The Italian Americans

Tony

Bennett

Oh, the good life. Full of fun, seems to be the ideal. Mmm, the good life. Let's you hide all the sadness you feel.

Narrator

Welcome to Roseto, Pennsylvania.

Population

1,600. To understand the real story of Italians in America, one needs to look no further than this little town. Founded 130 years ago by southern Italian immigrants, Roseto remained nearly all-Italian for four generations. Though many families have left Roseto, once a year they come back for a family reunion they call the "Big Time."

Martocci-Caponigro

Everybody co The Martinos, the Martucchis, the Sabatines, the Falcones, the Romanos. It's a big thing for us.

Queen

The Big Time has been going on for 119 years, and this is the 86th year that they have had a queen.

audience applause

inaudible announcer

Trigiani

The reason that the Big Time is so important is because it's the big thank you from the community. It's a celebration about, we're here, we're alive, we're well, we made it.

Narrator

But in 1964, this little Italian enclave made national news when, for a moment, the country focused its attention on the strength of their families. At a time when newspapers were awash with sensational details about Italian crime families, Roseto presented a different picture of Italian American life. That's when doctors from the University of Oklahoma conducted a heart study and discovered that Rosetans might hold the key to longevity.

Trigiani

In this little town, they noticed these people, that they're not dying. They're not dying of heart disease. How are they not getting heart disease? This is crazy.

Dr. Wolfe

Here's a community within the United States that has a strikingly low death rate from heart attack, which is the major killer in the United States. Now, why?

Narrator

A team of doctors descended on Roseto looking for clues to explain their good health.

Roseto Resident

They came to my house and asked me a lot of questions of your habits and all that. What you eat.

Roseto Resident 2

I think it was about 100 questions, the whole thing. At least 100.

Roseto Resident 3

I think everybody must've answered the same thing. We ate everything wrong, but we liked it. They said it was wrong. We didn't know it was wrong.

Roseto Resident 4

The spaghetti is not the best thing for you all the time, you know. But I'll tell ya. If I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with a meatball in my mouth.

Narrator

When the study revealed a diet high in fat and cholesterol, doctors seized upon a groundbreaking explanation.

Trigiani

They did this extensive study, and they came up with the bottom line. These people are not dying of heart attack, because they feel emotionally safe. They're not afraid about old age, because they're going to live with their families. They know they'll never starve, because the guy next door has a garden and a cow. In this Italian American community, look how they live. They know how to live. It's the family.

Dr. Patel

was one of having experienced the hardships of being Italian American in the late 19th century, of having overcome tremendous odds, but having bonded together very closely as a result of that experience. Now, investigators who study things like heart disease, they use the term the "Roseto Effect" to explain that a socially cohesive community is protective.

Narrator

At the dawn of the over 4 million Italians arrived in America. The largest wave of immigrants the country had ever seen. But once here, Italians' ideas about family would be tested.

Orsi

There was an expression in Italy that the very air of America somehow weakened the Italian family, and there was a lot of anxiety about this. Italians had thought Americans were dangerous, because Americans did not know how to live family life.

Narrator

Many of the earliest immigrants would choose to leave and return to Italy, while those who remained struggled to find their place in the American mainstream. Italians' notions of family would ultimately be reshaped in America, but they were born out of the complex history of Italy itself. Italy. Before 1861, there was no country called Italy. The peninsula was largely a collection of small kingdoms, divided north and south. In the north, there were the centers like Rome, From these cities came the frescos of Michangelo, the design of da Vinci. But to the south, where the majority of Italian Americans originate, was the impoverished Mezzogiorno region, what northern Italians called "the land that time forgot."

Talese

South of Napl From this comes the group who are not even Italian. They didn't call themselves Italian. They didn't even know what Italian was, because there was no Italy. My grandfather, Gaetano, was born in the Calabria area. We're talking about the most impoverished part of Italy, the area south of Naples, all the way down into Sicily. 85% of the movement to the United States comes from there, because it was the most suffering of the whole peninsula.

Narrator

The southern provinces had long been under the control of the Spanish Bourbon Monarchy, whose despotic kings left southern peasants living in crushing poverty.

Margavio

The south is an impoverished place. You can't get ahead. The little land that you can use is owned by somebody else, so there's no interest in your future. The peasants were bumped from the lines officially by noblemen, treated them like dirt.

Narrator

Then, in 1860, in hopes of ridding the peninsula of foreign rulers, Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi began a military campaign to create a new republic.

Gabaccia

Garibaldi wanted Italy to be unified as what we would think of as a democracy with representative government.

Narrator

In battles throughout southern Italy, Garibaldi and his band of 1,000 volunteers confronted the much better equipped Bourbon army. To his exhausted soldiers, Garibaldi exclaimed, "We either make Italy, or we die." By 1861, Garibaldi and his men had forced the Bourbon rulers from the country for good. the country of Italy was united, and southern Italians hoped they'd finally be free from tyranny.

Santopietro

After the unification of I Garibaldi thinks he's doing a great thing for all of us. The problem is, all it did to the southern Italians, it was just another invader. Instead of from another country, it was just from the north of Italy. And the northern government did nothing for the southern Italian peasants.

Fabiano

I remember of a story that was p down from my great-grandmother. She was a midwife, and she would go into people's homes, and she started noticing these curious dents in the wall. And it turned out that women were scraping plaster from the wall and trying to make the flour of the bread go further. I mean, that's how horrific the starvation was at the time.

Narrator

After unification, most southern Italian peasants could barely provide for their families. What meager wages they made went to pay taxes.

Gardaphe

This northern Italian government comes down and they tax everything. They taxed mules. They taxed food that was mandatory parts of the diet in the south. So, this lack of trust of outside is secondary only to this incredible investment they make inside the family. Families were the one thing that could be trusted and the one thing that could be consistent and controlled.

Fabiano

Everybody in authority was the enemy. And if they knew more about you, they could tax you even more. If they knew you had a little garden plot, a home garden plot, they could tax you more, so the whole thing became don't tell anybody anything, only the people that you trust the most, your family and your closest friends, because the more knowledge others have, the more they can hurt you with it. And that came with them when they came to America.

Narrator

By 1870, only a decade after Italian unification, the economic conditions in the south forced many southern Italians to flee their villages in search of work in America. For many of those early immigrants, the first stop was the Mississippi and the Port of New Orleans.

Nystrom

Italians, mostly Sicilians, started coming to New Orleans before they came anywhere else in America. It was the middle of the 19th century; they were involved in the Mediterranean citrus trade.

Narrator

At the end of the Civil War, with the emancipation of slaves, the economy of the Deep South was in shambles. But the loss of free slave labor provided an opportunity for Italians on the sugarcane fields of Louisiana.

Margavio

My grandfather came here as a young man, 17. He got a job on a plantation. Sugarcane required intense labor. The able-bodied men could make as much as $1.00, or $1.25, on a single watch. When October you could count on ships coming up the river and dropping off their cargo, Sicilian immigrants.

Narrator

By 1890, Sicilians were the largest immigrant group in New Orleans, and they had even taken control of the historic French Market. Now the French Quarter overflowed with Sicilian families who called it "Piccolo Palermo." But to the old-line southern establishment, Sicilians' success was threatening, and the insular world they created in Little Palermo was exotic and dangerous.

Nystrom

The Sicilians kept to themselves a lot. Family; very, very important to the Sicilians and with that came a sort of sense of secrecy.

Smith

The tightly knit nature of the Italian American community became a source of suspicion for people outside the community who really couldn't understand who these new people with their foreign language and their different customs really were and what they were doing in New Orleans.

Narrator

In the local papers, stories about hot-tempered Italian bandits and reprobates read like dime store crime novels.

Smith

Like any port community, there was a lot of crime. The press was only too happy to write about this. And it did make great copy. The press always portrayed Italian American crime as very passionate. A midnight assassination or vendetta, they would always call it "the vendetta."

Narrator

But, in the fall of 1890, a crime was committed that would haunt Italian Americans for generations. On the night of October 15th, the New Orleans Chief of Police, David Hennessy, and another detective were walking home on the outskirts of the French Quarter. Hennessy was popular with city reformers, because he was seen as tough on crime, especially Italian crime. It was just before midnight as he approached his house when a group of men leapt from the dark and opened fire.

gunshots

Smith

Hennessy pulled out his gun and returned some fire, but he was already grievously wounded.

Nystrom

His p hearing the shots, comes running and he sees Hennessy laying there in the street in a pool of blood and goes and crouches down and asks him, you know, "Dave, who did this?" And famously, Hennessy says, "The Dagos got me." Narrator condemned the murder, calling it a declaration of war between American law and order and Italian assassination.

Smith

The mayor was furious. He ordered a dragnet. The police fan out into the neighborhood. The first person they grabbed was Pietro Monasterio, a cobbler who lived diagonally across the intersection from the Hennessy's. Cops flooded into the nearby

inaudible

Smith

market and arrested some fruit sellers there. Antonio Scaffitti was a night watchman. He was badly beaten and taken off to the police station. There was a house full of Italian laborers, and the cops barged in and grabbed everybody. There were also some better heel defendants. Charles Matranga and Joseph Machaca, who were food importers, actually surrendered to the police. They had a pretty full stationhouse by the following morning.

Margavio

Yeah, everybody swept up in this. You know, from the organ grinder to the exporter, you know. "They're all Italian; they're after the same thing." "They're all hoodlums."

Narrator

In all, over 200 Italians were arrested, and 19 were charged with murder. Over the next four months, the press highly publicized the prosecution's theory that these men were part of a secret Italian society known as the mafia. "mafia" began to crop up in newspapers across the country.

Fox

The word "mafia" appears in 1890's in the United States, in newspaper reports, especially about New Orleans. Anywhere there's a major community of Sicilians or southern Italian immigrants, the word appears. Whether it's an organization in those early days is not clear. I don't think the evidence is there for that.

Destefano

The association of Italians and organized crime began even before the immigrants arrived here. There was a lot of kind of sociological literature that talked about people from southern Italy and Sicily as having some sort of inherent predisposition to crime. "These people are a danger." "They brought their criminal traditions with them to America."

Narrator

On February 28, 1891, the first nine Italian defendants were finally brought to trial. Then, on March 13th, to the surprise of the New Orleans community, the jury returned its verdict. Not guilty.

Smith

For a city that had been led to believe that these men were all thoroughly guilty, this was a great shock.

Narrator

The day after the verdict came down, an announcement for a public meeting appeared in the Times Picayune.

New Orleans residents were told

come prepared for action.

Nystrom

Right in the middle of Canal Street, there's a fellow by the name of John Whitcliff, and he gives one of the most stirring speeches of the day and says, "In the spirit of our forefathers, like we cleared out the carpet bagger before, we're going to go to the parish prison, and we're going to go and clear out these Sicilian mafia thugs.

Narrator

A mob of 8,000 armed men gathered outside the jail.

Nystrom

They break through the doors, and the mob bursts into the jail and hunts down the Sicilian defendants who are being held there. JP Macheca, the wealthiest Italian in New Orleans. They find him crouching behind a post and just riddle his body with bullets. Others they drag out to the crowd outside. A couple of them are lynched by hanging them from light posts. The mob had a purpose, and it was going to show these Mafiosi, as they saw them, that the uptown elite was not going to tolerate a not guilty verdict.

Smith

Some of the dead had not even been brought to trial yet. And, when it was all over, these civic leaders declared that they'd restored the rule of law to the city, and they went home.

Narrator

The front page headline of the

New York Times the day after the violence read

"Chief Hennessy Avenged."

Smith

To this day, no one has ever proven who killed David Hennessy. To me, the more significant aspect of the story is that the entire community was painted with the same brush, and the collateral damage was so harmful. The case made the word "mafia" a household word in America for the first time. Italian Americans have had to live with this albatross around their necks ever since.

Margavio

So many people just went into kind of a denial, you know. I remember, even as a kid, I kept asking my mother that. She would say, just didn't do a lot of talking about it. She was always reminded of it, because people would come up to her and, when they wanted to taunt her, would say, "Who killa da chief?"

Narrator

After th coverage of the violence in New Orleans, the image of Italian families as dark and criminal began to take hold of the American imagination. In the years to come, a new wave of Italian immigrants arrived at Ellis Island, and they would have their own ideas about whether or not to lay down roots in America. Despite the horrific events that took place in New Orleans, the lure of American dollars continued to spur Italian immigration. By 1900, America was in the midst of a second industrial revolution, as mechanization transformed almost every industry.

Gabaccia

Cities are growing rapidly. Think of New York. Think of its water system. Think of its transportation system. Somebody has to build them. That creates an incredibly powerful demand, and not just for workers, but for men workers.

Narrator

Over the first two decades of the 20th century, three million southern Italian immigrants passed through the gates of Ellis Island, anxious to find work in America's booming economy. But many of these Italians never planned to stay in America for long.

Dunn

My great-grandfather, he went back and forth across the Atlantic nine times. Started as a young boy. He first comes at the age of 13 on a sailing ship. His initial inclination was to make wealth here in the country and go back.

Cantarutti

My father had about 5 trips back and forth between Italy and the United States. The fright was that he may never see his family again. There was always this anxiety, "Will I ever see my mother and father again?"

Narrator

These migratory workers, who made multiple trips across the Atlantic, were known as "birds of passage." And many of them would soon discover that working in America often came at a high price to themselves and their families.

Talese

My grandfather, spent seven trips back and forth. Made that same awful trip. Sometimes, "I'll never do this again." Well, he did it seven times.

Narrator

Like many Italian immigrants at the turn of the century, Gaetano Talese spent years separated from his family while he worked as a miner in Pennsylvania. Back in Italy, every night he was away, his wife still set his place at the table, anticipating his safe return.

Talese

My grandmother did not want to leave Italy, because she didn't want to leave what was familiar. At least, in Italy, the women, they had a mother, they had aunts. It was all internal and the family was all there was. There was a name for these Italian women whose husbands went as laborers to America. She was known as a "white widow." And the status they had was of being a little better off than the women whose husbands did not venture out.

Narrator

Giovanna Pontillo, a 28-year-old midwife from Calabria, had been married for just a few months when she became a white widow, after her husband, Nunzio, left for America.

Fabiano

The plan that Nunzio and Giovanna had was that he was going to return. They really felt that once the bad times were over, they were going to be able to build their life in Italy. My grandmother used to say, "Oh, my mother loved him so, so much." There was just never any question that they were going to be together.

Narrator

But in 1902, Giovanna's husband, Nunzio, desperate for work, boarded a ship in Naples to begin a grueling

Fabiano

These voyages over were horrific. You had some people in Italy from hill towns who had never even seen the ocean. And all of a sudden, they're on this ship, and they're rolling and tossing, and the sickness in steerage was just horrific. weeks on the open ocean, Nunzio landed a world away from his tiny village, in the chaotic metropolis of New York City. I think about Nunzio coming over and just how extraordinary that must have been for him. It was just jam-packed. I imagine that Nunzio's letters back to Giovanna were filled with these sights and sounds that was Lower Manhattan at the turn of the century.

Narrator

Inside envelopes filled with money, Italian laborers sent letters with news of their travels and when they might return. But what they often hid from their families were the grim details of their lives in America.

Aleandri

It was difficu They worked very hard jobs, they built the subways, they did the construction on most of the buildings in New York. They were exploited by people who would hire them out and take most of their wages.

Gabaccia

They live abysmal conditions, abysmal. Crowded together in boarding houses or in railroad cars. They're the bottom of the labor hierarchy. You know, they're human steam shovels.

Narrator

In July of 1902, Nunzio Pontillo wrote his wife, Giovanna, that he'd landed a good job on a construction site in Brooklyn. Then, just weeks in, Nunzio and three other Italian laborers were chosen by the foreman to help guide a massive gas tank into place.

Fabiano

They sent m under a 200-ton steel disc into 26 inches of space to repair some pins and rivets as they were trying to lower the floor of this gas tank. And it's unthinkable that human beings would be treated this way, and, sure enough, the timbers that were holding up this steel floor gave.

Narrator

Nunzio and the other men were killed instantly.

Fabiano

It's unfathomable in the way that he died. These men were used like, you know, animals. They were sent to do things that you really, in our day and age; we wouldn't have an animal do.

Narrator

Back in Italy, Giovanna awaited a l from Nunzio, hoping for news of his imminent return.

Fabiano

the house washing dishes, and all of a sudden she started shivering. And the story goes that on the rock that was right outside their window, she saw Nunzio tip his hat and disappear. And, at that moment, she knew he was gone. She wouldn't leave that space. They said she was out there all night long and no one could move her, and then she stopped speaking and stopped really functioning.

Narrator

For the wives and children left behind in Italy, America had always been a mixed blessing. The threat of debilitating injury and death in America's industrial machine was real, but the opportunity for a better life seemed worth the risk.

Talese

My grandfather, granted, he made little money and brought it back home, but he was such a beaten man and he became so ill because of his work.

Narrator

On his 7th return trip to Italy, Gaetano Talese succumbed to cancer, likely the result of years of mining asbestos. He was only 43 years old.

Talese

For these workers, it was hard times, but they did what very rare people do. They cut themselves off from what is familiar and throw themselves into the winds in a way, and take their chances that they're going to land on their feet. That one trip might have meant 11 days at sea, but those 11 days at sea can change the next 1,000 years of history. The whole family can have 5 generations that look back on 11 days and it comes from miserable people like Gaetano. It's awful, but it's true.

Narrator

Despite these terrific hardships, as Italian workers made greater inroads into labor markets, they began to lay down roots in cities across America. In time, they sent for their wives and children, and together, as families, they forged ahead, starting new lives as Italian Americans.

Lou Dipaolo

Why don't I give you a taste of this right now? This is our specialty. Fresh, handmade mozzarella. Did you taste it? I gotta go back and make some fre You girls, you took it all!

Narrator

Dipaolo's Market on the corner of Mott and Grand Streets in New York's Little Italy was opened over 100 years ago by Italian immigrant Savino Dipaolo. Savino traveled alone from Basilicata, Italy in 1903. But once he established his business, he sent for his family. His great grandson, Lou, has been making mozzarella here for over 40 years.

Lou Dipaolo

We bring in salt from Sicily, from the Mediterranean, so we can get a more authentic flavor on our mozzarella. If you know anything about this community, Little Italy, Little Italy was a hustle and bustle of merchants and pushcarts, all speaking Italian. A lot of people are very upset see Little Italy change. But you were never supposed to stay here. This was supposed to be an area of transition.

Narrator

By the Italian enclaves cities across America. Tenements now as Italian men sent for In New York, into the teeming streets of the Mulberry District. Formerly home to Irish immigrants, the area became known as Little Italy. Within Little Italy's in Boston, Chicago and the rest of the country, Italian immigrants were re-creating southern Italian society.

Orsi

In East Harlem, at 106th street, the people from Naples lived, on 108th and 110th, people from Basilicata lived. Each little village had its own saint, its own language, its own dialect, its own cuisine. And, very quickly, Italians wanted their own food, because they had this idea that food in America was not real food, that salt in America was not as salty as the salt in Italy, and the tomatoes were not as rich in America.

Aleandri

They lived and breathed being Italian in that community. Wherever that Little Italy would be, whether it was Chicago or East Harlem, it was a safety net for the community.

Narrator

But while these enclaves gave them a foothold in America, they also left them cut off from the rest of society, susceptible to swindlers who preyed upon the newly arrived. In New York, at the turn of the century, a group of petty criminals called "The Black Hand" was holding Italian immigrants hostage in their own enclave and threatening their entry into the American mainstream. In 1903, Gio arrived in New York's Little Italy after her husband, Nunzio's death. She agreed to an arranged marriage with a widower named Rocco Siena and together they opened a small fruit market on Elizabeth Street. But it wouldn't be long before Giovanna discovered that doing business in the insular world of Little Italy meant paying kickbacks to "The Black Hand."

Petrosino

Basically what they did was extortion. They would go to a guy with a cart, you know, and say give me so much a month of what you make; or they go into a bakery or a butcher and say, "I want a certain percentage." And if they didn't pay, then things would start to happen.

Fabiano

What this was was, like any poor community, it was gangs. The Black Hand came to my grandmother, Giovanna, and said, "I'll protect your store. Just give me $5 a week." My great-grandfather was really stubborn, and he kept saying no. He kept saying no and eventually they bombed the store.

explosion sounds

Fabiano

There were so many bombings in and around Elizabeth Street. I think there was upwards of 30 or 40 within the space of a couple of years. Lots and lots of innocent people died in these extortion schemes.

Petrosino

The Black Hand started out in this country as Italian immigrants came here. The Italian government was kind of pushing some of these criminals out, and some of them wanted to come here, because they were wanted over there. When they got here it was like, "Huh, you got all these Italian immigrants here, how can we make money?"

Narrator

Italians were not the only immigrant group plagued by crime. Irish and Jewish criminals also preyed upon their own. But the tight-knit nature of southern Italian families, and their inherent mistrust of authority, made crime in Little Italy that much more difficult to combat.

Fabiano

When Italian Americans were the victims of crimes, they didn't think for a second of going to the police, because they thought that could only make it worse. Anybody who was in any position of authority was generally the enemy.

Petrosino

Nobody wants to talk, because they're afraid. The police department really was mostly Irish then. They didn't speak Italian. It was an immigrant neighborhood. Nobody wanted to even go in there.

Narrator

But there was one man on the force willing to help these new immigrants. His name was Giuseppe Petrosino. Petrosino was an Italian immigrant himself, born in the Village of Padula in 1860. After his emigration, he joined the police force and worked his way up to Detective Sergeant.

Fabiano

Giuseppe Petrosino. Today, most people don't even know his name, but he was probably the most famous crime fighter of the turn of century. I think it bothered Petrosino enormously that it was Italians preying on fellow Italians, and he wanted desperately to get rid of the bad element so that Italian Americans could prosper.

Narrator

In 1905, Petrosino assembled a team of 4 other Italian cops known as the "Italian Squad." Often working in disguise, and using their knowledge of multiple Italian dialects, they wormed their way into back room parlors where Black Hand gangs plotted. Petrosino made hundreds of arrests and deported numerous gang members back to Italy. But his ultimate goal was to help Italians break out of their enclave by learning to trust outsiders.

Petrosino

My great uncle, he said to somebody in front of police headquarters. The guy said, "Why do you do this?" And he said, "Well, who's going to protect our people? Who's going to get them out of this, you know ghetto area and get them into society?" As long as the Black Hand was around blowing people up, they didn't have much of a chance.

Narrator

Despite the risks involved with speaking out, Giovanna decided to ask Petrosino for help.

Fabiano

My great-grandmother went to Petrosino in an attempt to try and find the people who had bombed their store. Shortly after she starts working for him, that's when Petrosino is sent to Italy.

Narrator

On February 9, 1909, Petrosino traveled to Italy to investigate potential bombing suspects. A month later, he was dead; shot on a street corner in Palermo, Sicily. In New York, over 250,000 people lined the streets to mourn him. With Petrosino's death, Italian Americans had lost a willing ally to help lift them out of their ghetto. For Giovanna, his death was devastating.

Fabiano

You can imagine the abject hopelessness of ever getting any justice. Now, everything is gone for her. Her store is gone. The one person that she had put hope into is murdered, and they're still after the family. And it's only a few months later that their daughter, my grandmother, is kidnapped. Why don't you just tell me, how did Nanny get to America? When I was in my early 30's, I finally got my grandmother to talk to me. 80 years later, my grandmother still believed that these people could hurt our family.

Angelina

I don't tell nobody. I'll never even tell my friends. I don't want them to know, because, uh, it's, you shouldn't tell. That's the way it is.

Narrator

The day after her fourth birthday in 1909, Angelina was abducted from her apartment by a Black Hand gang member.

Angelina

I was only a little girl, so I went with him!

Fabiano

She goes with the kidnappers and gets on the train and realizes very quickly that she's going over the river, and she starts screaming and crying and saying, "Take me home." And he grips her hand and tells her to shut up or he'll hurt her.

Angelina

Where they took me there was no houses.

Fabiano

She remembered every detail of the kidnapping.

Angelina

There was a blue shade down all the time, it looked like a store.

Fabiano

She was there for nearly four months, in this room with nothing, no bed. There was some hay on the floor that she slept in.

Angelina

I says, "Why don't you take me home to my mother?" And they'd say, "Oh, tomorrow, tomorrow."

Fabiano

What they would do is send letters. They would put blood on the letters. They would draw nooses and knives. They snipped a piece of her hair and put it in there and said, you know, "If you don't send the money, this is the last thing you'll ever see of her." Most children that were kidnapped at that time were killed.

Angelina

My mother would say that they took me, then they would kill me! I think that's why those other children got killed, because, uh, they mentioned who kidnapped the children.

Fabiano

My family paid quite a bit of money. They were clearly just draining the family.

Narrator

Three months and over $1,000 later, Angelina's kidnappers finally let her go.

Fabiano

She remembers running up the stairs and coming in and everyone was screaming, and she remembers taking her fist and beating her mother saying, "Mama, why didn't you get me? Why didn't you come get me? Why did you leave me there? Why did you give me away?" My grandmother was in her 80's when she first told me about the kidnapping and what is astounding is that she still holds all the fear. She still thinks you don't tell, some things you don't tell and it was the same thing that Petrosino fought against all those years, that the best way to keep your family safe was not to say anything.

Narrator

A long history of secrecy and distrust of outsiders would keep many Italians in New York locked in their enclaves and it would slow their integration into American society. But there were Little Italy's in other parts of the country where Italians in this early generation found a way to succeed. In San Francisco, Fishermen Frank Rescino and his son Michael, continue 100 year old family tradition of making their living from the bay waters.

Frank Rescino

My grandfather came over 1908, and then he made enough money to send for my grandmother. I mean, it was hard, hard work.

Michael Rescino

There's actually 3 generations just on this boat right here. I'm 4th generation. My dad's 3rd. And now my son, if he wants to do it, then he'll be the 5th generation. So, a lot of history right there.

Narrator

Since the late 19th century, Italians had been migrating to northern California on word there was money to be made in the cool waters of the Pacific.

Frank Rescino

They were master navigators, master! They fished without radios! They had a compass. I mean it was all, their computers were in their head, it didn't matter. It was like in their blood.

Narrator

Armed with skills honed in southern Italy, Italians would come to dominate the west coast fishing industry.

Frank Rescino

My grandfather started fishing when there was an abundance of salmon. There was herring. There was sardines. I mean, if you were willing to work, you would make money.

Narrator

In northern California, free from the crime of New York's Little Italy, Italians found a place where they could prosper. But even here, it would take one of their own to pull them from the brink of catastrophe and help them find their place in America. By 1900, the Italian fishermen in San Francisco were catching more fish than all the other Pacific ports combined. At Fisherman's Wharf, the Sicilians hauled in the catch, and the Genovese In San Francisco's known as North Beach, Italians purchased opened their and even where they vaudeville acts and of course, opera.

Hamill

This Sicilians had never been permitted to listen to in Sicily; opera. They weren't allowed near the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. And, suddenly, opera was theirs too.

Narrator

On t night of April 17 1906, the Grand Opera House in the heart of San Francisco swelled with the voice of the Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso.

Carouso singing in Italian

Narrator

But only hours after the curtains came down, the opera house crumbled into rubble. A massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake had struck the center of San Francisco.

Cleese

My grandparents had had gone to see Caruso the night before. And then that morning, when the earthquake started, my grandmother said, "I woke up. I ran to the front of the flat to go out, and the brick stairs had collapsed. So then I ran to the back of the flat, and that's how long it lasted."

Narrator

After the earthquake, fires continued to consume the city. Italians in North Beach grabbed whatever they could, headed to higher ground and watched as their homes and businesses went up in smoke. In the midst of the chaos and looting that ensued, few noticed a lone fruit peddler and his horse drawn cart stacked high with oranges. But this was no ordinary peddler. It was the banker, Amadeo Giannini, the President of the Bank of Italy. Buried under his fruit was the life savings of many of the Italian fisherman in North Beach.

Gumina

The fire consumed North Beach. Amadeo Giannini goes to his bank; it's on fire. He takes his money out of the safe, and he takes it to his home in San Mateo, and he stores the money down there.

Narrator

In response to the disaster, California's governor sought to close the banks in San Francisco, but Giannini saw things differently. He worried that a lack of money to rebuild would cause a crisis of confidence. To gain the trust of Italians, Giannini headed for the docks, set up two barrels and a board and started lending money.

Cleese

A. P. Giannini had the financial resources and set up card tables in North Beach to give people handshake loans and enable people to rebuild and get a start again.

Gumina

The earthquake and fire is going to hit the Italian community very, very hard. Giannini looks at people and says, "How much will it take? You need a home? You need to fish. You need to farm. Here's the money." And so it begins that he rejuvenates the spirits.

Narrator

Amadeo Giannini was born outside San Francisco in 1870 to Italian immigrant parents. As a teenager, he worked his way up selling fruit on the docks, and by the time he was in his thirties, he'd become a wealthy man. It was on the docks that Giannini met scores of hard working Italian immigrants who could never get bank loans to help build their businesses. So in 1904, he founded his own bank, the Bank of Italy, as an institution for the "little fellows," he was fond of saying.

Gumina

Giannini loved to talk to people, walk up and down the street, meet you, shake your hand, and feel by the calluses on your hand, you're hardworking! That, to him, was collateral, the calluses on their hands. Their hard work meant they would not fail. Narrator the earthquake and fire, the Bank of Italy was solvent, deposits were up, and with Gianinni's handshake loans, North Beach was rebuilding faster than any other part of the city. What should have been a low point for the Italians of San Francisco, Giannini helped turn into a triumph. And with his encouragement, Italians were slowly beginning to trust outside institutions. His Bank of Italy showed them how to grow their money while saving and in doing so, eased them into the American mainstream. "Before Giannini, I was a dago," one North Beach man said. "And after him, I was an American." Giannini helps bring them into the What he gives them is a sense of pride in being an American and that is something that they then repay him. How many children in the Italian community were named Amadeo after him?

Narrator

Amadeo Giannini would continue to gamble on the little fellow across California. Branches of the Bank of Italy sprang up everywhere. His ideas about banking transformed the industry, and in 1930, his Bank of Italy was renamed, becoming what today is fittingly known as the Bank of America. Despite the hardship and economic uncertainty faced by these earliest immigrants, somehow, Italian families persevered. And even in the coming decades, as they faced the challenges of assimilation, most were still grateful for the opportunity to call themselves Italian Americans.

Margavio

My grandfather always f to this country for giving him the opportunity to have something that he did not have in Sicily, just a chance to use his own hands, his own wits, to make something for him and his family. And in order to show his thankfulness, he would go to baseball games, which he did not understand, stand up and sit down when everybody else did, eat things that he would not ordinarily desire, like hot dogs, because he thought this was somehow American, and he wanted to show his debt of gratitude. He says, "America, I thank you."

Announcer

Next time, Italians stir up the American melting pot. From a Hollywood heartthrob to reformers and revolutionaries.

Woman

Here's this guy telling you, "Workers unite."

Announcer

For some, the journey is rocky.

Man

Sacco and Vanzetti became the largest "cause celeb" really that the world had ever seen.

Announcer

Others find a shortcut to "Easy Street."

Man

Prohibition comes along, all of a sudden the world opens up for gangsters.

Announcer

On the next "Italian Americans." To learn culture and history from the late 19th century to today visit PBS.org/TheItalianAmericans. Or visit us on Twitter at #italiansPBS. "The Itali is available on DVD; a companion book is also available. To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS. Also available for download on iTunes.