant communities. Indeed, tensions among various ethnic minorities escalated during the economic crisis of the 1930s as they struggled with one another for cheap housing and job opportunities in the wake of the Depression. Il Progresso Italo-Americano warned that, as regionalism had made Italy into an easy prey to foreign states before the Risorgimento, local divisions would let other nationality groups dominate Italian Americans. Similarly, the Milwaukee-based monthly Italian Leader urged its readers to band together into a single organization in order to “promote the civic advancement of the Italian Americans as a whole and, in this manner, derive common benefits.” In six months, the Santa Croce, Vespri Siciliani, Tripoli Italiana, Dante Alighieri, and Stefanese clubs merged into one association called United Italian Societies of Milwaukee. [26][26] Ronald H. Bayor, Neighbors in Conflict: The Irish,...

John P. Diggins has argued that World War II “was the fuel of the melting pot” for Italian Americans. [27][27] Diggins 352.Yet, notwithstanding the mounting pressure of Americanization, the bulk of the Italian immigrants and their offspring stuck to their identification with their mother country.

Italy’s entry into World War II on 10 June 1940 sparked rumors that unnaturalized Italians and even a few U.S. citizens of Italian extraction would act as fifth columnists at Mussolini’s beck and call if the United States joined the conflict against the Nazi and Fascist regimes. Moreover the Federal Bureau of Investigation rushed to prepare lists of allegedly Fascist supporters to be detained in case of war on the grounds of their potential threat to national security. [28][28] “The Foreign Language Press,” Fortune 22.5 (1940):...

For Italian immigrants and their children, concealing their ethnic ancestry would have been a reasonable response to such xenophobic worries. Few, however, yielded to this opportunistic behavior. Significantly, plans to change the name of the Order Sons of Italy of America into Columbian Order of America were dropped. Luigi Scala, the Rhode Island leader, argued that “[he] consider[ed] ‘Italy’ a title of nobility, making us at least the equal of any other group insofar as our heritage of culture and tradition is concerned.” In addition, in early 1941, many voters of Italian descent mobilized in the fruitless effort to prevent the passing of the Lend-Lease Bill because they were afraid that such measure would pave the way for an American intervention against Italy in the war. Indeed, the papers of prominent members of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee such as Theodore Francis Green (D-RI) and Gerald P. Nye (R-ID) contain numerous letters from opponents of that legislation with Italian-sounding last names. [29][29] Rhode Island Echo 20 September 1940; Theodore Francis...

Even Italy’s declaration of war against the United States on 11 December 1941 in the wake of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor failed to weaken the ethnic identity of most Italian immigrants and their offspring. They disavowed Mussolini’s regime although their previous attachment had been sentimental rather than ideological, but they still cherished their ancestral roots. Sociologist Joseph S. Roucek maintained that “most American Italians looked for a mirage: American victory without Italian defeat.” Indeed, to a majority of them, fighting against their native country, where many still had relatives and friends, was a awesome perspective. When Roland DeGregorio, a second-generation Italian American from St. Louis, explained to his father why he had decided to enlist in the Marines, he pointed out that “the Marines are fighting in the Pacific and I won’t fight against your brother and cousins in Italy.” As Paul Pisicano, a New Yorker of Sicilian descent, has remarked,

Remember when Sergeant John Basilone came home? He was the Medal of Honor winner. They have a bridge on the Jersey Turnpike named after him. He was our hero. He did the right things, but he did them in the Pacific. He was shooting gooks, so that’s okay. It would be very painful to see the same act of courage demonstrated against Italians. Even if he did it, he would have been forgotten about. [30][30] Joseph S. Roucek, “Italo-Americans and World War II,”...

Although they hurried to distance themselves from fascism and to show off their patriotism toward the country of their adoption, the great bulk of Italian Americans did not reject their Italian descent. Even U.S. citizens of Italian ancestry claimed their right to support the war efforts of the United States by joining the army or buying war bonds not as mere Americans but as Americans of Italian extraction. After all, ethnic associations such as the Order Sons of Italy in America launched the major drives to encourage the purchase of war bonds within the “Little Italies” and did it on the occasion of traditional Italian-American ethnic festivities such as Columbus Day that members of the Italian-American communities continued to celebrate. The Italian-language press also made a point of focusing on the U.S. servicemen of Italian origin who were killed in action or awarded military decorations. Besides stressing the loyalty of Italian Americans to the United States in the eyes of the broader adoptive society, these articles helped make Italian-American readers aware of the contribution of their own minority to the fight against nazism and fascism, and prevented them from renouncing their ethnicity and their ties based on national origin. [31][31] L’Eco d’America 19, 26 December 1941; Il Progresso...

Furthermore, after Italy signed an armistice with the United States in September 1943, Italian Americans and their ethnic organizations did not refrain from lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of their ancestral country in the attempt to offset its defeat in the war. Their claims included a lenient peace treaty with their fatherland and American economic aid for Italy’s postwar reconstruction. [32][32] Nadia Venturini, “Italian American Leadership, 1943-1948,”...

Still World War II played a significant role in removing the surviving remnants of local, provincial, and regional loyalties. The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested 3,596 Italian aliens between 7 December 1941 and the end of the war. A few hundred immigrants and U.S. citizens of Italian origin were deported from sensitive military areas, primarily along the West Coast, and either relocated elsewhere or even interned in detention camps. Denaturalization proceedings were also initiated for several U.S. citizens of Italian birth. Against this backdrop, fears of discrimination reminded Italian Americans of their common national ancestry and further contributed to turn individuals from different geographical backgrounds in Italy into a more unified ethnic group whose sense of identity was based on the ties to the country of birth or descent of its members. [33][33] Lawrence DiStasi, ed., Una Storia Segreta: The Secret...

Aggregation along local, provincial or regional lines usually characterized the lives of the Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States before World War I. By the outbreak of World War II, however, the nationalistic appeal of both World War I and fascism, the end of mass immigration from Italy, the appearance of an American-born second generation with loose ties to the land of their parents, and primarily the common experience of having to face anti-Italian sentiments contributed to bring first- and second-generation Italian Americans together and helped them overcome their internal subnational divisions. As a result, they could develop the sense of a nationally-cohesive Italian ethnic group that they had lacked upon arrival in the United States.