Standing Our Ground Now And Forever
2008 April 19
Recently, the airwaves have been filled with all sorts of talk about Italians…some of it not so good.
Snippets of a sermon recently surfaced when a pastor of an inner city church said: “[Jesus'] enemies had their opinion about Him..The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans” The same gentleman called Jesus’ crucifixion “a public lynching Italian style” executed in “Apartheid Rome”.
Of course, you’d have to be living under a rock someplace not to have heard that comment on the television, as it has been played and re-played thousands of time now.
Not that I give one whit what this gentleman thinks about my Sicilian/Italian background, nor do I particularly believe anything that comes from the mouths of most politicians (they are, after all, politicians), who have attempted to exploit that comment one way or the other for their own purposes, but I began to wonder about persecution and discrimination against Italians in America, and I was saddened to find scores of examples of our Italian and Sicilian heritage being discriminated and persecuted against ( I am not talking about the recent “mafia” stuff done to our detriment by the “Soprano’s”, The Godfather Trilogy”, or “Goodfella’s ” either).
As far back as the 16th century, John Calvin, the French reformer who helped establish the Reformed Church of Switzerland, condemned Italians as lazy, two-faced, and deceitful.
Here in America, did you know that the largest lynching in American history involved Sicilians?
After the American Civil War, poor Italian immigrants were recruited in the South by plantation owners desperate for laborers and in the North by rich industrialist looking to fill their sweat shops with cheap labor.
In the South, fisherman from Sciacca and the fishing villages of Sicily settled in Louisiana because of the climate and in the hopes of securing work on both the plantations and also to fish for shrimp…plentiful in the Gulf of Mexico waters.
However, over time, resentment grew against these new settlers. Some Americans viewed these poor immigrants as some sort of a “missing link” between fair skinned Europeans and Africans.
In no time, violence against Italian immigrants boiled over and discrimination became rampant.
In 1891, ten Sicilians were lynched in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Yes, that is correct…lynched.
The largest lynching in American history….Sicilians.
In researching the incident, I found out that the chief of police in New Orleans, a fellow named Hennessy, was assassinated under dubious circumstances. Some say he was investigating the Mafia. Most others now believe that he was involved in some other political intrigue and was executed by others who blamed the Sicilians.
It was alleged that on his death bed he said “The Dagos did it”.
Nineteen Sicilians were rounded up, and jailed. Ten were accused of Hennessey’s murder.
Rumors swirled through the city that the Mafia was trying to take over New Orleans. The local newspapers chipped in by fanning hatred toward the new immigrants with terrible and hateful articles.
The ten who who accused of murder were acquitted at trial, but that didn’t stop mobs of people incited by those hateful newspaper articles.
A large riot broke out. Rioters stormed the jailhouse where they were being kept and according to newspaper accounts ‘The lynch mob brutally mutilated the Italian immigrants, shouting, “Hang the dagos!” According to the newspaper, the “cheers were deafening.”
The paper proclaimed “The little jail was crowded with Sicilians, whose low, receding foreheads, repulsive countenances and slovenly attire proclaimed their brutal nature.”
I was angered when I first read these accounts….then saddened . I was angered as a prideful Sicilian, yet saddened by the ignorance of the uneducated , led just like sheep to the wrong conclusion by the court of public opinion.
But that wasn’t the end of my research.
Four years later, in 1895, six Italian labor organizers were lynched in Colorado, and another six were lynched in Hahnville, Louisiana.
Another five more were lynched in 1899 in Tallulah, Florida.
The list went on.
In 1901 , mobs attacked and killed Italians in Mississippi. In 1906 the same occurred in West Virginia. In 1910 the same occurred in Tampa, Florida.
In Westford, Illinois, an incident occurred against Italians there that was so horrible that historian John Higham wrote “No pogrom has ever stained American soil, nor did any single anti-Jewish incident in the 1920’s match the violence of the [vigilante mob-led] anti-Italian riot”.
I realized that less than 100 years ago, Italians were killed for who they were (Italians).
I was shocked.
The hate and resentment toward Italians was also fueled , in addition to ignorance and bigotry, by…. of all things… religion.
Italians were Catholics…Papists…whose real loyalty was to the Pope, and not to America.
Protestant societies fueled resentment everywhere. Catholics were perverse, immoral, drank excessive alcohol…they gambled. They weren’t “like us”
Thus, a picture of resentment and hatred was painted against the new immigrants. A perverse picture fueled by the ignorant and the rich hell bent on preserving their way of life, and aided and abetted by “religious” bigotry as well.
As is the case with hostile racial or ethnic stereotypes, contributions of Italians…to America and the world..in countless areas..arts, music, science, mathematics, government , law, are forgotten or dellierately ignored.
We are Italians…and Sicilians…and we will stand our ground now and in the future to preserve who we are.
We are Italians…and Sicilians…and we will stand our ground now and in the future to preserve who we are.
We too should never forget.
