Contents
Italian American
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Italoamericani
Notable Italian Americans:
Madonna · Fiorello LaGuardia · Robert De Niro · Francis Ford Coppola · Ray Romano · Nancy Pelosi · Frank Sinatra · Joe DiMaggio · Samuel Alito · Jay Leno · Jon Bon Jovi · William Paca · Rudy Giuliani · Al Pacino · Kelly Ripa · Martin Scorsese · Enrico Fermi · Mark Calcavecchia · Chris Botti · Bruno Rossi
Total population
17,815,289
6.0% of the US population (2008)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Found in the Northeast, New England, Midwestern United States, West Coast, Florida
Heavily concentrated in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York City, Upstate New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland-Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and South Florida.
Languages
American English · Italian · Sicilian · Neapolitan, other Italian dialects and languages of Italian historical minorities
Religion
predominantly Roman Catholic, with Protestant and Jewish minorities.
Related ethnic groups
Italian people, Italian Canadian, Italian Argentine, Italian Brazilian, Italian Mexican, Italian Australian, Italian Briton
An Italian American (Italian: italoamericano singular, Italian: italoamericani plural) is an American of Italian ancestry, and/or may also refer to someone possessing Italian/American dual citizenship. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States.
About 5 million immigrated to the U.S. The greatest surge of immigration, 1880–1914, brought 4 million Italians to cities in the Northeast, where most began as unskilled laborers.[2] Italian Americans have moved from the bottom of the economic scale (in 1910) to the upper half by 1970. They have tended strongly to emphasize the family, the Church, fraternal societies, and politics.[3]
History
Early Arrivals
The Italian sailor Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European explorer to pass New York Harbor. The first Italian to live in what is now the United States was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian sailor, who settled in New York on June 2, 1635. Other Italians played an important role in early United States history, such as Filippo Mazzei, an important Italian physician and a promoter of liberty, and a close friend of Thomas Jefferson; He acted as an agent to purchase arms for Virginia during the American Revolution. The Taliaferro family, originally from Venice, came to America in the 17th century from England, and was one of the first families to settle in Virginia. Until 1880 Italians arrived in the US in relatively small numbers, mainly from Northern Italy, and in most cases lost conscience of their origin and amalgamated with the surrounding American ethnic groups. A typical case is represented by the Waldensians, a small Protestant group from Piedmont.
The main immigration
The few early arrivals were far outnumbered by the soaring number of arrivals after 1880, coming especially from rural villages in Southern Italy, including Sicily and Campania; smaller but significant numbers came from the northern regions of Liguria and Veneto. Large numbers (about one in three) returned to Italy after a few years earning money in the U.S. From 1914 to 1919 the World War made movement very difficult. In 1924 the Johnson Reed Act imposed a quota.
From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 immigrants arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. The main reasons for Italian immigration were the push factor of poor economic opportunities in Italy during this period, particularly in the southern regions, and pull factors of easily obtained jobs and the presence of friends and relatives. In the United States, Italians settled in and dominated specific neighborhoods (often called "Little Italy"), where they could interact with one another, establish a familiar cultural presence, and find favorite foods. Most arrived with little cash or cultural capital (that is, they were not educated) since most had been peasant farmers in Italy, they lacked craft skills and, therefore, generally performed manual labor.
Civic and social life flourished in Italian-American neighborhoods, with many people belonging to hometown societies. Chain migration that brought many people from a particular town or region to the same American neighborhood meant that even new immigrants had extensive social networks which helped in the adjustment to America. Many Italians arrived in the United States hoping to earn enough money to return home and set themselves up in a business or with a farm. Among immigrant groups to America, Italians had the highest rate of returning to the old country. Their neighborhoods were typically older areas with overcrowded tenements and poor sanitation. Tuberculosis was rampant. Italian immigration peaked from 1900 until 1914, when World War I made such intercontinental movement impossible. In some areas, Italian immigrants met hostility and even violence, even lynching.[4]
In the ten years following 1900, about 200,000 Italians immigrated annually. With the imposition of the 1924 quota, 4,000 per year were allowed.[5]
Three million Italian immigrants arrived between 1900 and 1914. About a third of them, called "birds of passage", intended to stay only briefly, in order to make money and return to Italy. While one in four did return permanently to Italy, the rest either decided to stay or were prevented from returning by the world war. By the 1920s the Little Italys had stabilized and grew richer, as workers gained skills and entrepreneurs opened restaurants, groceries, construction firms and other small businesses. With few new arrivals, there was less Italian and more English spoken, especially by the younger generation. The Great Depression (1929-39) hit the community hard as unemployment soared and business opportunities contracted; large numbers enrolled in New Deal relief programs, such as the WPA and CCC. With World War II, prosperity returned. Many young men served in the military. Given the concentration in urban industrial areas, it was easy to find high-paying jobs in the defense industries. AFter the war the younger generation--led by the veterans with their GI Bill privileges, bought cars and moved to suburban housing. The Little Italy's retained many of the older generation, and found a new niche by the 1970s as restaurant districts that were convenient to people working in the central city. Meanwhile the young people were increasingly likely to find marriage mates from other ethnic groups; by the 1950s 58% of the third generations married non-Italians. [6]