As an experiment I am sending thefull text of my 1984 article on Italians
in Chicago heights that appeared in Ethnic Chicago edited by Melvin Holli
and Peter Jones.  I am sending it as a message rather than as an
attachment and it may not come through for all recipients.  Dominic


=09DOMINIC CANDELORO
=09Suburban Italians:
=09Chicago Heights, 1890-1975


               IT IS COMMON TO THINK OF ITALIANS in America as big-city
folk.l Yet in the smaller communities and sub- rubs, richly detailed and
continuous information about Italians and other ethnic groups is often
most available. The stability of the sub- urban population, the coverage
afforded by local newspapers, and the higher quality of local oral history
data can help to provide a relatively complete picture of one part of the
Italian-American experience. A comparison of the suburban with the
big-city experience of Italian immigrants might also shed new light on the
nature of the ethnic frontier and group survival in America.=20
  =09 What is now the suburb of Chicago Heights is an old community.
Four Scots-Irish families first settled in the area near the crossing of
the Sauk Trail and the Vincennes Trail, thirty miles south of Chicago,
in the 1830=92s. The small community was first known as Thorn Grove.
after an influx of German Forty-Eighters, it became Bloom (1849) and
finally, in 1892, the village of Chicago Heights; a decade later it was
incorporated as a city.
   In the early 1890s a syndicate of Chicago businessmen headed by Charles
Wacker and Martin Kilgallen formed the Chicago Heights Land Association
and aggressively promoted the manufacturing potential of this satellite
suburb, which already boasted excellent railroad service lily the Chicago
and Eastern Illinois, the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern, the Baltimore and
Ohio, the Michigan Central railroads, and a terminal transfer line. Their
efforts were rewarded with the decision of Inland Steel, Canedy-Otto
(machine tool), and other large manufacturers to locate in the city,
eventually making it one of the liveliest industrial centers of its size.=
=20
The land association, led by Scots-Irish settler William Donovan, set out
to sell 25-foot homesites to workers moving into Chicago Heights from
rural America and overseas. Donovan went on to build a real estate,
insurance, and savings and loan empire, and he claimed he never lost a
penny in mortgages extended to Italians.2
   The city grew rapidly, attaining a population of 20,000 in 1920 and
Supporting a large downtown shopping district. Encouraged by the
boosterism of the local semi-weekly paper, The Star, Chicago Heights
residents proudly proclaimed their town =93the best manufacturing city
its size in the country.=94 But the 1920s saw the rise of Prohibition-relat=
ed


crime, lending a shady reputation to the town, a development whiz
The Star and civic leaders strongly resented. After limping through the
depressed 1930s, the industrial satellite city boomed during the war
years and looked forward to great advances thereafter.
    The post-World War II period saw the expansion of suburban areas, the
development of regional shopping centers, and a decline community
identity. Today, after the proliferation of suburbia, the viral demise of
the once-bustling downtown business district, the decline of the
railroads, and the shift away from the glamour of heavy industry, Chicago
Heights is no longer a community of rapid growth, and much of the optimism
of the turn-of-the-century community boosters is gone.  Though it
maintains a population of over 40,000, Chicago Heights has;  experienced
what planners all =93socioeconomic obsolescence.=94 It is I the bottom fift=
y
of Pierre De Vise=92s ranking of Chicago=92s 200 suburbs.=20
    During the period from the 1890s to the present, political and social
leadership has also changed. Though there is still some evidence of
the Scots-Irish business establishment which dominated the community
at the turn of the century, political and business leadership is now
largely in the hands of descendants of the ethnic migrants, most notably
the Italians.
    The 1970 census showed 3,092 of its residents of Italian birth an
8,783 claiming Italian as their mother tongue. If third and fourth
generations are included, the number would easily doubled Italians are
also the best-organized and most powerful political force in the
community, dominating the city council, the school board, and the park
board.=20

 How did Italians achieve this local dominance? Generally, the early
migrants from Italy to America were mostly male, and so it was in Chicago
Heights. Many=97probably most=97of these international immigrant workers be=
gan
as =93birds of passage,=94 with a sojourner mentality like the golondrina o=
f
Argentina and elsewhere. In the period before World War I, there is
evidence that few intended to stay permanently most hoped only to earn
enough to purchase a small plot of land back in Italy. Naturalization
papers and Census records reveal a good deal of internal movement within
the United States on the part of the earliest immigrants, but less
wandering by the later Italians, who were obviously part of a chain
migrations.=20
   A study of 1,448 applications for Citizenship filed by Italians is
Chicago Heights between 1907 and 1954 reveals that the earliest Italians
 who came to Chicago Heights arrived in the 1890s, but only
3 percent of them came prior to 1900. Most of these migrants moved
between 1900 and 1914. After 1900 the pace quickened to almost 1
per year until 1908, when it dipped to 11, presumably in response
the financial panic of that year. Though the national peak for Italian
immigration was 1907, the Chicago Heights migration peaked in 1913
when 218, or 15 percent of the people in the sample arrived. Some 7I
percent had migrated to the United States by the outbreak of World
War I. The war years saw a marked decline, with only one recorded
migrant to the cite in 1918. However, there was a postwar rush in 1920
when 127 arrived. Some 90 percent of this population had arrived by
1924, the year that quota restrictions went into effect. Thus the impact
of the quota on the Chicago Heights Italian community is clear, as
shown by the accompanying chart.6
    The age factor is always significant in defining the nature of a
community- and in determining many decisions concerning migration.
Among the Chicago Heights Italians, 46 percent were born before 1890,
82 percent by 1900. Thus a very high percentage were adults by the

Year of Migration of the 1,448 Italians Who Applied for Citizenship
                  in Chicago Heights, 1889-1954

1889- 1=09=09=09=091916-30=09=09=091942-0
1891 - 3=09=09=091917-3=09=09=09=091944-0
1892 - 3=09=09=091918-1=09=09=09=091945-0
1893 - 3=09=09=091919-12=09=09=091946-1
1894-6=09=09=09=091920-127=09=09=091947-1=09
1895- 3=09=09=09=091921-63=09=09=091948-1
1896- 7=09=09=09=091922-20=09=09=091949-4
1897 - 4=09=09=091923-24=09=09=091950-3
1898 - 6=09=09=091924-7=09=09=09=091951-2
1899 - 11=09=09=091925-8=09=09=09=091952-0
1900- 40=09=09=091926-0=09=09=09=091953-0
1901 - 34=09=09=091927-13=09=09=091954-0=09
1902 - 41=09=09=091928-10
1903 - 48=09=09=091929-8
1904 - 40=09=09=091930-10
1905 - 82=09=09=091931-4
1906 - 80=09=09=091932-2
1907 - 91=09=09=091933-1
1908 - 11=09=09 =091934-2=09
1909- 59=09=09=091935-0
1910- 79=09=09=091936-0
1911 -34=09=09=091937-2
1912- 125=09=09=091938-0
1913 - 218=09=09=091939-3
1914 - 50=09=09=091940-0
1915- 10=09=09=091941-0

time World War I began. They produced a large second generation of
Italian Americans, who came to adulthood at about the time of World
War II. The pattern that emerges from the sample of 1,346 cases for
which accurate data is available, holds few surprises.

                         Age at time of migration
         (Chicago Heights Italians, 1907-1954)7

Under
12...............................................................11%
13-21............................................................40%
22-31............................................................38%
over
31...............................................................11%

Thus the traditional image of the immigrants as vital young people
contributing the best work years of their lives to their new land is borne
out in Chicago Heights.
    In nearly all the literature concerning Italian-Americans, much is
made of the concept of campanilismo, the parochialism or sense of place
that made an Italian=92s town or region of birth the most important factor
in the relationship among immigrants in this country.8 The regionalism of
Italy, the dialects and different customs, helped to shape the
occupational and residential patterns adopted by the newcomers.  And town
and region of origin continued to shape the attitudes and values of
Italians in Chicago Heights for many years after the initial migration.
Six major towns in Italy contributed 701 (48%) of the persons who applied
for U.S. citizenship: San Benedetto del Tronto, which claimed 216 (15%);
Montepradone, a nearby town, which was listed as the birthplace of 143
(10%) of the sample; Amaseno, a sleepy village near Rome, which
contributed an even 100 (7%); the Sicilian town of Caccamo near Termini
Imerese, which sent 97 of its finest to Chicago Heights; Villetta Barrea,
the town of origin of 78 (5%); and Castel del Sangro, which sent 67 (5%).
These last two are located in the Abruzzi.  Five other towns contributed
twenty or more to the survey.=20
    The breakdown by regions is as follows: Marche, 640 (44%); Sicily, 172
(12%); Abruzzi, 159 (11%); Lazio, 147 (10%); and Campagnia, 52 (3%). These
five regions contributed 1,170, or 81 percent, of those ap plying for
citizenship. Thus Chicago Heights Italians were strongly Marchegiana, from
the San Benedetto area, with an admixture of Sicilians, Abruzzese, and
Lazioni. Towns and regions which one might have expected to be strongly
represented in Chicago Heights, but which were not, include Naples (6
people) and Calabria (11 people). More surprisingly, few if any came from
places in northern Italy, such as Genoa or Venice.=20

   Italians moved into several neighborhoods in Chicago Heights,
with 53 percent settling on the East Side, a multiethnic and biracial
section convenient to the factories and steel mills. Since the 1950s,
however, the East Side has lost most of its Italian population and has
become heavily black and Chicano. Some 38 percent of the Italians
lived in the Hill area, often called =93Hungry Hill=94 because of the one-
time poverty of its residents and the steep nature of the terrain.9 The
highest hill in the neighborhood was chosen as the site for the Italian
Catholic Church, San Rocco. This area was multiethnic but contained
a heavier percentage of Italians than did the East Side, and virtually
no blacks. Today the Hill continues to have a heavy Italian population,
a strong contingent of Chicanos (who rent from Italian landlords), and
a negligible number of blacks.
    The East Side is directly north of the Hill, encompassing 11th through
17th streets. South of 17th Street are railroad tracks and factories that
separate the East Side from the Hill. The Hill takes up the area from 21st
Street through 26th Street, but is considerably smaller in area,
population, and density than the East Side. It contained smaller
manufacturing establishments and, though less convenient to larger
factories than the East Side, was within a half-hour=92s walk of every
factory in town. However, one major factory, the Inland Steel Company, was
directly adjacent to the Hill.=20

    Italians in Chicago Heights stuck together according to their towns
of origin. Ninety-four of the 100 Amasenese lived in the Hill area, with
88 of them on the western end of the Hill. Only 2 percent of the 97
immigrants from Caccamo lived on the Hill, preferring instead the East
Side. The same was true of the former residents of Villetta Barrea, of
whom 74 percent chose the East Side; 17 percent of this group of 78
lived on the West Side. Perhaps because they were the most numerous,
the progeny of San Benedetto seemed to distribute themselves more
evenly than did any of the other groups, with 35 percent on the Hill,
57 percent on the East Side, and 8 percent on the West Side. Curiously,
those from Monteprandone, a town quite close to San Benedetto, had
a close 89 percent concentration of their members living on the East
Side. The contingent that had the highest proportion of its people living
among the Scots-Irish and Germans on the West Side at the time of
petition was the group from Sulmona. Some 21 percent of their rather
modest total of 29 claimed West Side addresses.
    Town of birth also seemed to influence or correlate with the rate at
which respondents went into business. While former residents of Caccamo
accounted for only 10 percent of the sample from the major Italian towns,
they represented 36 percent of the saloonkeepers in the sample, 23 percent
of the grocers, and 20 percent of the merchants.  The San Benedettans were
proportionally represented in most occupations, and the Amasenesi were not
represented at all among saloon keepers. The continued influence of
campanilismo on subsequent generations suggests the strong influence of
very localized ethnic, as well as class, factors on the culture of Chicago
Heights Italians.10
    For the most part, early immigrants were listed as =93day laborers=94
in the 1900 U.S. manuscript census. A cluster of Italians in Steger,
three miles south of Chicago Heights, worked as furniture finishers in
a piano factory. A dozen residents of Hanover Street (East Side), several
of whom had come to the United States before 1890, were employed
in the Heroy and Marrener Glass Works, apparently at skilled jobs.
Many others were railroad workers and steelworkers. A large number
including women and children, worked as field hands in the onion
fields of South Holland (five miles to the north), where they were hired
by Dutch farmers to plant, weed, and pick the pungent bulb.
    The Italian workers reached their workplace by taking the Chicago and
Eastern Illinois Railroad train, sharing the cars with white-collar
commuters who often turned up their noses at the sight and smells of the
transplanted peasant field workers. Only one Italian woman was listed by
the 1900 census as employed (a washer woman), but many more worked hard
each day to care for boarders, of whom there were approximately
seventy-five in a population of three hundred. Others did needle work for
Ederheimer Stein Pants Factory at 12th and Washington, where it was not
unusual for a twelve-year-old girl to work as a seamstress and function as
an interpreter for the adult Italian female employees. Old-timers also
remember Pasquarella, a gutsy widow who worked side by side with the men
laying track during World War 1.=20
    After 1910, with the establishment of a half-dozen country clubs in
the Flossmoor area ( two miles to the north), Italian boys and young
men had the option of working as caddies at Flossmoor Country Club,
Olympia Fields, Idlewild, and others. Idlewild is a Jewish club, and
for many years the members had second- and third-generation Italian
American caddies.
    The most important employers of Italians in the pre-1920 period were
Inland Steel Company, the National Brick Company, and Canedy-Otto Machine
Tools. As one observer wrote:=20

They worked under brutalizing conditions. Chicago Heights had steel mills,
chemical factories, foundries, dye factories, very dusty wood-working
factories, etc. Every place was a place of heat, grime, flirt, chest,
Stench, harsh glares, overtime, piece work, pollution, no safety gadgets,
sweat, etc. The workers were, as the Italians called them, =93Bestie da
Soma,=94 beasts of burden. Emphysema, stomach ailments, heart ailments booz=
e
drinking to make the harsh conditions tolerable were what could be
expected from such a context.  Many men became morose and intolerant
toward their wives. They yelled at them, beat them up at the least
provocation and were cruel and indifferent to their children.=20

By 1900 the few Italian foremen were finding jobs for their friends and
relatives at Inland, where the work routine even as late as 1923 was
described as follows:
I started at 6:30 p.m. and quit 6:00 in the morning. I worked on
the straightening machines. It was eleven and one half hours of
deafening noise. The bars going through the straightening ma
chine, the noise of the machine itself, those huge monstrous shear
machines cutting a dozen one-inch bars at a time, the bars falling
into the receiving bins, the noisy crane continuously passing over
head carrying bars to be straightened and taking away bundles of
bars that had been straightened. One could not hear his partner
talk, unless the partner, who was only six feet away, spoke at the
top of his voice. We were five men on the machine. Four men
worked as one rested. Each man worked two hours and rested a
half hour. The machine worked continuously because there were
always four men at their place by the machine. I was surprised to
see men eat a sandwich, eating it with dirty, greasy, oily hands, I
was surprised to see men curled up in a wheel barrow sleeping so
restfully as though they were sleeping in a soft downy bed....
When I saw the bathroom I was horrified. It took me several years
to get courage to use it. They called it by its appropriate name, the
Shit House. I usually jumped the fence and went behind the
 bushes 14

    Industrial accidents were not uncommon. Oral history sources have
no trouble recalling=97and accounts in The Star confirm=97frequent
deaths of Italian workers in construction, at the brickyards, and on the
railroad
    Of the 300 or so Italians listed in the 1900 census, some half-dozen
corner saloonkeepers, possibly serving as padroni as well. Dominic and
Victor Pandolfi, Tony Long, Leo Vellino, and Rocco Castabello (Castabile)
had places on 22nd Street, while Peter Cassaza and Mike Rich ran taverns
on the East Side=92s 17th Street. A handful of Italian-born people were
listed as barbers. Dominick Napoli of the Marchegiani neighborhood on
Hanover Street, reputed to be one of the first Marchegiani immigrants
(1894) to the city, owned a grocery store. A Cacamesi, Nick Pagoria, had a
similar establishment on Lowe Avenue.  Joseph Sinopoli, a Calabrian, began
his grocery business in 1900 near Portland Avenue and 16th Street, next
door to his residence. He mixed sausage-making with Republican precinct
work; both paid off, since he established a sound business (still run
today by his descendants) and attained the office of city sealer in 1914.
He also taught many young men the art of meat-cutting.=20
    Another early success story was that of Gaetano D=92Amico, who arrived
in the United States in 1889 from Abruzzi. After working on the railroad
in Missouri, he moved to Chicago in 1892, then to Chicago Heights in 1895.
Seven years later, his family opened up a grocery store in the heart of
the 22nd Street commercial district, while he continued to work at Inland
Steel. The success of this business brought capital, which the family
invested in a macaroni business at 17th and Lowe. =93Mamma Mia=94 brand
spaghetti products, bearing the picture of D=92Amico=92s wife, Giacinta, so=
ld
well, and the company expanded into a larger factory in Steger. Although
this side of the business was eventually sold to a large corporation, the
original grocery store is still operated by a distant relative in the
original location, where it now serves a mostly Spanish-speaking
clientele. Thus the Italian community al- ready had some small and growing
business people among its numbers by 1914.=20
   Oral history sources credit these early immigrants with encouraging
their fellow townspeople to migrate to Chicago Heights. These sources
cannot recall the existence of padroni (labor agents) in Chicago Heights.=
=20
The term itself had a different meaning for them, connoting ownership of a
business or a property. They remembered Tom Cellini, the railroad =93boss=
=94
who hired numerous workers for his crew from among his neighbors in the
period during and after World War I. Sources also recalled that grocers
and saloonkeepers often helped loyal customers get jobs, but it was not
done for a direct cash profit or commission.  Another source relates that
workers and their wives were often expected to do household favors and
chores for their foremen and bosses.=20
   By 1910 the number of Italian people in the city had increased from
about 300 to 3,224, more than 20 percent of the town=92s 15,000 populations=
=2E
This increase set the stage for the development of ethnic social
institutions. Most prominent was the founding of San Rocco Church in 1906
under the pastorship of Pasquale Renzullo. News- papers credited the land
association with helping in the construction of the $15,000 church. Joseph
Cercone, then city alderman, is listed as the contractor. Dedication
ceremonies included participation by Chicago archdiocesan officials, the
Italian band, and several Italian societies=97all of which points to a
considerable degree of development within the ethnic community.=20
   =09Renzullo (pastor from 1906 to 1922) had to battle apathy, anti-
clerical outbursts by Italian socialists, and competition from the
Presbyterian Italian mission, the Church of Our Savior. Despite setbacks,
however, the pastor succeeded in establishing the Mt. Carmel School in
1912, staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Mt. Carmel Social and
Athletic Club in 1919, two institutions that played an important role in
the community for years to come. The school taught some Italian, and the
club taught leadership and discipline, also providing an entree for
Italian youth into the very important amateur sports scene in Chicago
Heights. The Italian community also looked to Renzullo for solace during
World War I, when the Italian army suffered defeat at Capporetto. It was
he who led the joyous parade when Austria surrendered to Italy in 1918. He
also served as an informal defense attorney for boys who got into trouble
with the law. Despite his efforts, Fr.  Renzullo was not able to erase the
heavy parish debts, and when he was transferred in 1922, Cardinal
Mundelein deeded the parish and its debts to the Franciscans. Thus Chicago
Heights Italians were ministered to neither by the Scalabrini Fathers
(whose special mission it was to serve Italian immigrants) nor the
archdiocese.22
   The San Rocco Church and Mt. Carmel School, however, continued to be
important forces in the community. In 1926, Father Pacifico Bonanni, who
was to serve there for twenty-five years, was named pastor. Father
Pacifico guided the parish through the difficult Depression years, setting
up such services as soup kitchens, and in the 1930s he was successful in
getting consistent financial support for church from Italian businessmen.
He was so popular that when he transferred in the early 1950s,
parishioners circulated an unsuccessful petition to keep him on.=20
Protestantism also played an important role in the Chicago Heights Italian
Community. In 1910 the First Presbyterian Church appointed Rev. Eugenio De
Luca to make a pitch for support within the Italian community by founding
the Church of Our Savior (eventually located at 24th and Wallace in the
Hill neighborhood). Under the leaders of Rev. De Luca, the Bible-oriented
church used a combination of Social services, social functions, and help
in finding jobs to pull together a close-knit group of up to 200
Protestant Italian-Americans who participated in a dizzying whirl of Bible
readings, choir practices, drama performances, youth activities, picnics,
parties, and sporting events.  Whether these activities were a cause or
effect, Protestant Italians Chicago Heights seemed to Americanize faster
and to move into business positions and the professions at a slightly
faster rate than did Catholic
 Italians. A possible explanation of this may be that the ehureh, lit the
early Puritans, stressed English literacy so that its members could read
the Bible. This opportunity to increase their English fluency an the
exposure to American culture afforded by church activities speeded up the
assimilation process. Although it was accorded a good deal of favorable
publicity by The Star, however, the Church of Our Savior never represented
more than 7 percent of the Italians in the city.  Harsh feelings and
name-calling between Catholics and Protestants seemed to characterize the
relationship between the two in the earl)  days. Old-timers remember an
incident in the early 1920s in which Catholic rowdies led =93Svaboda=92s bl=
ind
horse=94 into the sacristy of the little Protestant church. In more recent
times feelings have softened considerably. The third generation of the
original families is now the mainstay of the Church of Our Savior at its
new location on the northern end of Chicago Heights (the original building
on the old site has be come a Spanish Protestant Church).  Also founded in
1915 by Reverend Eugenio De Luca, pastor of the Church of Our Savior, was
the Jones Community Center. Located on the East Side, it was a religiously
oriented settlement-house operation aimed at the needs of all the ethnic
groups in the neighborhood=97 Poles, Greeks, Italians, and blacks. Classes
in citizenship and literacy a vacation Bible School, and boys=92 clubs were
part of its program. The center=92s well-equipped gym was a major draw for
generations of East Side youngsters as another avenue for the development
of athletic talent, a later key to social mobility. The Jones Center
received financial support from the well-established Protestant business
community in the city.=20
   However, for most Chicago Heights Italians in the pre-1920 period, the
most meaningful social unit remained the family. Sociologist Ed- ward
Banfield has proposed the theory that South Italian backwardness can be
explained by inability =93to act together for their common good or .. . any
end transcending the immediate, material interest of the nuclear family.=94
In his 1958 study Banfield criticizes this overemphasis on Emily to the
exclusion of other societal institutions. However, Banfield s =93amoral
familism=94 is an exaggeration when applied to Chicago Heights Italians. Th=
e
churches, mutual benefit societies, comparaggio (godparenthood), and the
individual immigrant=92s need to depend on someone other than immediate
family in his search for jobs and security in the new land argue against
Banfield=92s concept, as does the rich associative life of Italian-American=
s
in Chicago Heights.=20
   Yet the fact remains that in Italian and Italian-American culture the
family is the strongest social institution. The vast majority of the
immigrants were from young families: only 15 percent of the children of
citizenship applicants were born in Italy. Eighty-one percent were born in
Chicago Heights, as American-born received citizenship at birth. and were
likely to be easily assimilated. Of the 4 percent born elsewhere, only
1.7% were born in Chicago, indicating only a small degree of movement from
Chicago to Chicago Heights. The practice of comparaggio continued in the
new country, thus expanding the biological family. The divorce rate was
less than 1% in the Chicago Heights sample, and family size averaged 2.8
children at the time of application for citizenship.=20
    In addition to family and the church, Chicago Heights Italians, like
many American ethnics, relied on mutual benefit societies. In the early
days, trusted community members went from door to door to collect
contributions for people in need. In the years before New Deal social
security, unemployment, and disability benefits, these organizations
played an important role in softening the impact of hardship in a new
land. The Amasenese Society was established in 1906, the Marchegiani
Society a few years earlier, and the Unione Siciliana just prior to World
War I. They provided visits by a doctor who was on retainer from the
society, as well as sick benefits and death benefits. At the wake of a
deceased member, the society=92s standard and badge were displayed.  >From
the money assessed each member at the death of a comrade the societies
provided the survivors with funeral expenses, including an Italian band.
Wakes were held in people=92s homes until the 1950s, but Italians also
patronized the Gerardi Funeral Home from the mid-1930s.  Often the members
attended the funeral as a group.=20
    With membership at times of 200-300 people, these mutual benefit
organizations spawned women=92s auxiliaries and sponsored social functions
such as dinner dances and picnics. Political candidates appeared at their
meetings, typically held once each month on Sunday mornings.  One reason
for the regional identification of these societies is that membership and
benefits were transferable, for instance, between the Amasenese society in
Chicago Heights and in Amaseno, Italy, should the widow be a resident of
Italy or if the beneficiary returned to live in Italy.=20
    Ethnic societies provided leadership experience and social recognition
for their officers, and they reinforced feelings of companilismo.=20
Although major offices seem to have been passed around within family
clans, mutual benefit societies had little appeal beyond the second
generation. Sometimes actuarially unsound, these organizations have
dissolved or reorganized in other areas. Currently, the Amaseno Lodge in
Chicago Heights is very healthy, benefiting from a sizable post-World War
II migration and the institution of the feast of San Lorenzo (August
12th), patron Saint of Amaseno, as a weekend street festival and
procession. The smaller Marchegiana Society maintains interest by
sponsoring

charter trips to Italy. The Sicilian groups seem to have been absorbed
into the Italo-American National Union.=20
    Harder to pin down are the Italian radical groups. For example, one
small group organized a radical protest in the midst of World Star I and
had its meeting broken up and four of its leaders arrested by the police
for violation of the Espionage Act. The Star linked the Italian group and
its leader, Dominick Mormile, with the radical-syndicalist Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW). The Abruzzesi and the Marchegiani were
predominant in this group, which had ties with Chicago radicals and even
sponsored a visit during World War I of the Italian philosophical
anarchist Carlo Tresca, editor of Il Martello (New York).  However,
strategic placement of a policeman who was taking names near the entrance
of the meeting hall ensured a small audience for this dynamic speaker.
After World War I, the group seems to have faded out of existence, not
even surfacing during the Sacco-Vanzetti controversy, which dragged out
until 1927. This lack of involvement was probably the result of pressures
by both the authorities and fellow Italian- Americans. Naturalization
papers show that several of these radicals, including Mormile, had
difficulty obtaining United States citizenship.  Surprisingly, oral
history sources uniformly testify to the absence of labor radicalism and
violence in this rather rough industrial town even in the depressed 1930s.=
=20
    There is no doubt that Italian immigrants to Chicago Heights suffered
their share of hardships and discrimination, the =93uprooting=94 of earlier
immigrants described by Oscar Handlin and other scholars. On the other
hand, by 1914 we have some impressive evidence of the ways that Italians
were gaining a foothold in business and politics. A 1914 advertising book
boosting Chicago Heights listed Rocco Nicosia as the official professional
photographer. Italians were listed as owners of five restaurants (possibly
saloons) and six groceries. Three ran construction firms, two were in the
transport business, and two in the liquor business. Within a few years the
Union Co-operative Italiana was founded as a partnership grocery store in
a large building on the East Side.  Designed to provide lower prices and
Italian specialties for its customers, the cooperative also contained a
large upstairs meeting hall which became the site of many social and
political functions in the years to come.=20
   How did Italians fare in local government in the early years? Orazio
Ricchiuto, Michael Costabile, and Vigliotti were members of the police
department , but no Italian names appeared on the 1914 roster of local
fire department.  Nevertheless, Italians had been represented as alderman
in the city since 1904, when Tony Long
 was elected from the 3rd Ward (Hill). By 1907, three out of ten aldermen
were Italian: Sam Zona, Michael Costabile, and Joseph Cercone. Though
local government was officially nonpartisan, Italians tended to cooperate
with the Republican machine organiza tion of John Mackler and Craig Hood,
which actively courted Italians by helping them file for citizenship and
by finding them jobs in local industries. The number of wards dropped to
seven in 1911, and Italians continued to hold at least one seat, and som
etimes two, until the institution of the commission form of government in
1921. For the decade following 1921, no Italian was elected as mayor or as
one of the four commissioners.=20
   Newspaper accounts reveal the change from the aldermanic system to the
commission form of city government as a progressive effort to eliminate
corruption and the influences of liquor and gambling interests. Whether or
not this was true in Chicago Heights, the result was a loss of Italian
ethnic representation for a lengthy period. In any case, the initiative
and apparent success of a number of Italians in business and politics
would lend some support to the contention of Humbert Nelli that the
history of Italians in Chicago was a history of early social mobility.33
Their success also illustrates the new opportunities for modest
advancement and the middle-class values of the immigrants stressed by John
Briggs in Italian Passage.=20
   An indigenous organization reflecting the middle-class business
orientation of the second generation was the Dante Club. Founded in
January 1922 by Pasquale Luongo, Joseph Tintari, Louis Ursitti, Michael
Costabile, and John P. Mancini, the club=92s purposes were to =93disseminat=
e
American principles . . . to promote the spirit of fraternal life, and to
promote social intercourse.=94 Their bimonthly meetings took place in the
warehouse of the General Chemical Company on 22nd Street. The Dante Club
began with forty-five members but by 1929 had eighty-five, mostly from the
Hill neighborhood. In the 1930s the club built its own headquarters on
24th Street. They sponsored patriotic functions, dramatic presentations,
and (in the 1930s) spectacular blackface minstrel shows. Proceeds from
these events supported the construction of the club building, the paving
of the Garfield School grounds, the purchase of stereopticon equipment,
the support of a milk program at the school, and other activities. The
group also sponsored baseball teams, a boy scout troop, and the
distribution of Christmas food baskets. Speakers at Dante Club banquets,
held at the Union Co- operative Italiana, included the political and
business elite of Chicago Heights, and The Star showered this civic
organization with good publicity. When the organization made an outright
gift of $200 and pledged to buy $35,000 worth of war bonds shortly after
Pearl Harbor, The Star
 referred to the club as =93in the vanguard of patriots in this community.=
=947
Such American patriotism, absence of Italian cultural programming and
insistence on the use of the English language at meetings, would seem to
characterize the Dante Club as an agent of Americanization rather than as
a force for ethnic survival.=20
   Dante Club leadership seemed to rotate among young men whose families
were politically active. Infighting among these elements in the late 1930s
and early 1940s is said by most observers to have =93ruined=94 the
organization. In fact, at the height of the scramble, one faction of the
club scheduled a political dinner on the same night as the regular club
dinner dance. Nevertheless, the ethnic identification combined with the
middle-class aspirations of the Dante Club members is in sharp contrast to
the working-class subculture described in Gans=92s study of Boston Italians=
=2E
Though not college boys, the Dante Club members seem more like an upwardly
mobile Chick Morelli group than the corner boys of Whyte=92s Streetcorner
Society.=20
   What was the role of Italians in the Chicago Heights schools? The
school system=92s success at instilling Americanism and perhaps a degree of
self-depreciation is illustrated in the following essay by a thirteen
year-old girl at Garfield School in 1925:=20

I was born in sunny Italy and came to America when I was nine years old,
and I never will go back to Italy again because my father was in America
twenty-six years, and after three years he made me come to America. Now he
is an American citizen and I thank him very much because he did so many
good things for me.=20

The best thing he did is that he made me learn to read and write American.
He said that we should all know the American language.=20

The first when I came it was in the joyful month of May and he made me go
to school to learn. I am so happy that I came to this dear country that I
want to be a teacher when I grow up, so I can help other boys and girls
learn our language. I am going to be like Miss Peters.=20

The trend among Italians on the Hill was simply to attend the school
nearest them, whether public or Catholic.=20
   Perusal of the 1962 Mt. Carmel Golden Jubilee Book suggests that its
eighth-grade graduates tended to reside in the eastern portion of the
Hill. Convenience, economy, and a male-oriented anticlericalism made for
high enrollments at Garfield Public School. When tuition fees for
parochial education made Mt. Carmel less attractive to parents, Fr.=20
Renzullo threatened that he would refuse to administer first communion to
children not attending Catholic school. Parents sometimes responded by
pulling their children out of Mt. Carmel immediately after they had
received their communion. Though the Mt. Carmel school staff compromised
by offering Sunday morning catechism classes to prepare public school
children for the sacraments, antagonism on this subject continued well
into the 1950s. As might be expected, this pub- lic-catholic split on the
issue of education also served to divide the Italian community from
itself.=20
   Governance and control of the public schools remained beyond the grasp
of Italians. Until well into the 1930s, few Italian children went beyond
the eighth grade; there were no Italian teachers, and no Italians served
on the school board. This is in sharp contrast to conditions in the 1950s,
when the school board president, most of the board, and many of the
teachers were Italian.=20
   How people spend their nonworking hours gives us some picture of their
values, lifestyle, and the texture of their existence. Oral history
sources stress that in the period before mass media and under
circumstances of relatively high population density, ethnic life was
filled with the intense and constant interaction of people=97relatives,
paesani, playmates. Chickens, goats, pigs, and horses were also part of
the neighborhood scene, as were the comer stores, pharmacies, bakeries,
and taverns.=20
   As Albert La Morticella remembered the late teens:=20

=2E . . Chicago Heights was similar to one of the Western towns one sees in
the old Western cowboy movies. The streets were unpaved, Twenty-Second
Street had twenty-six saloons. Card playing, booze drinking and pool
shooting were the only recreation these foreigners would have. Automobiles
were very scarce. Everything was horsedrawn. When Twenty-Second Street
became paved with cobble stones, the curbs had iron rings imbedded in them
to allow horses to be strapped and parked there. The fire engine was drawn
by three pairs of horses. It was very thrilling to see the fire engine
come thundering down the street to the scene of a fire. The brewery wagons
were everyday sights; they were drawn by four horses.  Men used to sport
around with revolvers in their hip pockets. The ambitious men got special
police stars which were pinned to their suspenders....=20

   Families did for themselves: they canned tomatoes for sauce, made wine,
beer, and root beer, baked bread, made macaroni, picked cicoria in the
open fields for both salad and boiled greens, made sausage from the meat
of freshly slaughtered pigs, kept goats and made cheese from goat=92s milk,
picked mushrooms, prepared delicacies from burdock stalks, made soap from
leftover animal fat, and even prepared natural and =93supernatural=94 cures
for broken bones and severe headaches. Old- timers remember =93Doctor=94
Generoso, the herb healer, whose garland of garlic, red peppers, and a
magic coin (which supposedly came down from heaven) was used to cure minor
ailments. Each neighborhood had a woman who set broken bones. Cicetta
Papitto, a midwife, assisted at most births in the Italian community until
the mid-1930s, when Americanborn and educated Dr. Hugo Long began bringing
his patients to St. James Hospital. A Marchegiana woman on the East Side
also gained recognition in the community as a fortune-teller.=20
   As members of a self-sufficient community, Italian neighbors freely
exchanged food and favors. Family and campari visited each other on the
slightest pretext, exchanging small money gifts (baste) on such occasions
as birthdays, baptisms, confirmations, and even the removal of one=92s
tonsils. Close records were kept of these gifts for future reference when
the time would come for reciprocation. Weddings, often arranged in the
picture-bride mode in the early years, were the high- lighted social
events in the community. They were often elaborate affairs with a large
wedding party and a long list of guests, many of whom received personally
hand-carried invitations from the parents of the bride and groom. Because
of the importance attached to the proceedings, weddings were often a
stressful time: an aunt, a cousin, or an in-law might take umbrage at real
or imagined slights or lapses in

the demonstration of proper rispetto in seating arrangements or the choice
of the compari (best man) and other members of the wedding party. These
events were paid for with the money gifts (buste) brought by each family,
which sometimes resulted in a valuable nest egg for the couple lucky
enough to make a profit on their wedding.=20

   Oral history respondents tell of untutored peasants (first generation)=
=20
who would regularly make the long trip to Chicago to see the opera and
then return home to heated discussion at the barbershops and saloons over
the merits of the performance. Further evidence of Italian- American
identification with cultural things were the theatrical productions.
First- and second-generation young people joined Panteleone Laurino, an
East Side (Neapolitan) jeweler, in producing Italian plays and operettas
at the Masonic Hall and the Washington Junior High School auditorium in
the 1920s and 1930s. In 1925, Laurino=92s Italian Dramatic Club presented I
Dui Sergenti and Romeo and Juliet (with music). In February 1933 the
Eleanora Duse Dramatic Club, under the leadership of Cristoforo Di Sanzo,
performed Italian-language radio plays from WJKS (Gary, Indiana) and
mounted a production of I Cieci at the Washington auditorium on February
3, 1933. During that same month the Dante Club presented its annual lavish
blackface minstrel show to a large audience.46 In April 1933, Attillio
Carducci=92s Italian Presbyterian dramatic group presented Attorney for the
Damned. A few months later, the Laurino Company presented La Cieca di
Sorrento, also in Italian. Each production had a sizable cast, and there
seems to have been little overlapping of cast members; the audiences were
also reportedly large and enthusiastic. This flurry of dramatic
presentations reflects elements of cultural retention and assimilation.=20
It also reflects the energetic talent of the young people and (perhaps)=20
the high unemployment rates of the Depression era. But again, it seems
inconceivable that Gans=92s Urban Villagers would be engaging in the above
activities.=20
   For summer recreation there was the =93Tombola,=94 a Sunday evening
festival held at Ceroni=92s Grove or the San Rocco Church grounds, featurin=
g
band music and food and climaxed by the =93Tombola=94=97an abbreviated bing=
o
game with ten numbers in two horizontal rows of five.  Tickets sold for
one dollar each, and these weekly events were sponsored by clubs and the
church itself as moneymaking ventures. Prizes of $200 for the first five
numbers in a horizontal row (Cinquina), $700 for the first full ticket
(Tombola), and $100 for the second full ticket (Tombolina) were standard.
Fireworks capped off the evening.=20
    Young men hung around at the gas stations, barber shops, pool halls,
and taverns playing morra, a finger game, passatella, a vicious drinking
game, mozzaferrata, an Italian version of cricket, and bocce.  Adjacent
open fields and the brickyard swimming hole were the scenes of countless
boyhood adventures for generations. OBI history testimony indicates that
peer-group influence was strongest among the second- generation cohort,
youngsters who entered their teens in the 1920s.  The Silver Tavern group
and the Dozenettes (both still active) were formed during that era. Later
groups appear to have dissipated because of the greater economic and
geographic mobility their members experienced.=20
    Second-generation youths also fell prey to the lures of American
sports. Many complained that coaches in the 1920s did not give Italian
kids a fair break; but impressive percentages of future political and
business leaders gained their first community-wide recognition on high
school and semiprofessional sports teams. Cases in point are the careers
of Hap Bruno and Dominic Pandolfi. Mario =93Hap=94 Bruno moved from the Mt.
Carmel teams in the twenties to become manager of the Chicago Heights
Athletic Association semipro baseball team in the thirties and one of the
first Italians elected to township office in the forties.  Young Dominic
Pandolfi=92s stellar performance on the Bloom Township High School
basketball team in the 1920s paved the way for his appointment in the
early 1930s as the first Italian-American public school teacher in the
city. Sonny Talamonte, a race-car driver, was probably the best-known
Chicago Heights Italian until his death in the mid-1920s.  The success of
Chuck Panici as captain of the high school basketball team in the late
1940s and early 1950s laid the groundwork for his successful bid for the
mayoralty in 1975.=20
    Italians participated vigorously in another =93sport=94: interethnic
conflict. Into the 1950s Italian youths felt alienated from Waspish
middle- class West Siders, referring to them as =93Mangia Cakes=94
(cake-eaters or sissies). Gang fights were not infrequent, and in 1925 the
conflict be- came so serious that police moved in and arrested five
Italian boys and charged them with harassing the captain of the football
team, the son of the fire chief, and other high school athletes. The Star
reported that the Italian boys protested in court that =93everybody had it
in for them because of their nationality.=94 The paper advocated a get-toug=
h
policy against =93gang conceit=94 and complained about =93peanut politician=
s=94
making excuses for =93poor parents.=94 Nevertheless, delinquency in Chicago
Heights was never defined as a serious enough problem to warrant the kind
of delinquency prevention program that Clifford Shaw and his associates
established in Chicago=92s Taylor Street Italian neighborhoods
   The Ku Klux Klan was reportedly strong during the 1920s, and it claimed
an attendance of over 3,000 at a 1923 organizational meeting at the
Chicago Heights Masonic Lodge. It is quite likely that Italian- Americans
were involved in the burning of a =93Klantauqua=94 tent near downtown Chica=
go
Heights in July of 1924.55 Another incident that possibly indicates
interethnic unrest occurred in June of that same year, when a traveling
carnival complained to police that =93a gang of wops=94 had plundered their
booths.=20
   Community tensions were also reflected in the newspaper, as it felt
free to run such anti-immigration material as a cartoon captioned: =93This
is Not a Dumping Ground=97Signed Uncle Sam.=94 The cartoon appeared on the
front page of The Star in May of l924. Another insensitive example was the
headline =93Calabrians Carve=94 that appeared above a story dealing with
Italians involved in an East Side street brawl.=20
   Much of this antagonism on the part of Italian-Americans undoubtedly
stemmed from the fact that early Italian political successes under the
aldermanic system had been wiped out when Chicago Heights switched to the
commission (at large) form of municipal government in 1921. After that,
the political commentators repeatedly spoke of the East Side-West Side
split. Another gauge of intergroup feelings was job discrimination.
Motives are difficult to document, but it was not until 1933 that the
school board grudgingly hired Dominic Pandolfi, the first Italian teacher,
in a district with so percent Italian enrollment Oral history sources have
alleged that the telephone company and other large companies refused to
hire people with Italian names for white collar jobs. Prestigious women=92s
clubs also barred Italian Women frolic their ranks.=20
    Thus=97in the 1920s at any rate=97there are strong indications of
intergroup conflict and the nonpassive reaction of some Italian Americans
to the situation. Yet group identity was never strong enough even to
support the establishment of an Italian or Italian-American newspaper.=20
    Probably the matter that irked the Chicago Heights establishment most
about the Italian presence was the explosion of Prohibition related crime
in the community during the 1920s and early 1930S While The Star had been
apathetic about the murder of =93another Italian=94 before 1920, it was
incensed about the negative reputation the city acquired as a result of
the activities of Capone-connected bootleggers which was bad for business.
Dozens of gangland murders (including that of former Alderman Tony
Sanfilippo), occurring mostly in the East Side neighborhood, shocked the
people of metropolitan Chicago.59 Two major raids=97one on the lavish Milan=
o
Club in 1925, the other on a variety of booze and slot-machine holdings in
1929=97brought national and even international attention to Chicago Heights=
=2E
In addition, during the late twenties there were sixty-five murders in two
years. A federal agent was quoted as saying that Chicago Heights was one
huge distillery and that there is nothing in the United States to equal
it.60 Many residents remember Capone=92s frequent visits to the city,
especially his Robin Hood-like performance at a 1931 baptismal reception
in the Mt. Carmel School Hall. As =93well-wishers=94 filed past, Capone pee=
led
off one-, five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills from random stacks of cash
on the front table.61 Local underworld leaders conducted =93Supreme Court=
=94
from a bakery on 22nd and Butler=97adjudicating every- thing from domestic
squabbles to territorial disputes between =93liquor distributors.=94 The
bakery was the scene of a spectacular murder in the early 1930s.62
    One observer has suggested that bootleggers were major employers of
runners, sugar buyers, and plumbers (to construct stills), and that the
industry brought a measure of prosperity to the community during the
Prohibition years.63 Chicago Heights bootleggers dabbled in both
Democratic and Republican politics to protect their illegitimate
activities, just as Humbert Nelli has described the phenomenon in
Chicago.64 Oral history narrators suggest that the classic elements for
organized crime were all there: an unpopular law, a corrupt municipal
government, and a desire for quick economic mobility. Even grand- mothers
and favorite aunts got into the act, making a little moonshine for a
niece's wedding or for a little extra money to pay for piano lessons.=20

   The legacy of this plague of lawlessness has been extensive. Former and
surviving bootleggers made nest eggs for legitimate businesses or to send
their Children to college and into the professions. Hundreds ,)f innocent
neighborhood people of all ages were terrorized into distorted and Cynical
attitudes about law and order. Most important has been the Criminal image
of Italians which non-Italians have held and which non-Sicilians developed
of Sicilians within the City. This situation. rnoreover, added to the
burden of young Italians in the Depression era and after in their quest
for social mobility and status.=20

   By the mid-1930s there was at least one Italian-American doctor in
Chicago Heights, a half-dozen lawyers, a family of successful macaroni
manufacturers, the manager of the semiprofessional baseball team, a city
commissioner, and a handful of political appointees in mid-level positions
For the majority however, the 1930s spelled hard times.  Along with other
groups, Italians appeared on the relief rolls, waiting in line for WPA.
Many enrolled in night-school Citizenship Classes be- cause they feared
that noncitizens would be fired from jobs to make room for citizens.65
Thus applications for naturalization increased in the middle and late
thirties. To Cope with matters during the difficult Winter months, some
people resorted to stealing coal from slowly passing railroad hoppers.
They formed what the papers Called a =93moonlight coal company,=94 selling =
the
stolen fuel at bargain prices to friends and neighbors.66 Others=97less
creatively but more legally=97bartered their work unloading Coal ears in
return for a small supply for their families.=20
   World War 11 changed everything. This was no less true for Chicago
Heights Italians than it was for other American ethnic groups. War orders
brought prosperity to the heavy industries of the city, erasing the
ravages of the Depression. The war also brought alien registration and
draft registration, and in both Categories Chicago Heights Italians were
prominent. By March 1942 some 611 people had registered as enemy aliens.
While the vast majority were Italians, a considerable number were Germans
from the rural periphery of the city.67 Though there had been thought of
relocating Italians, such as was done with the West Coast Japanese, the
federal government settled for a photo- identification and registration
process. Demographically, second- generation Italian-Americans of Chicago
Heights were probably over- represented among draft-age men. The years of
birth of the Children of Citizenship applicants Clustered in the late
teens and the twenties. An early 1942 monthly draft Call included thirteen
Italians of the thirty white men called up.68 A photo of departing
inductees in downtown Chicago Heights at about this time also reveals a
heavy representation of Italians.=20

    Toward the end of the War, The Star regularly featured Italian
American war heroes, war dead, and even champion war bond buyers.69 The
patriotism of the wartime period, the traveling and education that the war
entailed, the Americanization involved in the military service as well as
the GI benefits for postwar education and home purchases had a strong
impact on Italian-Americans as on all Americans. In the post-World War PI
period, Italian-American Gigs went to college and into the professions in
significant numbers for the first time formed new families, and moved
during the late forties and early fifties into new housing to the north
and west of the old neighborhoods, but housing that was often well within
Chicago Heights city limits. The East Side seems to have emptied out the
most quickly, partly as a result of the pressures of a new black migration
to the neighborhood during the

    On the other side of the ocean, the war had brought destruction and
still greater poverty to southern Italy. This seemed to spark a new exodus
from Amaseno of everyone who had any claim whatsoever to American
citizenship. They were from a different Italy and were more aggressive,
better educated, and better equipped to move ahead than were their
predecessors. This was a matter of no little resentment between the old
and new immigrants. A new Chain of immigrants, including the large Planera
family, settled on the western end of the Hill neighborhoods thus
preserving it as an ethnic enclave until today=97a shot in the arm for
Italian retention unparalleled among other ethnic groups in Chicago
Heights. There seems to have been no sizable post- ~ war influx from the
other major Italian towns which had provided stock earlier to Chicago
Heights.=20
   During=81their own in local elective politics. Though one Italian had
been named commissioner in 1927 (one term) and another, Maurino Ricchiuto,
in 7 ~ 1935 (he was reelected in 1939), it was not until 1947 that an
Italian
    became mayor This was Ricchiuto, who had changed his name to Richton.
Though Chicago Heights Italians voted Republican on the national
    and local levels in the 1920s, they joined the Roosevelt coalition in
    l932 and stayed in the national Democratic camp through the 1948
    presidential election. However, they supported Republican Richton _
by, I and others on his ticket in the nominally nonpartisan municipal
elections in 1935, 1939, and 1947.7=B0
     A liberal arts graduate of Northwestern University and the son of l a
Republican grocer, the American-born Richton was drawn into political ties
in 1935 by an audience=92s enthusiastic response to his speech in Italian
condemning crooked politicians in both parties.71 His education, youth,
and polished speaking style made him the first Italian politician
acceptable to West Side voters. However, though he was a hero in the
Italian community, Richton did not make much of an effort at a grass-
roots organizations He was denied the renomination by the Mackler faction
of the Republican party in 1951; but he returned as mayor in 1963 in
alliance with Democratic (and Italian) township committeeman John Maloni,
who himself was elected commissioner that year. Elected for the third time
in 1967, Richton shifted again toward the Republicans. In ethnic terms,
the 1967-1971 city commission had three Italian- American commissioners
out of five. Further indication that Italians were voting on the basis of
ethnicity is the success of Democrat Anthony Scariano, who was returned to
the state legislature with consistently heavy majorities from 1958 until
the early 1970s. A liberal protege of Senator Paul Douglas, Scariano was
fiercely independent of the pressures of the Richard J. Daley machine in
Chicago.=20
    In 1975, Chuck Panici, the son of an Amasenese saloonkeeper on 22nd
Street, put together a tightly organized Republican-oriented political
machine based on ethnic ties and a reformist desire to make Chicago
Heights an =93All-American City.=94 Though resisted by The Star, Panici won
easily in 1975 and again in 1979. He was, by the beginning of the 1980s,
the leader of one of the most successful local Republican | organizations
in the state. And although his group was often accused of nepotism, Panici
pointed out somewhat justly that almost everyone in town (especially among
Italians) was related anyway. Politick Italians in Chicago Heights had
arrived. On the other hand, there, seemed to be a trend of Italian
candidates running against each other thus negating the ethnic factor.=20
    It had not, however, been a clean sweep. Though Italians donated the
grade school board of education and the park boards in 1960s and 1970s
they were forced to share power in the state legislature, the high school
board, and the township board, and they remail underrepresented on the
newly created community college board. a last point may be explained by
the fact that the district is much tat than the city boundaries. The
banks, savings and loan associations newspaper, and top management
positions in national corporations h thus far resisted heavy Italian
penetration. But the professions;  small businesses are today very heavily
Italian.=20
    The second- and third-generation children of the Italian immgrants
have =93made it.=94 Their ethnicity, however, is not the ethnicity their
forebears. The Italian language is not spoken much in these I generations.
The East Side Italian neighborhood is no more. Bile.  and ranch house
dwellers express nostalgia for the cooperative neighborliness of previous
generations and for the time when downtown Chicago Heights was alive; but
it is only nostalgia. However, interns in San Rocco Church remained high
in the post-World War II peers A new school and a refurbished church were
financed and paid within a few years. The parochial school=92s enrollment
remained[ ] and Italians from all over the city look forward to the
church's festival each June, even though the present pastor is not Italian
and there, no regular Italian-language masses.=20
    The Marchegiana Society, in cooperation with the city govemme has
worked out a goodwill, sister-city relationship between Chicago Heights
and San Benedetto del Tronto. This has resulted in many visits by large
delegations in both directions.  More than 300 Chicago Heights residents
have traveled to Italy to see the birthplace of their parents under the
auspices of this sister-city program. Clan-sized family picnics and the
Amasenese Society's five-year-old Feast of San Lorenzo celebration are
other indications of a continuing but changing ethnic identity in the
city.=20

    Thus, the historical movement of Italians into Chicago Height one
drawn from several Italian regional sources, chain-migration sty In the
early part of this century, when the labor needs of the n industrial
Chicago Heights coincided with the stagnant economic conditions of a
half-dozen Italian towns, a significant transfer of people and culture
took place. Though they gained some economic and political success almost
from the beginning, the major Italian-American experrience was hard work
and slow progress. Discrimination and prejudice
    st the newcomers was heightened by Italian involvement in illicit
j)e;~tlegging and Prohibition-related activities. The group=92s quest for
economic betterment was interrupted, to say the least, by the Depression
but was speeded up through the assimilative aspects of sports and their
strong participation in World War II. The growth and persistence of the
Italian population, as well as the general postwar prosperity, propelled
the Italians of Chicago Heights into a dominant role in the community.=20
their progress is colored, however, by the dynamics of ethnicity, which
makes their success story an Italian-American one rather than an Italian
one. The culture has shifted from an immigrant one to an ethnic one.  Ally
although this culture of Chicago Heights Italians has changed over the
past century, theirs remains distinct in many ways from the general
American culture. They have moved up in the world without having melted
completely
   Moreover, the small-town suburban setting, immune from the harsher
forces of change in the urban immigrant experience, has allowed for a
higher degree of continuity, group identity, and visible social mobility
among Italians than might have been the case in the big city. They were
apparently spared the widespread practice of the is padrone system and the
frequent residential changes of Chicago=92s Italians chronicled by Nelli;
but they were not spared the discrimination and the identification with
criminal elements that occurred in the big city.  Because of continuity
and the relatively limited number of Italian cities of their origin, the
rich texture of their associative life was probably greater than that of
big-city Italians.=20

For footnotes see Holli and Jones, Ethnic Chicago, Eerdman's 1984




Dominic Candeloro D-Candeloro1@govst.edu (708)756-5315 Fax 756-5320 Adm.
Asst. to Mayor Angelo Ciambrone, Chicago Heights, IL 60411 Adjunct Prof.
of History, Governors State University, University Park, IL Residence:169
Country Club Road, Chicago Heights, IL 60411 (708) 756-7168 Homepage:=20
http://www.ecnet.net/users/gcandel/home.html editor of H-ItAm Italian
American Newsgroup http://h-net2.msu.edu/~itam

Humanities & Social
Sciences Online

Copyright © 1995-2006 - Contact Us
RSS | Validate: XHTML | CSS