Il Piccolo Giornale Octoberber, 2020

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Founded 1994 Il Piccolo Giornale Octoberber, 2020

Il Piccolo Giornale is the official newsletter of Club ItaloAmericano of Green Bay, Wi.

Website: http://clubitaloamericano.org/ Facebook: Club Italaloamericano of Green Bay Board of Directors Send contributions/comments to: [email protected] Officers: Facebook: 230 likes & 239 followers as of 9/25/2020

President Website: 225 visits as of 9/26/2020 L. V. Teofilo Vice President

Richard Daley Treasurer Vicky Sobeck

Secretary Mary Prisco Past President

Richard Gollnick

Directors

John Contratto

Ron Cattelan NEWS FROM THE BOARD NEWS ABOUT OUR attended. We have offered opportu- Dom DelBianco nities for online Italian conversation, Marlene Feira The Board of Directors held their ANNUAL DUES and are looking into other online Janice Galt monthly meeting via ZOOM on activities. We continue to send We have been asked if we will still Susan Milewski Thursday, September 17. Up for members this newsletter every collect dues for next year, and the Darrell Sobeck discussion on the agenda were the month, and to maintain a club web- Annual Spaghetti Dinner and the answer is “YES.” Judy Sulzmann site and Facebook page. Annual Cena di Natale, our biggest Although we have had to cancel a Lynn Thompson We are hoping that 2021 will bring event of the year. number of events this year due to changes that allow for safe indoor the COVID pandemic, our organiza- Ambassador at Sadly, because of the surge in get-togethers, but even if that does tion is still active and looking for cre- Large COVID-19 and the difficulties in try- not happen, we expect to continue ative ways to serve our members in Riccardo Paterni ing to hold these events and follow and possibly expand upon the out- these difficult times. protocol, it was unanimously decid- door and online activities we offered Editor ed to cancel both. In February, we were able to hold this year. our annual Carnevale celebration Paul Marino The Spaghetti Dinner has been held As we look to the future, we need before the pandemic struck. This every year but one since our tenth your help to come up with creative summer, as usual, we held our week- anniversary in October. 2004. This ideas to keep Club ItaloAmericano ly bocce games and scheduled three will be the first time in our 26 year viable during this pandemic and passeggiate, with modifications to history that we will not hold our after. Cena di Natale. ensure the safety of those who Please ask yourself: October is Italian Heritage Month, for- an air of mystery. merly known as National Italian Ameri- What can we do, given the COVID crisis, to 10. “Mix your pasta with healthy green can Heritage month in the U.S. As an Ital- reinvigorate our organization and keep us leafy vegetables.” Favorites include spin- ian-American who strives every day to alive and active? ach, chard, broccoli rabe, or black cabbage live “La Dolce Vita” (the sweet life), here (a.k.a. Tuscan kale). You can email your ideas to are a list of ways to celebrate like an Ital- [email protected] . ian. You don’t have to be Italian to incor- 11. “Wear a tweed jacket.” In busy Italian cities, the women often wear menswear- You can also help our club by re- porate some of these activities into your life. inspired attire to work. It will go very nice- newing your membership! ly with #3. 1. “Dine with friends.” Italians love to We typically would start to collect dues share a meal with loved ones. Dinner can 12. “Buy a pair of Italian leather shoes or for next year at the Musicale in late Octo- take several hours while friends savor sev- boots.” They are an investment you ber, but because of the virus, there will be eral courses and enjoy good company. won’t regret. no Musicale this year. It would be a big 2. “Flirt.” Have you ever known an Italian 13. “Have an aperitivo.” It’s the Italian help if you would send in your dues with- who wasn’t a charmer? Flirting is a harm- version of happy hour: a small liqueur and out waiting to receive a renewal form in less activity that is fun for everyone in- a few tidbits to eat. the mail. volved. Hold someone’s gaze a little long- 14. “Practice double-cheek kisses.” It’s a The dues for 2021 will remain $15 per er, smile at the shopkeeper, throw a hot lovely way to say hello and good-bye. person if paid between now and January wink. 31, 2021. After that date, dues will be Do you notice a pattern emerging? Learn- 3. “Wrap up in a colorful scarf.” Italy is $20. ing to live like an Italian is all about the known for its beautiful textiles. Accesso- pleasures of life. Food, drink, fashion and Make your check payable to: Club Ital- rize your outfits with a warm, cozy merino oAmericano wool splash of color. romance. La Dolce Vita.

Mail to: Victoria (Piccione) Sobeck 4. “Have an espresso.” Italians love their SUNDAY BOCCE coffee and make some of the best. It’s a 1810 Oakhill Drive Our Sunday bocce games have been highly great excuse to buy a cute set of tiny es- successful throughout the spring and sum- Green Bay, WI 54313-4800 presso cups and coffee spoons. mer! With the arrival of autumn along 5. ”Watch an Italian film.” May I suggest with the surge in COVID cases, we will We hope you choose to remain a club ”La Dolce” Vita? Or ”Cinema Paradiso” or discontinue this club activity until spring, member and celebrate all things Italian “Life is Beautiful” or “Eclipse” I could go 2021. Hope to see you then! on all day. with us! 6. “Make a batch of homemade tomato sauce.” Start with a can of crushed toma- Italian Movie, But No Dinner toes, add some tomato paste, some water Italian American Heritage The Neville Museum is open again to the and dried Italian herbs, and you’ve got Month public and is taking great care to ensure yourself a delicious basic sauce. Jazz it up visitor safety--requiring masks, social dis- with garlic, onions, or whatever you like. tancing, limiting occupancy and disin- 7. ”Drink some red wine.” love a good fecting daily. Barolo or Chianti Classico. It’s good for Therefore, for those interested, the Inter- your heart. national Film Series will begin on October 8. “Try a glamorous new look.” Practice 7. However, in order to maintain 50% your winged eyeliner, add full lips and capacity, you'll need to register (for free) voluminous hair. Think “Sophia Loren” or for each film. The link can be found here: “Monica Bellucci.” Bellissimo. https://www.eventbrite.com/.../green- bay-film-society... 9. “Wear sunglasses no matter what time of year.” Italians wear fashionable shades We have scheduled the Italian film IL Divo in winter, summer, spring and fall. It adds for 7:00pm, Wednesday, November 18 at the Neville, but because of the Covid-19 Facing Windows The Man Who Will Come virus there will be no dinner before the Farinelli il Castrato The Postman movie. Fellini Satyricon The Scounger The description of the movie is: Fiorile-Wild Flower The Tiger and the Snow Il Divo (Italy, 2008), directed by Paolo Sorrentino Gomorra The Tree of Wooden Clogs

Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize this biopic Honey Three Brothers recounts the life of Italian politician Giulio Human Capital Tickets Andreotti covering a large portion of his I Am Love Travelling Companion seven terms as prime minister of Italy. It concerns itself with the inner machina- I Knew Her Well Umberto D tions of the man known as “Beelzebub,” Identification of a Women We Have A Pope the intrigue surrounding the disappear- ance of his political enemies, and the role Journey to Italy Wondrous Boccaccio of the Mafia in postwar Italy. Juliet of the Spirits Sponsored by the ItaloAmerican Society. La Dolce Vita Photos Passeggiate La Strada September 15 The Brown County Library has Life is Beautiful Italian Movies available. Life of Lies

Just go to: browncountylibrary.org Mama Roma

Catalog Mia Madre

Search for Title - DVD Night of the Shooting Star

Example: The Man Who Will Come - DVD Nine Good Teeth

Once Around List of Italian Movies on DVD Paisan Spread Out Paol Gioli Filmworks Brown County Library 8 1/2 Red Desert

Baaria Roma

Bitter Rice Rome Open City

Blaise Pascal Senso

Bread and Chocolate Shun Li and the Poet

Bread and Tulips Sicilian Girl

Christ Stopped at Eboli St. Frances

Days & Clouds Stromboli

Detective Montalbano Swept Away

Dillinger is Dead The Dinner The Garden of Finzi Divorce Italian Style Time To Eat Europe 51 The Leopard ARTICLES FOR OUR NEWSLETTER As October is Italian History — than others, while some were ranked as too close to blackness to be socially Please feel free to submit articles or pic- Month. The Following is from the redeemable. The story of how Italian im- tures for our newsletter. Information for New York Times about the Italian migrants went from racialized pariah each upcoming month needs to be sub- American Experience. status in the 19th century to white Amer- mitted to me by the 25th. (think Christ- icans in good standing in the 20th offers a mas) of the month. You should email window onto the alchemy through which articles as an attachment in Microsoft race is constructed in the United States, Word and pictures in a jpeg format. and how racial hierarchies can some- My email address is: pao- times change. [email protected] Darker skinned southern Italians endured Questions— call me at 612-360-8246 the penalties of blackness on both sides of CLUB MEMBERS IN BUSINESS the Atlantic. In Italy, Northerners had long held that Southerners— particularly Sicili- We have several club members that are Newly arrived Italians waiting to be processed at ans—were an “uncivilized’ and racially Ellis Island around 1905 in the restaurant business: inferior people, too obviously African to be part of Europe. Nardi’s Affogato Bar in DePere, Luigi’s Vicious bigotry, reluctant ac- Italian Bistro in Green Bay, Sammy’s Pizza ceptance: Racist dogma about Southern Italians Garden in Green Bay, Tarlton Theatre in found fertile soil in the United States. As An American Story. Green Bay, Titletown Brewery in Green the historian Jennifer Guglielmo writes, Bay and Thumb Knuckle Brewing in Lux- How Italians Became White the newcomers encountered waves of emburg. books, magazines and newspapers that By Brent Staples “bombarded Americans with images of Whenever you visit these businesses, Italians as racially suspect.” They were please mention that you are a member of Mr. Staples is a member of the New York sometimes shut out of schools, movie Club ItaloAmericano as a support of their Times editorial board houses and labor unions, or consigned to business and membership. Oct. 12, 2019 church pews set aside for black people. CLUB BUSINESS WEB SITES Congress envisioned a white, Protestant They were described in the press and culturally homogeneous America as”swarthy,” “kinky haired”members of a Nardi’s Affogato Bar in DePere, https:// when it declared in 1790 that only “free criminal race and derided in the streets gelato920.com/ white persons, who have, or shall migrate with epithets like “dago,””guinea”— a into the United States” were eligible to Luigi’s Italian Bistro in Green Bay, term of derision applied to enslaved Afri- become naturalized citizens. The calculus https:// cans and their descendants— and more of racism underwent swift revision when www.luigisitalianbistrogreenbay.com/ familiarly racist insults like “white nigger” waves of culturally diverse immigrants and “nigger wop.” Sammy’s Pizza Garden in Green Bay, from the far corners of Europe changed https:// the face of the country. www.sammyspizzagreenbay.com/ As the historian Matthew Frye Jacobson Tarlton Theatre in Green Bay, https:// shows in his immigrant history thetarlton.com/, https:// “Whiteness of a Different Color,” the www.facebook.com/thetarlton/ surge of newcomers engendered a nation- Titletown Brewery in Green Bay, al panic and led Americans to adopt a https://www.titletownbrewing.com/ more restrictive, politicized view of how whiteness was to be allocated. Journalists, Thumb Knuckle Brewing in Lux-emburg. politicians, social scientists and immigra- https://www.thumbknuckle.beer/ tion officials embraced the habit, sepa- rating ostensibly white Europeans into Italian Americans were often used as cheap labor on https://www.facebook.com/pg/ “races.” Some were designated the docks of New Orleans at the turn of the last ThumbKnuckleBrewingCo/events/ century “whiter”— and more worthy of citizenship among Italian-Americans, and a diplomatic charge could occur in the absence of an blowup over the murders that brought actual victim and might arise from minor Italy and the United States to the brink of violations of the social code— like compli- war. menting a white woman on her appearance or even bumping into her on the Historians have recently showed that street. America’s dishonorable response to this barbaric event was partly conditioned by The Times was not owned by the family racist stereotypes about Italians promul- that controls it today when it dismissed gated in Northern newspapers like The Ida B. Wells as a “slanderous and nasty- Times. A striking analysis by Charles Se- minded mulattress” for rightly describing guin, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State rape allegations as “a thread bare lie” that University, and Sabrina Nardin, a doctoral Southerners used against black men who student at the University of Arizona, had consensual sexual relationships with Mulberry Street in the Little Italy section of New shows that the protests lodged by the white women. Nevertheless, as a Times York around 1900 Italian government inspired something editorialist of nearly 30 years standing— that had failed to coalesce around the and a student of the institution’s history— The penalties of blackness went well be- brave African-American newspaper editor I am outraged and appalled by the nakedly yond name-calling in the apartheid South. and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. racist treatment my 19th-century prede- Italians who had come to the country as Wells— a broad anti-lynching effort. cessors displayed in writing about African- ”free white persons” were often marked Americans and Italian immigrants. as black because they accepted “black” When Wells took her anti-lynching cam- jobs in the Louisiana sugar fields or be- A Black ‘Brute’ Lynched cause they chose to live among African- paign to England in the 1890s, Times edi- Americans. This left them vulnerable to The lynchings of Italians came at a time tors rebuked her for representing “black marauding mobs like the ones that when newspapers in the South had estab- brutes” abroad in an editorial that joked hanged, shot, dismembered or burned lished the gory convention of advertising about what they described as “the prac- alive thousands of black men, women and the far more numerous public murders of tice of roasting Negro ravishers alive and children across the South. African-Americans in advance— to attract boring out their eyes with red-hot pok- large crowds—and justifying the killings by ers.” The editorial slandered African- The federal holiday honoring the Italian labeling the victims “brutes,” “fiends,” Americans generally, referring to rape as explorer Christopher Columbus— “ravishers,” “born criminals” or “a crime to which Negroes are particularly celebrated on Monday— was central to “troublesome Negroes.” Even high- prone.” The Times editors may have the process through which Italian- minded news organizations that claimed lodged objections to lynching— but they Americans were fully ratified as white dur- to abhor the practice legitimized lynching did so in a rhetoric firmly rooted in white ing the 20th century. The rationale for the by trafficking in racist stereotypes about supremacy. holiday was steeped in myth, and allowed its victims. Italian-Americans to write a laudatory portrait of themselves into the civic rec- As Mr. Seguin recently showed, many ‘Assassins by Nature’ ord. Northern newspapers were “just as com- plicit” in justifying mob violence as their Italian immigrants were welcomed into Few who march in Columbus Day parades Southern counterparts. For its part, The Louisiana after the Civil War, when the or recount the tale of Columbus’s voyage Times made repeated use of the headline planter class was in desperate need of from Europe to the New World are aware “A Brutal Negro Lynched,” presuming the cheap labor to replace newly emancipated of how the holiday came about or that victims’ guilt and branding them as con- black people, who were leaving back- President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed it genital criminals. Lynchings of black men breaking jobs in the fields for more gainful as a one-time national celebration in in the South were often based on fabricat- employment. 1892— in the wake of a bloody New Orle- ed accusations of sexual assault. As the ans lynching that took the lives of 11 Ital- These Italians seemed at first to be the Equal Justice Initiative explained in its ian immigrants. The proclamation was answer to both the labor shortage and the 2015 report on lynching in America, a rape part of a broader attempt to quiet outrage increasingly pressing quest for settlers who would support white domination in crescendo in an 1882 editorial that ap- complicity in the chief’s murder. the emerging Jim Crow state. Louisiana’s peared under the headline “Our Future romance with Italian labor began to sour Citizens.” The editors wrote: when the new immigrants balked at low “There has never been since New York wages and dismal working conditions. was founded so low and ignorant a class The newcomers also chose to live togeth- among the immigrants who poured in er in Italian neighborhoods, where they here as the Southern Italians who have spoke their native tongue, preserved Ital- been crowding our docks during the past ian customs and developed successful year.” businesses that catered to African- The editors reserved their worst invective Americans, with whom they fraternized for Italian immigrant children, whom they and intermarried. In time, this proximity described as “utterly unfit —ragged, filthy, to blackness would lead white Southern- and verminous as they were— to be ers to view Sicilians, in particular, as not placed in the public primary schools fully white and to see them as eligible for among the decent children of American persecution — including lynching — that mechanics.” had customarily been imposed on African-

Americans. The racist myth that African-Americans and Sicilians were both innately criminal

drove an 1887 Times story about a lynch- The monument to Dave Hennessy rises above nearly all the other tombs in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. ing victim in Mississippi whose name was given as “Dago Joe”— “dago” being a slur That the evidence was distressingly weak directed at Italian and Spanish-speaking was evident from the verdicts that were immigrants. The victim was described as a swiftly handed down: Of the first nine to Clams being sold from a cart Many Italian Americans lived “half breed” who “was the son of a Sicilian in a section of New Orleans be tried, six were acquitted; three others that became known as Little father and a mulatto mother, and had the were granted mistrials. The leaders of the Palermo worst characteristics of both races in his mob that then went after them advertised Nevertheless, as the historian Jessica Bar- makeup. He was cunning, treacherous and their plans in advance, knowing full well bata Jackson showed recently in the jour- cruel, and was regarded in the community that the city’s elites— who coveted the nal Louisiana History, Italian newcomers where he lived as an assassin by nature.” businesses the Italians had built or hated were still well thought of in New Orleans the Italians for fraternizing with African- in the 1870s when negative stereotypes Americans — would never seek justice for were being established in the Northern Sicilians as ‘Rattlesnakes’ the dead. After the lynching, a grand jury press. investigation pronounced the killings

praiseworthy, turning that inquiry into The Times, for instance, described them as The carnage in New Orleans was set in what the historian Barbara Botein de- bandits and members of the criminal clas- motion in the fall of 1890, when the city’s scribes as “possibly one of the greatest ses who were “wretchedly poor and un- popular police chief, David Hennessy, was whitewashes in American history.” skilled,” “starving and wholly destitute.” assassinated on his way home one even- The stereotype about inborn criminality is The blood of the New Orleans victims was ing. Hennessy had no shortage of ene- plainly evident in an 1874 story about Ital- scarcely dry when The Times published a mies. The historian John V. Baiamonte Jr. ian immigrants seeking vaccinations that cheerleading news story — “Chief Hen- writes that he had once been tried for refers to one immigrant as a “burly fel- nessy Avenged: Eleven of his Italian Assas- murder in connection with the killing of a low, whose appearance was like that of sins Lynched by a Mob “ — that reveled in professional rival. He is also said to have the traditional brigand of the Abruzzi.” the bloody details. It reported that the been involved in a feud between two Ital- mob had consisted “mostly of the best A Times story in 1880 described immi- ian businessmen. On the strength of a element” of New Orleans society. The grants, including Italians, as “links in a clearly suspect witness who claimed to following day, a scabrous Times editorial descending chain of evolution.” These hear Mr. Hennessy say that “dagoes” had justified the lynching — and dehumanized characterizations reached a defamatory shot him, the city charged 19 Italians with the dead, with by-now-familiar racist ste- of highly politicized myth making. reotypes.

“These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians,” the editors wrote, “the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have trans- ported to this country the lawless pas- sions, the cutthroat practices ... are to us a pest without mitigations. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they. Our own murderers are men of feeling and nobility compared to them.” The editors concluded of the lynching that it would be difficult to find “one individual who would confess that privately he deplores it very much.” The “Monument to the Immigrant” commissioned by the Italian American Marching Club o New Orleans, stands along the Mississippi River in Woldenberg Park President Harrison would have ignored the New Orleans carnage had the victims But in the late 19th century, the full-blown been black. But the Italian government Columbus myth was yet to come. The New made that impossible. It broke off diplo- Orleans lynching solidified a defamatory matic relations and demanded an indem- view of Italians generally, and Sicilians in nity that the Harrison administration paid. particular, as irredeemable criminals who Harrison even called on Congress in his represented a danger to the nation. The 1891 State of the Union to protect foreign influential anti-immigrant racist Repre- nationals — though not black Americans sentative Henry Cabot Lodge of Massa- — from mob violence. chusetts, soon to join the United States Harrison’s Columbus Day proclamation in Senate, quickly appropriated the event. 1892 opened the door for Italian- He argued that a lack of confidence in Americans to write themselves into the juries, not mob violence, had been the American origin story, in a fashion that real problem in New Orleans. piled myth upon myth. As the historian “Lawlessness and lynching are evil things,” Danielle Battisti shows in “Whom We he wrote, “but a popular belief that juries Shall Welcome,” they rewrote history by cannot be trusted is even worse.” casting Columbus as “the first immi- Facts aside, Lodge argued, beliefs about grant”— even though he never set foot in immigrants were in themselves sufficient North America and never immigrated any- to warrant higher barriers to immigration. where (except possibly to Spain), and even Congress ratified that notion during the though the United States did not exist as a 1920s, curtailing Italian immigration on nation during his 15th-century voyage. racial grounds, even though Italians were The mythologizing, carried out over many legally white, with all of the rights white- decades, granted Italian-Americans “a ness entailed. formative role in the nation-building nar- The Italian-Americans who labored in the rative.” It also tied Italian-Americans campaign that overturned racist immigra- closely to the paternalistic assertion, still tion restrictions in 1965 used the romantic heard today, that Columbus “discovered” fictions built up around Columbus to po- a continent that was already inhabited by litical advantage. This shows yet again Native Americans. how racial categories that people mistak- enly view as matters of biology grow out