Race, Citizenship and Sicilians in the Jim Crow Gulf South, 1870-1924
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ The “Privileged Dago”?: Race, Citizenship and Sicilians in the Jim Crow Gulf South, 1870-1924 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in HISTORY by Jessica Barbata Jackson June 2017 The Dissertation of Jessica Barbata Jackson is approved: _________________________________ Professor David Brundage, chair _________________________________ Associate Professor Cynthia Polecritti _________________________________ Associate Professor Catherine Jones ___________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Table of Contents Introduction: The “Privileged Dago”? …………………………………..……… 1 Chapter 1: From “Proper Citizens” to “Alien Electors”: Reconsidering the Experience of Italians & Sicilians in Louisiana Before & After the Lynchings ................................................................................................................. 23 Chapter 2: “Gentlemen, do you wish to kill me? I have always thought that you were my friends.”: The Lynchings of Italians/Sicilians in Louisiana and Mississippi (1880s-1910) ………………………………………………………..... 76 Chapter 3: The “Privileged Dago”: “Electoral Freaks and Monstrosities” in Louisiana’s Disenfranchisement Debates …………………………………..… 129 Chapter 4: “We ain’t got no desks for Dagoes!”: Segregating Italians, Sicilians and Schools in Turn-of-the-Century Mississippi …………………………..... 198 Chapter 5: “A Miscegenation Mess”: Legislating Italian Marriages & Whiteness in Louisiana & Alabama …………………………………………... 247 Epilogue: Citizenship, Naturalization and Immigration Legislation in the Gulf South to 1924 ………………………………………………………………. 305 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………..... 318 iii Table of Illustrations “Regarding the Italian Population,” The Mascot, 7 September 1889 ………… 35 “Result of Encouraging Immigration,” The Mascot 13 April 1889 …………… 37 “From Sunny Italy, Arrival of a Shipload of Immigrants,” Times Democrat, 18 October 1888 ……………………………………………………………………… 46 “From Sunny Italy, Arrival of a Shipload of Immigrants,” Times Democrat, 18 October 1888 …………………………………………………………………….... 74 “Bagnetto Was Hanged on a Tree in Front of the Jail,” Daily Picayune, 16 March 1891 ………………………………………………………………………... 74 Known Victims of Lynching in Louisiana and Mississippi by Race: 1882-1930 …………………………………………………………………………………….... 93 “Lynch Law,” The Mascot, 14 March 1891 ……………………………………. 100 “List of the Lynchers,” Report from Acting Italian Consul at New Orleans to the Royal Ambassador at Washington, 13 January 1900 ……………………. 112 “A Bad Easter Egg. The Bloodiest Carnival and Lent in the State of Louisiana,” The Mascot, 29 March 1891 ……………………………………….. 121 Map of Disenfranchisement Debates in Louisiana, 1898 …..……………….. 178 iv Abstract The “Privileged Dago”?: Race, Citizenship and Sicilians in the Jim Crow Gulf South, 1870-1924 Jessica Barbata Jackson Although the Jim Crow South is usually considered a story of the black/white color line, it is also an immigration story. This dissertation recovers a history of immigrants in the South who were not totally “white” but who were not “black” either. Where did they fit? And on which side of the color line were Italians relegated when southern states started imposing their Jim Crow laws, like voting restrictions and interracial marriage bans? While not barred from officially naturalizing as U.S. citizens but denied “unofficial” access to citizenship, what can the narrative of the Italian in the Gulf South tell us about the historical construction of race and citizenship? This dissertation expands the geographic boundaries and traditional focal points of immigration history and southern studies, rectifying the consistent exclusion of the Italian/Sicilian diaspora from southern history, and closes a significant gap in the existing scholarship on Louisiana and the Gulf South. Additionally, I trouble a reliance on strictly nation-state constructions of citizenship and broaden a point of inquiry for deconstructing race. Furthermore, by using a transnational approach, I reconfigure what we have previously understood about the story of Italian immigration: I analyze the lynchings of Italians, the impact of disenfranchisement efforts upon Italians, attempts to segregate Sicilian children from “white” schools, v and the inconsistent way that Sicilians and other Italians were racially categorized within turn-of-the-century miscegenation statutes. Ultimately, I provide a new framework for understanding the liminal status of racially-marked immigrants like Italians/Sicilians, who I term “racially transient.” This transiency meant that Italians moved among and between racial communities, as they slipped back and forth across the color line in ways that both reinforced it and revealed its instability. This transiency also caused southerners to paradoxically constitute their color and race; the lynchings of Italians represent moments when their “color-status” was contested, meaning Italians were vulnerable to being treated like other “non-whites,” while other moments subverted the racial questionability of Italians’ and progressively aligned them more fully within the “white” mainstream. Close readings of these historical moments reveal both the racial transiency of Italians and that context was crucial. vi Dedication To Josh, my best friend and partner in everything, to our growing family, and to all the adventures still ahead. vii Acknowledgements Over the past six years, I have received tremendous support and guidance from the history department at UCSC. I would especially like to thank my advisor David Brundage for inspiring my venture into immigration studies, for reading countless drafts and for his time, encouragement and feedback throughout this process. I would also like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee, Cindy Polecritti for mentoring my Italian studies (both as an academic and a traveller) and Kate Jones for always asking the tough questions that encouraged me to dig deeper. Thank you also to Vanita Seth for serving on my QE committee, Alice Yang for advising my MA thesis, and Cat Ramirez and Noriko Aso for their advice throughout this journey. And to all the other countless UCSC professors whom I took classes from, TA’ed for and worked with, thank you for your support. An additional thank you to my graduate colleagues and especially my writing group—our happy hour feedback sessions gave both reprieve and structure to life as an ABD. For financial assistance, thank you to Chancellor Blumenthal, the Division of Graduate Studies and Humanities Dean Stovall, the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, the UCSC History Department, and the Institute of Humanities Research. For research support, thank you to the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center Archives, the Louisiana and Special Collections at the University of New Orleans, the American Italian Research Library, and the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. viii Likewise, this dissertation would not have been possible without the love and support of my family and friends. Whether they were listening to me ramble on about my research, helping with mundane chores, puppy-sitting, driving me to campus, or covering one of my classes at PCS because I needed to be in class myself, the behind the scenes support was invaluable. They say it takes a village, and my community (especially my mom) certainly contributed to the production of this final outcome. ix Introduction The “Privileged Dago”? After five Sicilians were lynched in Tallulah, Louisiana in July of 1899, the Times Democrat of New Orleans published an article in defense of the lynching: “Citizens Plead Necessity For White Supremacy.”1 Just the year before, however, while Louisiana legislators disenfranchised African American voters through the implementation of the state’s grandfather clause, an additional provision was passed—subsequently dubbed the “Privileged Dago” Clause—which specifically protected the “foreign white vote” and Italian voting rights. What do we make of this paradox? Within prescriptions of southern “white” supremacy, where did Italians/Sicilians belong? As the title of this work questions, was the “dago” in the Gulf South actually “privileged”? While not barred from officially naturalizing as a U.S. citizen but denied “unofficial” access to citizenship, what can the narrative of the Italian in the Gulf South tell us about the historical construction of race and citizenship? By 1880, an Italian and predominantly Sicilian, community had become well established in the Gulf South, having arrived in great numbers to replace African Americans on southern plantations after emancipation.2 Animated by questions of mobility and identity and engaged with both official metrics of citizenship as well as unofficial constructions of belonging, this dissertation examines how racially marked immigrants like Sicilians and other Italians complicated constructions of race, identity 1 “Citizens Plead Necessity For White Supremacy,” Times Democrat, July 25, 1899. 2 Demographically speaking, the Italian community in the South was most concentrated in New Orleans, Louisiana, although I also document the expanse of the Italian community throughout the Gulf region, especially within communities in rural Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. 1 and citizenship in the Jim Crow Gulf South between the 1870s and 1924.3 While our understanding of ethnic history has long been rooted