PREFACE to the published version of the Guide to NIAF Records at the IHRC by Prof. Rudolph J. Vecoli
Excuse me if I am somewhat autobiographical. As a professor emeritus, I may be entitled to a few reflections that help place the National Italian American Foundation and this guide in historical perspective. A half century ago when I began to study and write about the Italian American experience, I felt that I was writing an obituary. In the 1950s, there was little sign of life in the Italian American “community,” if we can call it that. The “Little Italies” of American cities were being bulldozed for freeways and public housing. With the destruction of physical structures, the social fabric of neighborhoods was being torn to shreds. It seemed, in fact, that surviving Italian immigrants and their growing number of descendants were about to be ground up in the Great American sausage-making machine to be turned into hot dogs, not salsiccia.
Out of the traumas and tragedies of the 1960s, however, emerged a new vision of America. Not of a homogenized society and culture, but of a pluralistic country that not only tolerated but embraced diversity. We have been engaged in the past half century in trying to define, shape, realize this vision. By its nature, a society that values difference rather than uniformity is untidy, contentious, nonconformist. But consider the alternative, the living dead of a Nazi Germany or a Stalinist Russia.
Along with others, Italian Americans felt the exhilaration of liberation, of coming out of the closet, wearing red, white, and green, flaunting their tomato stains and garlic-laced breath, reviving the feste of hometown saints, learning how to dance the tarantella, retrieving nonna’s recipes, breaking out of the tourist itinerary (Rome, Florence, Venice) to visit their ancestral paesi in Calabria or Piemonte, discovering long-lost cugini and the fascination of family histories. In short, Italian Americans, like others, were discovering and affirming who they were, where they had come from, and how they had gotten here.
Long silenced by class and cultural prejudices, Italian Americans discovered their voices, bursting with stories to tell, songs to sing, dramas to be enacted. Italian names (no longer a need to anglicize them) increasingly adorned culture, high and pop. Literature, music, film, theater, the arts, all became media for new generations of Italian Americans to articulate their experiences. The Godfather, book and film, like it or not, was THE artistic achievement of the late 20th century. Italian Americans also broke through the Anglo walls of academe, making their mark in the professoriat. Scholars studied “the Italian American experience,” wrote hundreds of books about it, taught courses about it, and established programs in Italian American studies. The Italian-language press, after a long history, was moribund. Now hundreds of magazines, journals, newsletters, devoted to Italian American issues but published in English, served to link the scattered former denizens of Little Italies.
These unleashed energies and enthusiasms revived Italian American community life. Old organizations with updated missions took on second lives, while new ones reflecting the changing socio-economic and educational status of Italian Americans emerged. In place of the societa di mutuo soccorso composed of paesani, associations were based on a loosely defined Italian American-ness and addressed wide-ranging agendas, professional, cultural, business, political, etc. Rather than isolating them in ethnic ghettos, special interest groups utilized these associations as a means of integrating themselves within the larger institutional structures of America.
In the 1960s, Italian names were still rare in the lists of American elites. Whether business, governmental, military, scientific, or educational, relatively few Italian Americans had broken into the ranks of the rich and powerful. Twenty years later, when Lee Iacocca was acclaimed as the beau ideal of the corporate leader, he was not unique. In every field of endeavor, names ending in vowels were commonplace among leading figures.
What had happened? In the immigrant generation, Generoso Pope (and a few others) were exceptional in their success. World War II, and especially the GI Bill, opened new opportunities for those of the second generation. However, spectacular upward mobility was still inhibited by limited education and Anglo monopoly in the corridors of power. But the groundwork was laid by the emergence of a broad middle class among Italian Americans who aspired to university educations for their children. It was the latter who would emerge in the 1970s and ‘80s as the “high achievers.”
According to one assimilationist model, upward mobility would facilitate rapid and total Americanization. However, to the contrary, many second and third generation Italian Americans who sat in the board rooms and belonged to exclusive country clubs still clung to their ethnicity. Jeno Paulucci, the founder of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), did not forget his roots as he acquired a fortune. He remembered growing up on Minnesota’s Iron Range, when his father worked in the mines and his mother ran a boarding house. He also remembered how, as an up-and-coming entrepreneur, he was snubbed by Duluth “old money.” Others may have had similar experiences. But the myth that ethnic identity is strongest among blue-collar workers and weakens as one climbs the ladder of success ignores the reality that “group identity” is built into the very structure of American society. One acquires customers, clients, patients, political influence, etc., through ethnic ties.
The formation of NIAF in 1975 was the logical consequence of the emergence of an Italian American elite. In part their affiliation may have been due to a continuing sense of exclusion, but more likely it was a desire to associate with others who shared both class and ethnic interests and who would constitute a network for mutual support and advancement. NIAF thus provided a vehicle for ambitious, successful men and women to attain the social recognition they desired and also to wield power at the highest levels of government and business. The establishment of NIAF offices in Washington, DC, expressed this motive to bring to bear their collective weight upon the policies and personnel of the federal establishment. In addition to advancing Italian Americans to high office and influencing US policies with respect to Italy and related matters, the presence of NIAF sent the message “The Italian Americans are in town, and don’t forget it.” The ritual attendance of American Presidents from Gerald Ford on at the annual NIAF gala dinners was a symbolic acknowledge of “Italian Power.”
NIAF, by conscious design, is a “top down” organization that makes no pretense to a grassroots constituency. Its policies and programs, therefore, are defined by the point-of-view and interests of powerful and rich Italian Americans. The degree to which these policies and programs reflect the aspirations and needs of middle- and working-class Americans is a question for historians to answer. As the inventory to the NIAF archives deposited at the Immigration History Research Center indicates, those scholars will have extensive and rich sources for their studies of this institution and its role in the history of Italian Americans. Rudolph J. Vecoli Director Emeritus, IHRC
Chairman’s Message by Frank J. Guarini
The Guide to the Records of the National Italian American Foundation should be a source of great satisfaction to all those anxious for the preservation of the record of the Italian patrimony in America.
At the same moment of its publication by the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) of the University of Minnesota, our trustee, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), is celebrating thirty years of service as an advocacy organization for the Italian American community. NIAF affords a united voice in the nation’s capital, and beyond, for the millions of Americans who trace their roots to Italy, as well as those who simply love what our history and culture gave and continues to give to the world.
I have been honored to serve twelve years as both president and chairman of this very special organization. During the course of my tenure, NIAF established many new programs to better fulfill its mission. Acting on well-thought-out and encompassing recommendations, NIAF distinguishes itself by continually updating its priorities to parallel the changing needs of our people, yet always concentrating on cultural imperatives and core values that, over the long term, best present and serve not only the Italian American community but the commonweal. Scholar-ships continue to be an important part of our focus, as are programs to address the unique interests and educational needs of those Italian Americans who are in the early stages of a career.
We have increased funding for Italian language programs; we work closely with Congress and the White House to promote an Italian American presence in our national government; we monitor the portrayal of Italian Americans by the news media and the entertainment industry; we strengthen cultural and economic ties between Italy and the United States; and we have instituted procedures to ensure that NIAF operates as an efficient and well-organized foundation in carrying on all of this important work.
While we can be proud of the progress we have made and look ahead to ensure that NIAF continues to grow and meet the evolving needs of our community, we must, of course, preserve what it is we have already done, preserve all that has been accomplished. With the opening of the NIAF Archives, we now embark on bringing this record of past performance into a place of preservation for future use. Because of its particularity, the NIAF Archives gives a rich and rewarding dimension to the Center’s already unparalleled Italian American collection—the largest of its kind under any one roof!
The good will, support, and helpfulness of a number of persons was required to bring this project—a joint undertaking of the NIAF and the IHRC—to a successful conclusion. On the NIAF side, John Salamone, the dedicated NIAF national executive director, and Jerry Jones, his administrative assistant, were especially instrumental in locating records, creating an inventory, and facilitating their delivery to the IHRC.
Singular praise must be assigned to our longtime board member Dominic R. Massaro, the New York jurist who serves as the NIAF’s historian. On behalf of those working toward a common goal, he has been both a tireless advocate of the preservation idea and constant in emphasizing the necessity of the NIAF dimension to widen and enhance the body of Italian American literature. At his initiative, as far back as 1999, the NIAF began interacting with the IHRC about safeguarding its most important asset, its documented history. The NIAF board fully agreed and approved an initial $25,000 budget for the project. The resulting fund of primary resource material catalogued in these pages is now available to be drawn upon for research in Italian American history.
NIAF believes in its past as it believes in its future. Most of all, it believes in the capacity to learn from the past, that better judgments be made for creating a better future for all Americans.
Frank J. Guarini, Chairman The National Italian American Foundation