3-30-06, 8:43 am

The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism

Edited by Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, 2003


The Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism is an important collection of essays on Italian American working-class history. Generally perceived as conservative, Italian Americans have a lengthy and influential record of radical working-class activity. According to the editors, this conservative image, fueled by media stereotypes, presents Italian Americans as 'hostile to political, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities.'

The radical history of Italian Americans is often ignored by people in that community because it is deemed 'somehow too Italian and not sufficiently American' for fear that this history 'deviated from the norms of dominant society.' In the view of the editors, distorting or ignoring this history 'increase[s] the community’s vulnerability' by eliminating a rich history of socialists, anarchists, communists and civil rights activists who sought solidarity and equality of all working-class people.

Often prominent Italian American figures and organizations led the way in erasing this past and pushing a conservative image. They emphasized a historical narrative, say the editors, of Italian American history that ignored politics and insists that Italian Americans have no need for ideology or struggle for society-wide equality. A recovery of this history is needed, argue the editors, in order to tell the truth about Italian Americans and to re-inspire the community to reclaim its long tradition of political activism.

This book emerged out of a 1997 academic conference on Italian American radicalism and includes essays by prominent scholars such as Rudolph J. Vecoli, Jennifer Guglielmo , Fred Gardaphe, and Donna K. Gabaccia.

Vecoli’s essay provides a broad picture of the forging of Italian American working class radicalism and its early demise in the first half of the 20th century. Vecoli notes the eagerness with which Italian immigrants joined the US labor movement in the first decades of the century. Italian radicals, moved by the Russian Revolution, urged 'the uprising of the American working class.' Left-wing figures such as Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were persecuted for their involvement in workers’ struggles. And by the Depression-era and the founding of industrial unionism, Italian American workers 'participated in unions and labor struggles on a larger scale than ever before.'

Vecoli catalogs a number of factors, both domestic and transnational, that affected the early demise of this radical ferment. Political repression in the US leading to deportations of Italian American radical leaders was one major factor. Another was the rise of fascism in Italy. Italian American organizations like the Order Sons of Italy in America promoted support for fascist Italy and rejected their previously pro-labor positions. (Vecoli notes, in contrast to this, that Italian American radicals were among the leading figures in the anti-fascist movement.) The rise of gangsterism in working-class institutions, a phenomenon spearheaded by Irish and Jewish criminal elements and taken up by some well-known Italian American individuals, writes Vecoli, also contributed to the decline of radical activism in the community. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, McCarthyism and anti-labor laws severely curtailed left elements and pushed conservative working class figures to the foreground.

Most important, perhaps, was the issue of racism. Like other European immigrant communities, Italian Americans were racialized in the US as white. This process, both a result of existing racist practices and institutions in the US and of pro-fascist attitudes among Italian immigrants and Italian American communities, according to Vecoli, receives further examination by Jennifer Guglielmo.

Guglielmo, co-editor of another book titled Are Italians White?: How Race is Made in America, points out that by the 1940s with the decline of radical leadership and activism in the Italian American community, like many other European immigrant communities, Italian American workers had begun 'to insist on their whiteness, entitling them to privileged political rights, better-paying jobs, and leadership of the union.' Guglielmo goes on to add that they 'did so by practicing and institutionalizing policies of racialized exclusion in the union and industry.' Thus white identity for many Italian American workers came as a result of their direct attack on the equal democratic rights of non-white workers.

Fred Gardaphe’s essay works toward recovering the left tradition among Italian American writers. Gardaphe looks briefly at the works of such figures as Communist Party founder Louis Fraina (Lewis Corey), Communist Party member and author of the proletarian novel, Christ in Concrete, Pietro di Donato, pro-working class writer Jerre Mangione, anti-fascist biographer Frances Winwar, pro-Communist novelist and McCarthyite witch hunt victim Carl Marzani, and writer Angello Pelligrini as well as a score of other radical poets, novelists, artists and essayists.

Immigrant historian Donna K. Gabaccia closes the book with an interesting essay that argues essentially that none of this history was inevitable or the result of inherent cultural or racial characteristics of Italians or Italian Americans. Rather, the trajectory of the history of Italian Americans resulted from the domestic and global contexts in which it occurred. 'Capitalism,' Gabaccia concludes, 'class, politics, and the state were not trivial players in the making of Italian Americans, or in the making of Italian American ethnicity. They determined Italian Americans’ losses, restricted their choices, and made them – along with Italian American studies – what they are today.'



--Send your letters to the editor to