The Southern Italian is Lower than a Negro - Booker T.
Washinfton visiting a rural Southern Italy , Booker T.
Washington, a former slave, commented: "The Negro is not the man
farthest down." From Columbus to Cabrini: America's Italian
Catholics For early Italian immigrants, the church was a
cultural and spiritual consolation, but even in their parishes,
they were sometimes relegated to the basement. Patheos; By Pat
McNamara, March 22, 2011 From the start, Italian Catholics have
played key roles in American history: Christopher Columbus, John
Cabot, Giovanni da Verrazzano, Amerigo Vespucci. But it was a
long time before Italians came here in large numbers. In 1851,
the City of New York had seventy-four Italian residents; by the
turn of the century it had more than Genoa, Florence, and Venice
combined. By then Italian immigrants were arriving at Ellis
Island at the rate of 100,000 a year. To understand why, we must
look back to Italy, which had just moved from a series of
independent kingdoms into a united nati