Chicago Italians

Early Labor & Business
Italians worked in construction, on the railroad and in the factories that proliferated around the city while others went into the small trades. Before 1900, unskilled workers sometimes fell prey to padroni, labor agents who found work for their compatriots, often for an exorbitant fee. Women worked alongside men in the garment industry, second only to New York City, which spawned one of the largest strikes in Chicago history led by three Italians. Success came to early entrepreneurs such as Giovanni Garibaldi and Frank Cuneo, who together created the largest fruit and nut wholesale business in the United States.

Public Image
From the start, Italians were considered racially inferior to white Europeans and public debates in academic circles and the media carried on unheeded for decades. Rampant anti-immigrant sentiment brought about The Immigration Act of 1924 and Chicago’s Italian Americans moved to defeat it. The small percentage of criminal elements active in the Italian American community, Black Hand practitioners and those who came up during the Prohibition Era, only lodged prejudices more firmly in the public’s mind. The most publicized protest from the community came in 2001 when the Chicago-based American Italian Defamation Association (AIDA) sued Time Warner for distributing HBO’s hit series The Sopranos because of its negative portrayal of Italian Americans.

Italo Balbo’s Flight
Balbo’s headline-grabbing transatlantic flight from Italy to Chicago during the 1933 World’s Fair brought unprecedented prestige to the Italian Colony. While it reinforced italianità among Chicago Italians, their reaction to the escalating threat of war in Europe would soon demonstrate their overwhelming allegiance to America.

Neighbhood Life
Popular processions of saints, or feste, brought the community together each year to celebrate deeply held traditions and customs and enjoy favorite foods with family and friends. Hundreds of organizations from mutual-aid societies and sports clubs to business groups and regional associations helped Italian Americans maintain strong cultural ties. The love of opera cut across class lines and many Italian Americans grew up listening to the great voices of a bygone era like Enrico Caruso, Luisa Tetrazzini and Chicago’s Vivian Della Chiesa, who made her debut in the Chicago Opera in 1936.

Our Lady of the Angels Fire
On December 1, 1958, fire swept through a Catholic grammar school in a West Side neighborhood with a large Italian-American population, killing 92 children and 3 nuns. The tragedy brought about changes in fire safety standards in American schools, but it also sparked a mass exodus of families from the neighborhood, a trend that brought about the demise of the city’s Italian Colonies in the ensuing decades.

Politics
Before World War II, the Italian American community produced only a handful of political leaders, among them Vito Marzullo, a strong ally of Mayor Daley who went on to become a state representative and alderman. Frank Annunzio was the most visible political figure for many decades who fervently promoted Italian American causes throughout his three decades in office. One unwitting figure to venture into local politics is Florence Scala. A tailor’s daughter, Scala took on City Hall to protest the building of the University of Illinois campus, which eventually destroyed her Taylor Street neighborhood and most of the Hull House complex. Today’s Italian Americans leaders like Senator James DeLeo, Senate Majority Leader Debbie DeFrancesco Halvorson, Representative Skip Saviano, and Schiller Park mayor Anna Montana remain committed to serving diverse constituencies while maintaining close ties to their ethnic identity.

The first Italian to travel through the future site of Chicago was explorer Enrico Tonty (Tonti) in 1681 sailing under the French flag.

Oak Park native Dan Castellaneta supplies the voice of cartoon character Homer Simpson.

Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini, who founded hospitals and schools in Chicago and died there, is the first American citizen to be canonized a saint in 1946.

The Radio Flyer Red Wagon, a symbol of American childhood, was produced by Antonio Pasin, an immigrant from Venice whose company is still being run by his grandsons on Chicago's West Side.

A group of Italian American businessmen and community leaders formed the White Hand Society in 1907 to fight Black Hand extortion.

Carl Laemmle, the founder of Hollywood's Universal Studios in 1906, received his inspiration while visiting Dan Ligarda's Nickelodeon movie theater on Halsted and Taylor Streets.

Two of Chicago's most respected "top cops” are Italian Americans: former Police Superintendent Joe DiLeonardi and Melrose Park Police Chief Bill Jaconetti.

The famous Pickwick movie theater in Park Ridge, used as the backdrop for Roger Ebert's "At the Movies," was designed by Alfonso Ianelli, a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The black boxes found on all commercial U.S. airplanes were manufactured at the DeMuro Brothers Electronics Factory in suburban Melrose Park.

Vito Bertoldi of downstate Illinois is one of 14 Medal of Honor winners from World War Two.

Amabile Piguri Santacaterina, one of Chicago’s s most popular Italian radio broadcasters in the 1940s, was recruited by the FBI to aid in the war effort.

Chicago clarinetist, Joe Marsala, had the first integrated band on 52nd St. in New York City in 1936. Marsala also brought the first integrated band into NYC's Waldorf Astoria Hotel in 1937

Judge Nicholas Bua ruled against patronage in Chicago's City Hall in the 1970s.

Chicago-born operatic soprano Vivian Della Chiesa was so popular that she had her own national radio show during the 1930s.

Baker and businesswoman Serafina Ferrara, known as the "Angel of Taylor Street," organized thousands of weddings throughout her lifetime.

Certified Grocers is the largest grocery cooperative in the entire nation organized by Henry Vinci in the 1960s.

Every musician in the U.S. receives royalty payments on his of her recordings, a condition fought for, and achieved, back in the 1930s under James Petrillo, head of the American Federation of Musicians.

One of six members of the Italian Parliament representing Italians abroad, Senator Ron Turano’s territory extends from Alaska to Panama.

Actor Gary Sinise, Steppenwolf director Frank Galati, and Drury Lane producer Tony DeSantis are just a few of the artists of Italian descent who helped create Chicago’s vibrant theater scene.

Gerald Arpino relocated his renowned Joffrey Ballet to Chicago, joining already established dance troupes led by Lou Conte and Gus Giordano.

Oscar-nominated actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio is an Oak Park native.

Singer Carol Lawrence, née Laraia, grew up in Melrose Park and originated the role of Maria in the first Broadway production of West Side Story in 1959.

Educator and principal Claude Mazzocco, born on the city’s East Side, founded and served as first president of the Illinois Middle School Association.

Mario Nello Buoniconti turned an old movie theater on Chicago’s West Side into Ferrara Manor, one of Chicago’s largest banquet halls.

Raymond and Connie DeGrazia opened up a pizzeria in the early 1950s, “Connie’s Pizzas,” credited with popularizing the then-obscure food pie.

South Side singer Peter Cetera became the recognizable voice of the popular rock band Chicago.

The late Henry Palmisano,born in Bridgeport and chief accountant at the family-run Henry’s Sports & Bait/Henry’s Marine, became a well-known activist who campaigned against commercial netting of perch fish in Lake Michigan.

Emma Tranter moved from Detroit to Chicago, where she formed the environmental activist group “Friends of the Park.”

Born in the suburb of Batavia, Frank Perna worked in his family’s Batavia West Side Market , one of the earliest businesses in that suburb), became a successful shoe-store owner, later spending the rest of his career as a high-ranking military official at the Pentagon.

As chair of the Chicago Mailers Union from 1968-1978, Peter Giangrosso negotiated contracts for newspaper workers, shared drinks with columnist Mike Royko, and delighted his Bridgeport neighbors by playing Big Band tunes on a Wurlitzer organ in his window.

Sam Cascio served as the legendary doorman at Chicago’s Hilton Hotel for over 60 years, greeting everyone from ordinary citizens to presidents.

Pianist Lennie Tristano, drummer Louis Bellson and violinist Johnny Frigo all made unique contributions to jazz music.

Dominick DeMatteo’s popular grocery store of the same name made the transition from small local business to one of the first supermarket chains.

Attorney Lawrence Pusateri was the first Italian American president of the 32,000 member Illinois State Bar Association.

Dino D’Angelo was a lawyer and philanthropist who refurbished the Chicago Civic Opera House, now called the Lyric Opera building.

Lawrence Pucci and his sister, Caryl Pucci Rettaliata, run Pucci Inc., one of the oldest custom-clothing firms in the nation.

Jazz, blues and pop singer Frankie Laine was born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio to Sicilian parents on Chicago’s West Side.

Lee Artoe drop-kicked a field goal for 52 yards while playing tackle for the famous 1941 Chicago Bears National Football team, an historic record set in the days before placekickers relied on a holder

The 150-year history of Italians settlement in Chicago, from early arrivals who laid the foundation for burgeoning Italian enclaves to the Italian American contribution to politics and labor, the arts and culture. Combining rare historical footage and photographs, interviews with prominent Italian Americans, authors, historians, and individuals who came of age in Chicago’s Little Italies, And They Came To Chicago journeys to the heart of one of the city’s most vibrant, and misunderstood, communities for an unforgettable look at Chicago’s Italian American legacy.

Though a handful of Northern Italian adventurers settled in the Midwest before the Revolutionary War, the first notable Italian presence in Illinois dates back to the 1850s, when Italian enclaves gradually formed around the state where there was promise of steady work. It was rough-and-tumble spirit of a growing metropolis that brought the majority of new arrivals to Chicago, the Midwest’s leading center of industry and commerce and home to one of the fastest growing Italian communites in the nation. While the city’s first Italian settlers hailed primarily from the North, the majority of Chicago’s Italians trace their ancestry to Southern Italy and Sicily, the Mezzogiorno. Mass immigration in the late 19th century pushed their numbers into the thousands and by 1920--just a few years before restrictive immigration laws were enacted--60,000 Italians called the city home, the third largest Italian population after New York and Philadelphia. Today, more than half a million Italian Americans live in greater Chicago, with Illinois ranking seventh among states with the largest Italian Americans populations.

The extraordinary accomplishments of Chicago’s Italian Americans have long overshadowed the hardships their ancestors endured early on. Among famous and unsung figures profiled include popular radio broadcaster Amabile Peguri Santacaterina; Frank Annunzio, Chicago’s leading Italian American congressman who helped make Columbus Day a national holiday; labor leader James Petrillo, a sewer digger’s son who became most powerful figures in the entertainment industry; Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi, who found a new home at the University of Chicago after fleeing Fascist Italy; Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American to achieve sainthood; and Ron Turano, the first American elected to the Italian Senate.

Success, though, had its price. The sting of deep-seated prejudices lingered for generations even as thousands of Italian Americans marched off to war. And while they gradually attained visibility at every level of society, perhaps more than any other ethnic group, Italian Americans continue to combat a negative public image. In Chicago especially, Italian identity, criminality and violence were synonymous in the public’s imagination a generation before gangster life became the media’s cash cow.

Through it all—the anti-immigrant backlash, the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Great Depression and global conflict—Chicago’s Italian enclaves remained the bedrock of social life for several generations of Italian Americans. More than a dozen of Little Italies formed across Chicagoland as successive waves of immigrants followed their compatriots to America. Taylor Street on the Near West Side, the city’s largest enclave of mostly Southern Italians before the University of Illinois claimed much of the neighborhood. 24th & Oakley, first settled by Tuscan immigrants before 1920 and possibly the best-preserved Italian neighborhood. Little Sicily on the Near North Side, once home to 20,000 Sicilians, and the western suburb of Melrose Park, where the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was born in 1894. Chicago Heights and Roseland to the South, Highwood and Highland Park to the North. Elmwood Park and Grand & Harlem, where Italian Americans put down deep roots. And finally, Grand & Ogden, Bridgeport and Chinatown, once-thriving Italian neighborhoods that yielded to newcomers as Italian Americans gained greater economic mobility

Immigrants, ethnics, achievers, 1850-1985 Part -2World War II changed everything for Italian Americans. It Americanized the second generation. The G.I. Bill opened up the first possibilities for a college education and the first opportunities to buy a new suburban house. Other government policies such as urban renewal, public housing, and the building of the interstate highway system combined to destroy their inner-city neighborhoods. First was the building of the Cabrini-Green Housing Project, which helped drive the Sicilians out of the Near North Side in the 1940s and 1950s. Then came the construction of the expressway system on the near south, west, and northwest sides, which dislodged additional Italian families and institutions, including the church and new school of the Holy Guardian Angel. The exodus headed west along Grand Avenue, eventually reaching Harlem Avenue. In the early 1960s Mayor Daley decided to build the new Chicago branch of the University of Illinois in the Taylor Street neighborhood. This meant that approximately one square mile of the heavily Italian neighborhood would have to be demolished. Almost simultaneously the Roseland-Pullman Italian Community fell victim to real-estate block busters who profited from the expansion of the black ghetto by scaring white residents into abandoning their neighborhood and their new Church of St. Anthony of Padua.

The overall result of all the positive and negative forces during the post World War II era was that, except for a few noteworthy pockets of Italian settlement, Chicago's old Little Italies were destroyed. With them have gone the sentimental sense of identity and security that the continuity in customs and familiar faces of the old neighborhood offered. Whatever political power that the Italians could muster from geographic concentration was also undermined. Henceforth, there would be no geographic base for the community. This was replaced by a smaller community of interest based almost entirely upon voluntary association and self-conscious identification with Italianess.

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One of the first to perceive the change and to plan for it was Fr. Armando Pierini. Easily the most productive leader in the history of the Chicago Italian community, Pierini began serving at the Scalabrinian Santa Maria Addolorata Church in 1935. Within a year he founded a seminary to train Italian-American priests to minister to their own. The Sacred Heart Seminary trained future priests, and it educated young men who became Italian community leaders. Pierini also used the same citywide approach for his next project: an Italian old people's home. Proposed in 1945, Villa Scalabrini opened in 1951. From that time forward there has been a continuous and intense campaign to create an Italian community and to unite that community behind a common noble cause — The Villa Scalabrini. In the 40 years since the Villa was proposed, Italians from various parishes and various parts of the metropolitan area have cooperated to stage an endless stream of carnivals, dinner dances, stage shows, fashion shows, spaghetti suppers, cocktail parties, and golf outings to support this multi-million dollar institution which stands as a proud testimonial of what Chicago Italians can accomplish when they are united.

The campaign to support the Villa also resulted in the establishment in 1960 of Fra Noi (Among Us). A monthly English language paper, Fra Noi functioned as a house organ for the Villa. Featuring local articles on politics, people, organizations, major contributors to the Villa, sports, recipes, and cultural and religious topics, Fra Noi has in its four hundred issues reinforced a sense of Italianess and community among its 12,000 subscribers and their families. In 1985 Fra Noi passed from Pierini into the hands of the third-generation professional journalists who have broadened the paper's circulation, advertising revenue, intellectual scope, and even the size of its Italian language section. Given the current geographic dispersal of the 300,000 Italians in the Chicago area, it is hard to conceive of any meaningful way in which the term "community" could be used to describe that population if Fra Noi and the Villa did not exist.

A brief demographic analysis of the Italians in the city in recent times yields varied conclusions. Census figures for 1970-1990 show Italians in the city to have above-average incomes and to be slightly under-represented in the professions. Other studies have shown that the Italians along with the Poles, African-Americans, and Hispanics are woefully under represented on the boards of directors of large corporations. Figures for educational attainment show Italians to be below average, but this can be explained in part because the oldest cohort of Italians had little or no formal education. In 1980 statistics show the highest concentration of people of Italian ancestry in the Dunning, Montclare, and the Belmont-Cragin areas of the northwest edge of the city limits where approximately 20,000 of the 138,000 city Italians live.

This forty-block area is shared with second and third generation Poles but contains hardly any African-Americans. The ambiance of the neighborhood also reveals the ethnicity of the zone. It features a large grocery specializing in Italian imports and a genuine Italian-style bar (Bar San Francesco) complete with espresso, gelato, and card-playing Calabresi in the backroom. Many of the stores and businesses on Harlem Avenue are owned and operated by Italians, many of them recent (1970s) immigrants. Both the statistical and the impressionistic evidence point unmistakably to the fact that the era of the poor Italian-American is long gone. They are financially comfortable as a result of success in family business, the acquisition of a skilled trade, or through unionized factory work. Moreover, the under-consumption of previous generations, the slow accumulation of real property, and family economic cooperation reinforce their economic status. They have achieved the American Dream except for one thing — respect.

Attaining their final goal is the stated or unstated purpose of the hundreds of voluntary associations that Chicago Italians have formed. Prominent among these is the Joint Civic Committee of Italian-Americans (JCCIA). It was established in the 1950s in response to an effort by the Democratic party to drop a respected Italian-American judge from the electoral ticket. An important part of the Capone legacy is the assumption in the public mind (and among Italian-Americans themselves) that every successful Italian-American is somehow "connected." The JCCIA since its founding has maintained a downtown office with a director, a secretary, and volunteers and is generally conceded to be the spokesman for the Chicago Italian-American community. Its Anti-Defamation Committee has used an effective combination of quiet influence, outraged protest, and award-giving flattery to nudge the news media toward more objective treatment of Italians. One major achievement has been the cessation of the use of Italian words such as Mafia and Cosa Nostra in favor of the more neutral "organized crime." Oriented toward the regular Democratic organization, the officially "nonpartisan" JCCIA's major patron was Congressman Frank Annunzio, who fashioned for himself on the national scene the role of "The Leading Italian American Congressman." The most important annual function of the JCCIA is the Columbus Day Parade, which attracts almost every politician in the state regardless of race, ethnicity, or party. The Columbus Day event shows off the Italian community's power and influence. In the early 1960s the JCCIA forged an alliance with the Villa and Fra Noi, which gave increased credibility to all concerned. Together the agencies have sponsored a dizzying array of cultural, folkloric, and social events that range from Italian language classes to debutante balls.

Immigrants, ethnics, achievers, 1850-1985 - Part-1

Italians have been in Chicago since the 1850s. Until 1880 the community consisted of a handful of enterprising Genoese fruit sellers, restaurateurs, and merchants, along with a sprinkling of plaster workers. Most Chicago Italians, however, trace their ancestry to the wave of unskilled southern immigrants who came to the United States between 1880 and 1914. As a rail center, an industrial center, and American's fastest growing major city, Chicago offered opportunities for immigrants from all nations. In the nineteenth century it was a mecca for German and Irish migration. In the early-twentieth century Italians, Russian Jews, and, most important, Poles found a place in Chicago. Later, blacks from America's South, and Mexican and Asian immigrants came to the city, making it today home to sizable colonies of more than eighty different nationalities. Chicago's black population is second only to that of New York City; at one time or another it has been the largest Lithuanian city, the second largest Bohemian city, the second largest Ukrainian city, and the third largest Swedish, Irish, Polish, and Jewish city in the world!

As in most older American cities, ethnic identities have persisted well beyond the melting pot, and a sophisticated understanding of the economic, social, political, and cultural dynamics of the city is impossible without careful consideration of ethnic factors. Being part of the complex interaction of ethnic groups and consistently outnumbered by Irish, Poles, African-Americans, and Hispanics, Italian aspirations for power and prestige have often been thwarted.

Typical chain migration patterns prevailed, with families and villages gradually reforming in Chicago neighborhoods as workers accumulated savings to send for their relatives. Throughout the early-twentieth century a good deal of residential mobility continued among the Italians. Nevertheless their major colonies, as first enumerated by Rudolph Vecoli, were shaped as follows. The original Genoese/Lucchese neighborhood in the shadow of today's Merchandise Mart produced the first Italian Catholic Church of the Assumption in 1880. Toward the south end of the Loop near the Polk Street Station, the Riciglianese (Salerno) lived. Over the years the colony moved south into what is now known as Chinatown, where they were joined by the Sicilians from Nicosia. The Scalabrinian church of Santa Maria Incoronata (patroness of Ricigliano) remained the focal center for the community until the 1980s, when it became the Chinese mission of St. Therese. On the near West Side, in a neighborhood made famous by Jane Addams and Hull House, the largest Italian colony grew up. This Taylor Street area contained about one-third of the city's Italians — a mixture of people from Naples, Salerno, Basilicata, the Marche, and Lucca. The neighborhood was also shared with Russian Jews to the south and Greeks to the north.

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For the most part this area could be considered a slum in the pre-1920 era. The Scalabrinian churches of the Holy Guardian Angel and Our Lady of Pompeii and a hospital founded by Mother Cabrini served the zone. On the near Northwest Side a varied community of Baresi, Sicilians, and others grew up around the Santa Maria Addolorata Church. Perhaps the most colorful Italian sector was in the 22nd Ward on the city's Near North Side. Known alternately as"Little Sicily" and "Little Hell," this neighborhood was home to some 20,000 by 1920.

Most originated from the small towns surrounding Palermo. The Servite Church of St. Philip Benizi provided the backdrop for a score of festivals each summer sponsored by paesani-based mutual benefit societies. (Paesan is from paese, meaning fellow countryman or townsman.)

In addition to the major inner-city Italian enclaves, a number of outlying and suburban colonies formed in the pre-1920 period. In the 1890s a settlement of Toscani who worked at the McCormick Reaper plant appeared a few miles to the southwest of the Loop at 24th and Oakley. Also to the south, in the famous planned company town established by George Pullman, there was a colony of Italian brickmakers from Altopiano Asiago. The nearby Roseland neighborhood was also home to a contingent of Piedmontese and Sicilians. The town of Blue Island at the southwest border of the city was heavily settled by railroad laborers from Rippacandida (Basilicata). Chicago Heights, thirty miles to the south of the Loop, had a population that was 50 percent Italian by 1920, with most hailing from San Benedetto del Tronto (Marche), Caccamo (Sicily), Amaseno (Lazio), and Castel di Sangro (Abruzzo). Melrose Park, sixteen miles to the west of the central city, was a place of second settlement, attracting Italians from the inner city to the wide-open spaces of the suburbs. The establishment of a major religious feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel eventually identified the town as the quintessential Chicago Italian suburb. The Highwood community, twenty-eight miles north of the city, developed after the turn of the century when migrants from Modenese towns moved here from Illinois coal towns.

Mostly contadini (small farmers) from dozens of towns in Italy both north and south settled around the core of the central city and in selected suburbs. They practiced campanilismo (allegiance to their town of origin), living near others from the same village or region. The core colonies were considered slums, their inhabitants the object of intensive efforts by social workers to make them middle class and masterful maneuvers by political ward bosses to get their votes.

The immigrants worked as railroad laborers, construction workers, small-scale fruit and vegetable peddlers, shoe makers, and barbers. Both men and women were engaged in the needle trades, and Italian Socialists were among the leaders in several Chicago strikes by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. In the pre-World War I period, it was unusual to find Italians employed in factories. Only a minuscule number worked in meatpacking plants.

The Italian communities of Chicago were enriched by a phenomenon all too rare in their towns of origin — voluntary associations. By the 1920s in addition to the paesani-based mutual benefit societies, the Italians in Chicago had church and school-oriented clubs and sodalities that worked at fundraising, as well as special-interest organizations sponsored by the settlement houses. According to historian Humbert Nelli, the general prosperity had nearly completed the Italians' social mobility by 1929.

No treatment of Chicago's Italians would be complete without some discussion of the city's most famous Italian American — Al Capone. The image of this gangster, who operated a vice, gambling, and illegal liquor empire for twenty years under the bribed consent of the city's non-Italian political leadership, has besmirched the name not only of Italians in Chicago but of the city itself. A showoff, Capone fancied himself a modern Robin Hood, passing out cash at social functions and establishing soup kitchens for the destitute. Though the numbers directly involved in syndicate crime were less than 1 percent of the Italian American people, the Capone mob captured the imagination of journalists and moviemakers who helped create a negative stereotype that continues to haunt people with Italian names a half century after Capone's death.

On the whole, public opinion of the Italian immigrant in the 1920s was a negative one. Poverty, ignorance, blackhand crime, and prohibition-related violence were the chief ingredients in the public image of Italians. Even the most sympathetic saw Italians in the city as suitable objects for social work, charity, and rehabilitation — perhaps a more negative image than the criminal stereotype.

In the mid-1920s Italians in Chicago still maintained their Italianess. Their language, their family patterns, and their religious practices were retained in their old neighborhoods even while they were Americanized by their daily contacts with non-Italians (mostly immigrants themselves). Mussolini and Fascism reinforced Italianata. In fact, the proudest moment in the history of the Chicago Italian colony came in July 1933 when Italo Balbo's squadron of planes completed its transatlantic flight, landing in Lake Michigan as part of the World's Fair activities. The event and the activities surrounding it put Italians on the front page — in a positive light for a change. Until the declaration of war between the United States and Italy, support for Mussolini was high. Then things changed, the second generation marched off to war, and vocal support for the Fascist regime died out.

Roughly speaking, what might be called the second generation emerged in the 1920s through the 1940s. Born in Chicago, educated according to American and/or Catholic standards, influenced by the Prohibition of the 1920s, tempered by the Great Depression, and tested by service in World War II, this group was often ambivalent about ethnicity. Though they had experienced the joys of Italian family life, middle-class America had always frowned on their parents' language and customs, and now came the War ...