History of Italian Americans in Boston

Contrary to popular myth, they did not improve their lot solely by working hard; they held protest rallies, organized labor unions, and were extremely active in the Democratic party.

Others were private philanthropists, community activists, charitable organizations, and mutual aid societies whose aim was to help immigrants, the poor, and workers in general.

George Scigliano, a lawyer who served on the Boston Common Council and the Massachusetts legislature at the turn of the century, worked to improve the lives of local Italians.

Among other things, he called public attention to the exploitative padrone system, and worked to end it; he introduced legislation to regulate the loosely run "immigrant banks", which were notorious for cheating poorly educated workers out of their savings; he founded the Italian Protective League of Boston, a benevolent society for new immigrants; and he helped to defeat a bill that would have required workers to be naturalized.

[9] The North Bennet Street Industrial School was founded in 1885, with the support of philanthropist Pauline Agassiz Shaw, to provide job training for Italian and Jewish immigrants.

[10] The North End Union, a social service agency founded by the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches in 1892, provided food, daycare, cooking classes, and other aid.

"[14] The following week, Massachusetts representative Henry Cabot Lodge published an article in the North American Review in which he defended the lynch mob and proposed new restrictions on immigration.

[15] In August 1905, some 200 members of the North End's Liguria Society were parading down Federal Street when a trolley car driver refused to stop for them.

[20] During Prohibition there were some Italian bootleggers in Boston, but for the most part the business was controlled by the competing Irish and Jewish mobs led by Frank Wallace and Charles "King" Solomon.

[25] In 1927, following Sacco and Vanzetti's execution in the Charlestown State Prison, they were laid out at the Langone funeral home in the North End, where they were viewed in open caskets by over 10,000 mourners over two days.

"[27] Fifty years later, in 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation—significantly, in both English and Italian—declaring August 23 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day, and asking the public "to reflect upon these tragic events, and draw from their historic lessons the resolve to prevent the forces of intolerance, fear, and hatred from ever again uniting to overcome the rationality, wisdom, and fairness to which our legal system aspires.

"[28] In 1997, Thomas Menino, Boston's first Italian-American mayor, and acting governor Paul Cellucci formally accepted on behalf of the city a bas-relief sculpture memorializing Sacco and Vanzetti.

In 1937, Massachusetts Governor Charles Hurley called it "a patently absurd gesture", while Boston mayor Frederick Mansfield said it had "no possible chance of acceptance."

It shows the two men in profile, with a quote from Vanzetti's final prison letter: What I wish more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be understood in their real being and serve as a tremendous lesson to the forces of freedom so that our suffering and death will not have been in vain.

[30] In the late 1930s, sociologist William Foote Whyte spent several years living in the North End, studying the social dynamics of the local gangs and bookmakers.

In 1943 he published a groundbreaking case study titled Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum which became a bestseller and a classic college text for students of sociology and anthropology.

Known as a fiery-tempered defender of the "little man", state senator Joseph A. Langone, Jr., launched an investigation into Boston's welfare department, alleging it was withholding money from the needy, and in 1939 organized a march on City Hall to demand better services for the North End.

As a state legislator, he served the district that included the West End, where he saw his own home torn down and replaced with luxury apartment buildings.

[56] Francis X. Bellotti, the son of Italian immigrants, grew up poor in Boston's Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods, worked his way through law school, and became state attorney general, and later the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.

Mimie Pitaro, the pastor of Most Holy Redeemer parish in East Boston, was the first Roman Catholic priest elected to the Massachusetts legislature.

As a state representative from 1970 to 1972 and president of the East Boston Neighborhood Council, he fought against the expansion of Logan Airport, was instrumental in getting the BRA to build an elderly housing development instead of the waterfront motel it had planned, and worked in the hospice movement.

[79] The annual Madonna Delle Grazie (Our Lady of Grace) procession is a tradition brought to the North End in 1903 by immigrants from San Sossio Baronia, Avellino.

Today the proceeds are donated to local food pantries and non-profit organizations in honor of Saint Rocco, who gave all his possessions to the poor.

[92] Nevertheless, they were stereotyped as criminals and discriminated against by the police, the courts, schoolteachers, college admissions officers, and Irish political bosses who had the power to distribute jobs and favors.

[97] As recently as 2003, an article in Boston magazine (ironically titled "The Godfathers") described local Italian-American politicians as reluctant to call attention to their ethnicity lest they be stereotyped as criminals.

When Robert Travaglini became president of the Massachusetts senate, for example, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr opined that it was like "handing the keys to the State House to Tony Soprano".

[99] In the early 20th century, Italians in Boston, as in other cities, often clashed with the Irish despite the fact that the vast majority of both groups shared a common religion (Roman Catholic) and political party (Democratic).

One of the youth's friends, Joseph Sammarco, was arrested for murder, and was quickly tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison based on what many considered weak evidence.

Ubaldus Da Rieti distinguished between so-called "true Italians"—Genoese, Piedmontese, Tuscans, Lombardians, Venetians, Romans, Bolognese, and some Neapolitans—and those descended from "Albanians, Saracens, Greeks and Arabs", blaming the latter group for crime in the North End:

The true Italian type of countenance is oval, with a high forehead, an aquiline or old Roman nose, rather fair than dark in complexion, with black eyes and generally symmetrical outlines.