Frank A. Salamone - Viewing an American Ethnic Community: Rochester, New York Italians in Photographs

There are many people who assisted this work. The Rochester Public Library, The Rochester Museum and Science Center, The City of Rochester Photography Center, Sister of Saint Joseph Archives, Josephine Costanza (my sister), my cousins, son, and other relatives who shared photos, various people who consented to interviews, Joe Lo Curto, St. John Fisher College Library and Alumni Center, The Catholic Courier Journal, Sr. Connie Derby and the Catholic Archives, and so many other people. To allthanks from the bottom of my heart. And thanks to the good Sisters of St. Joseph at their archives for their prayers when I was operated on. They worked.

The first Italian settlers in Rochester faced problems common to immigrants elsewhere. Basically, they were outsiders and, contrary to the myth that Italians were welcomed in America before the large immigration of the latter nineteenth century, were made to feel that hostility from earlier settlers. Although there were agencies that did social welfare work among the immigrants and were accepted by them, most notably The Practical Housekeeping Center, later known as Lewis Street Center, and the Practical Nursing Association, the Italian immigrants became noted for their desire to solve their own problems and to pay their own bills. The instrument that enabled them to do so was the society or voluntary association.

Interestingly, although many of these associations were based on campagnia or regione, such as the Caltanisetta or Vulgarnara Societies, very quickly they served to present a united Italian ethnic identity. Even the use of regions united villages which otherwise were distinct in the Old Country. It is an irony not often appreciated that Calabrians, Sicilians, and others had to come to America to become Italians. A significant part of that transformation occurred in clubs as a necessary response to prejudice and discrimination in the Rochester environment.

The local Gannet papers attitude toward Italians has been noted above. It continued to treat Italians as either quaint or dangerous depending on the circulation needs of the moment. An interesting example is its illustrated article on the description of immigrants in Rochester (Union & Advertiser, Jan. 31, 1889, 32).

The house depicted as a typical Arcadian dwelling is, in reality, a summer house used by people to do some farming in a section they termed le lotte (the lots) and to get some fresh air. The purpose of the article was to stress the alien and inscrutable nature of Italians, a nature so different it would bar them from participating equally in Rochesters society. Therefore, it is understandable that the immigrants pushed to emphasize their willingness to become Americans. At the same time they began to underscore Italian contributions to western civilization from which American values ultimately sprang.

Ruth Keenes 1946 Sociological Masters Thesis provides a glimpse into the status of Rochesters Italians in 1940. It also demonstrates the bias, which Italians still had to overcome in the following years. Keene points out that the percentage of the foreign born in Rochester had declined from 12.7% of the population to 9.7%. She innocently concludes that never again would people have to worry about the growth of immigration. Moreover, the median age of the foreign born population, mainly Italian in Rochester, was 50.9. However, she (1946: IV) notes... the children of the foreign-born have just reached the productive phase of their lives. During the next twenty years our concerns will be with these persons who are themselves in a particular phase of the acculturation process. They are in a peculiar middle position, experiencing and learning the ways of the country of their parents at home, but meeting the impact of the American culture at school, in their jobs, and in their community contacts.

To Keene and other concerned Rochesterians this issue of acculturation was of primary importance. From their point of view, 17.8% of Rochesters population, 56, 329 people according to the 1940 census, was of Italian origin. It was not simply that there were 56,329 Italians, born in Italy or America, out of 324,975 people but according to Keene (5-6) these Italians were a high welfare people. Moreover, they have a high delinquency rate, over two times that of other American children. She points out they live in last chance areas, with overcrowding. Their unemployment rates are greater than other Rochesterians. Needless to say, their status was low. She concludes finally that there is a need to understand Italian culture to solve the problem.

Keene went on, however, to note that Italians had not yet been assimilated. Moreover, she understood that there was not a single homogeneous American Italian culture, a point too often overlooked in writings about Italian Americans. It is also important to note that a large number of Italians left America and returned to Italy. Indeed in the 1920s more Italians left to return to Italy than came to America. Many, in fact, did come to America with the explicit idea of staying for a short time and, contrary to many myths that have arisen, did just that. 62.8% of all Italians who came from Italy returned. When one considers that young men who came without their families made up the majority of those coming to America and that there were 135.8 males for every 100 females up to and including the 1940 Rochester census, it is not surprising that so many people returned. It also suggests that those Italians who remained in the United States differed from those who did not.

They followed the typical pattern of settling in areas with other immigrants of their own group. In 1940, for example, 6.092 Italians, 29.1 percent, of their total population were living in but six census tracts. Over 50% of Italians in Rochester were in thirteen census tracts, according to Keene (p. 50). By 1940, however, there was some movement out of these areas, a movement that accelerated greatly by 1960. Moreover, Keene reported changes among children of Italian immigrants, which foreshadowed even greater changes ahead.

Italians in Rochester had to adapt to the overall situation in Rochester. Rochesters population was 324,975, a slight drop from the 1930 census. It was the first drop in its history. However, Rochester remained the twentythird largest city in the United States, the same position it held in 1930. Additionally, Rochester was a city of home owners and Keene presents evidence that Italian immigrants and their children were moving into their own homes. Despite the bleak picture with which she opens her thesis, Keene does conclude that the first generation born in the United States was being acculturated into Rochesters society. And what was that society like in 1940?