Italian American Contributions to America

 Just an Update here……..Our new site “Italian Americans” is under construction and will be open soon.

Please bookmark this link and check back often….Oh yeah, and if you have any articles or links that you would like us to post or reference, please let us know.

This post might only be of interest to other Italian Americans, but bear with me….I recognize Black History Month and have studied about the great contributions of African Americans, to this country, however I have found little information promoting Italian Americans, and their contributions.
This is why I wanted to promote a few, lesser known facts about Italian Americans contributions to Americas greatness.

Every year the U.S. president signs an executive order designating the month of October as National Italian American Heritage Month. Coinciding with the festivities surrounding Columbus Day, the proclamation is recognition of the many achievements, contributions, and successes of Americans of Italian descent as well as Italians in America.

Over 5.4 million Italians immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1992. Today there are over 26 million Americans of Italian descent in the United States, making them the fifth largest ethnic group.
The country was even named after an Italian, the explorer and geographer Amerigo Vespucci. One way to celebrate Italian American heritage is with The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Italian History and Culture, which includes the accomplishments and successes of many Italian Americans.

Because of this, and the fact that I am American of Italian descent, I thought that I would start my own celebration of Italian American History month. Here you will find no bias to color.

My own version of Italian American History Month:

Italian Festivals

Below is a link of Italian and Italian American festivals held around the country. It was compiled by the National Italian American Foundation.

Italian Festivals Link

Some information on Italian Americans and their deeds and influences on America:

ITALIAN AMERICANS IN WORLD WAR II

Few people are aware that more than half a million Italians living in the United States during World War II suffered serious violations of their civil rights.

* Shortly after the United States declared war on Italy in 1941, the federal government classified more than 600,000 Italians living in the United States as “internal enemies.”
* From February through October 1942, the United States imposed restrictions on these 600,000 Italians, most of whom had been living in the United States since the turn of the century.

* As “enemy aliens,” Italians were required to register at the nearest post office, carry identification cards, and report all job changes. They could not travel more than five miles from their homes, had to adhere to curfews, and were forbidden to own guns, cameras, and short-wave radios.

* The Army forced more than 100 U.S. citizens of Italian birth to relocate from the east and west coasts and the Gulf of Mexico to “safe” inland zones.

* The restrictions caused many Italians to lose their jobs and limited the freedom of movement of thousands of others, including a fisherman named Giuseppe DiMaggio, who could not visit the San Francisco restaurant owned by his son, Joe DiMaggio.

* During World War II, an estimated 1.2 million Americans of Italian descent served in the U.S. military, constituting one of the largest segments of the US combat forces of about 12 million. However, elderly Italian mothers and fathers were not allowed to visit sons in the U.S. armed forces, who were assigned to military installations.

* The Immigration and Naturalization Service held nearly 3,300 Italians in internment camps for varying lengths of time during the war.

* During the same period, the mayors of two of America’s largest cities were Italian Americans: Angelo Rossi of San Francisco and Fiorello LaGuardia of New York. Both were sons of Italian immigrants.

* For more information, see “The Unknown Internment” by Stephen Fox. The book is available from the author in McKinleyville, California for $10.00. To order, call or fax 707/839-1919.

ITALIAN AMERICANS IN GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE

Italian Americans have been part of the American political scene for more than 200 years.

* The words in the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal” were suggested to Thomas Jefferson by Filippo Mazzei, a Tuscan physician, business man, pamphleteer and Jefferson’s friend and neighbor. Mazzei’s original words were “All men are by nature equally free and independent.”

* Two of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence were of Italian origin: William Paca and Caesar Rodney. Paca was one of the first senators in the Maryland state legislature, governor of Maryland (1782 to 1785) and a major general during the Revolutionary War. Rodney of Delaware, descended from the Adelmare family in Treviso, is most remembered for his courageous ride to Philadelphia in July 1776. Though sick with cancer, he rode through thunder and rain to arrive just in time to vote for independence.

* Onorio Razzolini was the first Italian American ever to hold public office. He was the U.S. Armourer and Keeper of Stores in Maryland between 1732 and 1747, a duty which essentially put him in charge of defense for the Colony of Maryland.

* In 1837, John Phinizy, the son of an Italian immigrant named Ferdinando Finizzi, became the first Italian American mayor of an American city: Augusta, Georgia. In 1880, Anthony Ghio was elected mayor of Texarkana, Texas, where he later opened the town’s first opera house.

* Among the first Italian American governors were William Paca, who served Maryland from 1782 to 1785; Caesar Rodney of Delaware in 1776; and Andrew Houston Longino who was elected governor of Mississippi in 1900. The first Republican governor of Italian descent was Christopher Del Sesto, who was elected governor of Rhode Island in 1958.

* Francis B. Spinola was the first Italian American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives (1887-1891). A Democrat, Spinola represented New York City.

* In 1950, John Orlando Pastore became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1976. In over 50 years in public office, he never lost an election. A Democrat from Rhode Island, he began his political career as a state assemblyman in 1934 and became the first Italian American governor of his home state in 1945 after his predecessor resigned. He was reelected in 1946 and then again in 1948 by a record 73,000 vote margin over his opponent.

* Alfred E. Smith, who was born Alfred Emanuele Ferrara, was the first Italian American governor of New York (1919), and the first Italian American presidential candidate. He was defeated by Herbert Hoover in 1928. His paternal grandfather was born in Genoa in 1808.

* Charles Joseph Bonaparte founded the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1908, built the U.S. Navy into one of the strongest in the world and was the first Italian American appointed to a cabinet position, serving as Secretary of the Navy and later as U.S. Attorney General during Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.

* New York City’s “Little Flower,” Fiorello H. LaGuardia was elected mayor in 1931 and served until 1944. Elected on the Republican ticket, he became the first Italian American mayor of the city. The former lawyer was a champion of labor unions and campaigned in English, Italian, Yiddish, German and Spanish.

* Michael A. Musmanno served on of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and on the bench of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which tried the Nazi officers after World War II.

* The 1950 New York City mayoral race was among three Italian Americans: Edward Corsi, Vincent Impellitteri, and Ferdinand Pecora. Impellitteri won on the Experience Party ticket and served as mayor until January, 1954.

* U.S. Congressman Peter Rodino, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, led the Committee recommendation to impeach Richard M. Nixon. Elected to Congress in 1948, Rodino also was a key congressman supporting the law that made Columbus Day a national holiday in 1973.

* Anthony J. Celebrezze was the first foreign-born mayor of Cleveland, Ohio and the first non-native to be appointed to the U.S. Cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Also a judge to the U.S. Court of Appeals, he was born in Potenza, elected Cleveland’s mayor in 1953 and re-elected four times, the last time with nearly 75 percent of the vote. He was the only Cleveland mayor elected five times. He died in 1998 at age 88.

* Gov. Ella Tambussi Grasso of Connecticut was the first American woman elected governor in her own right and the first Italian American woman in Congress. Elected governor in 1975, she brought the state out of debt and created an “open government” so all citizens could easily access public records. Grasso served as governor until 1980. She served in Congress from 1970 to 1974. Ella Grasso died of cancer in 1981.

* Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman to ever run for national office in the U.S. In 1984 she ran as Walter Mondale’s vice presidential candidate. A Democrat from New York, she served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985.

* Mario Cuomo, who was first elected governor of New York in 1982, won the 1986 election with 2,761,000 votes, or 64 percent, the largest margin in New York history. During his 12 years in office, Gov. Cuomo pushed through landmark programs in criminal justice, education, the environment, health care, human rights, housing and health care that were national firsts. See his book, The New York Idea: An Experiment in Democracy

* The first woman to be secretary of state and attorney general in Nevada was Frankie Sue Del Papa. She was elected secretary in 1987 and attorney general in 1991.

* Brooklyn’s Rudolph W. Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City in 1993, and re-elected in 1997. During his first term as mayor, crime in the Big Apple dropped 41 percent, the largest sustained decrease in the nation and the lowest rate in New York City since the 1960s. The Mayor began his career in the U.S Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in 1970 at age 29, later practiced law privately and worked for the Attorney General’s office and the Justice Department. He first ran for mayor in 1989 as an independent but lost to David Dinkins.

* At the close of the 20th century, about eight percent, or 82 of the mayors of the 1,056 major U.S. cities had Italian last names. Per state, the largest percentages of mayors are in New York (35 percent), Connecticut (31 percent) and New Jersey (23 percent). Six of the Italian American mayors are women. Italian Americans constitute about six percent of the U.S. population.

* When the 20th centuryh closed, 31 men and women of Italian descent were serving in the U.S. Congress, including five senators and four women.

Italian Americans created many of the familiar items we enjoy every day.

* The Jacuzzi hot tub and spa were invented by the Jacuzzi family. whose family of seven sons and six daughters came to America in 1907. In 1915, they formed the Jacuzzi Brothers Incorporated, which supplied the American military with propellers. In 1926, they developed the deep well (jet) water pump that led to the famous whirlpool bath.

* Mr. Coffee, the best-selling coffee maker in the world, was invented by Vince Marotta, who also developed a better way extract oil from coffee beans and invented the paper coffee filter. Since 1972, more than 50 million Mr. Coffees have been sold. An estimated 10 billion Mr. Coffee paper filters are sold annually.

* The convertible sofa was invented by Bernard Castro (1904-1991) who came from Italy and opened an upholstery shop in New York in 1931. In 1945, he invented the famous space-saving sofa that even a child could open.

* Chef Boyardee, the man behind the nation’s leading brand of spaghetti dinners, pizza mix, sauce and pasta, was really Ettore Boiardi, an Italian immigrant from Emilia Romagna. Boiardi, who began as a chef’s apprentice at age 11, eventually opened a restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924 and began packaging pasta and sauce for his customers to take home. In the 1930s, he began selling his pasta and sauce in cans. A food distributor convinced him to change the spelling of his name to make it easier for Americans to pronounce. During World War II, the company was the largest supplier of rations for the U.S. and Allied Forces.

* The Big Mac, McDonald’s sandwich classic, was invented by Jim Delligatti owner of a McDonald’s franchise in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since its introduction in 1967, more than 14 billion Big Macs have been sold, making it the most popular sandwich in the world.

* Antonio Meucci invented the telephone in 1871, five years before Alexander Graham Bell, but the impoverished inventor did not have the funds (about $25.00) to file a patent.

* The popular Radio Flyer red wagon was created by Antonio Pasin, an immigrant Italian carpenter in 1917. Pasin began making the wagon he called the Liberty Coaster, after the Statue of Liberty, one of his first sights in America. Today, his grandson, Robert Pasin is the president of the Chicago-based Radio Flyer Inc, which he runs with his brothers, Antonio and Paul. The company’s 100 employees manufacture about 8,000 wagons a day.

* The chocolate bar exists today in part thanks to Domenico Ghirardelli. In 1867, he perfected a method to make ground chocolate. Today, Ghirardelli chocolate is sold all over the world, including the square in San Francisco named after him, where his chocolate factory - now a shopping center — still stands.

* Mr. Peanut and the Planters Peanut Company were created by Amedeo Obici and Mario Peruzzi, two Italian immigrants. Obici, who came to America from Oderzo in 1889, began selling five-cent bags of peanuts on the street. In 1897, he took Peruzzi as his partner. By 1930, the two had four huge factories, and raked in over $12 million annually. Today the Planters Peanut Company has over 5,000 employees.

* The cough drop was created by Vincent R. Ciccone, who began his career in the 1930s as a janitor at the Charms Candy Co. and retired as the company’s president and chief executive officer. Ciccone secured 20 patents, including the “Blow Pop,” a lolly pop with a bubble gum center. He died at age 81 in 1997.

* Charles Atlas, born Angelo Siciliano, invented the body-building technique called “Dynamic Tension” in 1921 and was dubbed “America’s Most Perfectly Developed Man” by Physical Culture magazine. By the 1950s, the former Coney Island janitor, had over one million followers. He died in 1972 at age 79 while jogging too soon after a heart attack.

* The ice cream cone was invented by an Italian immigrant to New Jersey named Italo Marcioni in 1896.

* The three-way light bulb was invented by Alessandro Dandini, who patented more than 22 inventions, including the rigid retractable automobile top and the spherical system, which concentrates and extracts solar energy. Dandini came to the U.S. in 1945, and taught at the University of Nevada in Reno. He held degrees in science, languages, hydraulic engineering and classical literature. He died in 1991 at age 88.

* Bernard Cousino (1902-1994) held more than 76 patents on audiovisual equipment, including the eight-track tape player and the automobile tape deck. In 1994, just days before his death, he filed a patent for a continuous loop video cassette that allows VCRs to play tapes repeatedly without rewinding.

ITALIAN AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN WASHINGTON, DC

Most Americans know that the District of Columbia is named after Christopher Columbus, but few realize how great a role other Italians and their descendants have had in building the city and its monuments. Italians helped create Washington’s classic architecture and impressive monuments, and many of the city’s schools, churches, and federal buildings.

* THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL — Neapolitan immigrant Attilio Piccirilli and his five brothers carved the statue of Lincoln, which they began in 1911 and completed in 1922. It is 19 feet high and made of 28 blocks of marble, carefully fitted together. The gifted sculptors, working out of their studio/living complex in the Bronx, also carved the famous lions on the steps of the New York Public Library, and the facade of the Brooklyn Museum among many other works in New York and across America. See Attilio Piccirilli’s biography by Joseph V. Lombardo, published in 1944.

* THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL — Using techniques handed down by stone carvers since the Middle Ages, Italian artisans created the gargoyles and statues that decorate the facade of Washington’s most famous place of worship.

* THE CAPITOL BUILDING — A concrete symbol of American democracy, the Capitol bears the imprint of Italian talent. Between 1855 and 1870, the Italian artist, Constantino Brumidi decorated its interior dome, corridors, and the President’s Room where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

* UNION STATION — Italian construction workers helped build Washington’s train station, which was begun in 1905 and completed in 1908, considered one of the most beautiful train stations in the United States. The six statues that decorate the station’s facade were sculpted by Andrew E. Bernasconi between 1909 and 1911.

* METRO — Washington is justifiably proud of its quiet, modern subway system, but few of the thousands of commuters who ride it daily know that more than 60 percent of Metro’s 764 subway cars are made in Italy. The DC Transit Authority purchased 466 cars from Breda Costruzioni Ferroviarie in Pistoia at a cost of about $1.3 million each.

This information, and more, can be referenced at the NIAF website.

Here is a past post with more links:

Great Links For Italian Americans…..And You Too

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Great Links for Italian Americans and you too
• “First I maka the pasta”
• Keep No Secrets: The Art of Discrimination Against the Italian American Per…
• Lawrence DiStasi Interview, Part I of III