Not all of the 5 million Italians who immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1978 came through Ellis Island. Many came through other ports, including the Port of Boston. Exactly how many stayed in Boston is unknown, but it was enough to make Italians the second largest ancestry group in Boston, after the Irish. Most settled initially in the North End; others settled in East Boston, the West End, Roxbury, and other neighborhoods. These groups of Italians now mainly reside in the suburbs mostly north/northwest of the city. But the North end and Eastie still retain much of their Italian culture.

Most of Boston's Italian immigrants were southern Italians who had little money and could speak little to no English. They faced many hardships in the early years, including exploitation and discrimination. Contrary to popular myth, they did not improve their lot solely by working hard; they held protest rallies, organized labor unions, and were extremely active in the Democratic party. In addition, they were aided by local charitable organizations, mutual aid societies, and federal programs such as the Works Progress Administration and the G.I. Bill.

After World War II, with the help of the G.I. Bill, many were able to attend college and join the ranks of the middle class. Many obtained home loans through the G.I. Bill and moved to the suburbs. The North End has been gentrified, but retains much of its old character in the form of Italian restaurants and traditional festivals.

History

Prior to 1855, census records showed no Italians living in Boston. Most arrived in three waves of immigration: the first starting in the late 19th century; the second and largest following World War I; and the third following World War II. Most settled initially in the North End of Boston.

1890s – 1910s The first wave of Italian immigration to Boston occurred in the late 19th century. In 1890, Boston's Italians numbered less than 5,000 and accounted for only 3% of Boston's foreign-born population. By 1897, that figure had risen to 11%, with 18,000 living in the North End alone. Others lived in East Boston, Roxbury, the West End, and other neighborhoods.

The first arrivals were mostly northern Italians from Genoa and Parma. The northern Italians were generally better off and better educated than those who came to Boston later from agrarian southern Italy, the majority of whom were poor, illiterate, and non-fluent in English.

The North End

When Italians began arriving in large numbers, the North End was already occupied by thousands of Irish and Jewish immigrants. The area's many low-rent tenements and proximity to downtown made it a natural choice for poor and working-class Italian immigrants as well. As the neighborhood became increasingly Italian, other ethnic groups began to move out. Irish immigrants, who had settled there during the Great Famine, numbered 15,000 in 1880; ten years later, only 5,000 remained. A large number of Jewish immigrants had also settled there, started businesses, and built synagogues; they stayed on longer than the Irish, but eventually they too were crowded out. By 1905, of the 27,000 people living in the North End, 22,000 were Italians. Groups of immigrants who had lived in the same part of Italy formed small enclaves, Abruzzesi on one block, Avellinesi on another, and so on.

Community support

During this period, Italians faced many obstacles—poverty, discrimination, a language barrier—but they also received various forms of assistance from sympathetic Bostonians. Some, such as Boston attorney George A. Scigliano, had a special interest in helping Italians. Others were private philanthropists, community activists, charitable organizations, and mutual aid societies whose aim was to help immigrants, the poor, and workers in general.

George Scigliano, a lawyer who served on the Boston Common Council and the Massachusetts legislature at the turn of the century, worked to improve the lives of local Italians. Among other things, he called public attention to the exploitative padrone system, and worked to end it; he introduced legislation to regulate the loosely run "immigrant banks", which were notorious for cheating poorly educated workers out of their savings; he founded the Italian Protective League of Boston, a benevolent society for new immigrants; and he helped to defeat a bill that would have required workers to be naturalized.

James Donnaruma, an immigrant from Salerno, founded La Gazzetta del Massachusetts, a popular Italian-language newspaper, in 1905. As editor he used his influence to help local Italians, advocating for them in his paper, writing letters to Congress, recommending people for jobs, supporting Italian political candidates, and making generous charitable donations.

The North Bennet Street Industrial School was founded in 1885, with the support of philanthropist Pauline Agassiz Shaw, to provide job training for Italian and Jewish immigrants. The North End Union, a social service agency founded by the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches in 1892, provided food, daycare, cooking classes, and other aid. The Saturday Evening Girls club, started by Edith Guerrier in 1901, hosted educational discussions and lectures, published a newspaper called the S.E.G. News, and operated an acclaimed pottery with a store in Boston. In 1904, Domenic D'Alessandro founded the Italian Laborers Union, with the help of George Scigliano, to combat the exploitation of immigrant workers.

"An excitable people"

To the Yankees of Puritan-founded Boston, the Italian immigrants were exotic and a little unsettling. Sociologist Frederic Bushée described them as "an excitable people" but "on the whole ... good-natured and friendly."

Following the lynching of 11 Italians in New Orleans in 1891, 1,500 Boston Italians—with "coal black hair and eyes", according to the Boston Globe—gathered in Faneuil Hall to protest and demand reparations. One of the speakers, a Dr. R. Brindisi, urged the audience, "Italians, be calm! Don't get excited! Trust to the authorities of this government to see that justice is done." The following week, Massachusetts representative Henry Cabot Lodge published an article in the North American Review in which he defended the lynch mob and proposed new restrictions on immigration.

In August 1905, some 200 members of the North End's Liguria Society were parading down Federal Street when a trolley car driver refused to stop for them. Several "young ruffians" jumped onto the car and "set upon" the driver and the conductor, breaking windows and sending the passengers fleeing in terror. The fight, in which the conductor's nose was broken, "created a sensation" in Boston, and still turns up in Internet searches as the Federal Street Riot of 1905.

World War I

In 1917 there were an estimated 50,000 Italians living in Boston. Approximately 8,000 Boston Italians served in the U.S. military during World War I. Others served in the Italian military.

After the war ended, tens of thousands of Italians emigrated to Boston. The vast majority were from southern Italy: many from Sciacca in Sicily, and others from Naples, Abruzzi, Calabria, and Potenza.

In 1918, the Spanish Influenza Pandemic hit the crowded North End severely; so many children were orphaned as a result of the pandemic that the city created the Home for Italian Children to care for them. The Home for Italian Children was later renamed the Italian Home for Children. Located in Jamaica Plain, it now provides residential and day treatment for children with emotional and learning difficulties.

On January 15, 1919, the Purity Distilling Company's 2.3 million gallon molasses storage tank burst open, causing the Great Molasses Flood. A massive wave of molasses flowed down Commercial Street towards the waterfront, killing 21 people and injuring 150. Lawyers for the tank's owners tried to blame the explosion on Italian anarchists. The accident was later found to be due to the tank's poor construction and maintenance, but not before the initial reports had fueled anti-Italian sentiment.

1920s

During Prohibition there were some Italian bootleggers in Boston, but for the most part the business was controlled by the competing Irish and Jewish mobs led by Frank Wallace and Charles "King" Solomon. People of other ethnicities were also involved. The Patriarca crime family, founded by Gaspare Messina in 1916, expanded during the 1920s but did not gain the upper hand in Boston until 1931, when they assassinated Wallace and the Irish assassinated Solomon.

In 1923, Logan Airport was built in East Boston, which had a sizable Italian population. Area residents were less than enthusiastic about the airport and the noise and traffic that inevitably came with it.

Sacco and Vanzetti

Prior to their arrest in 1920, the Italian anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti lived in Stoughton and Plymouth, Massachusetts, and had political ties to Boston. Most Boston Italians, although far from sympathetic to the anarchist cause, believed the pair were victims of anti-Italian bias.

In 1927, following Sacco and Vanzetti's execution in the Charlestown State Prison, they were laid out at the Langone funeral home in the North End, where they were viewed in open caskets by over 10,000 mourners over two days. At the funeral parlor, a wreath over the caskets announced In attesa l'ora della vendetta (Awaiting the hour of vengeance). On Sunday, August 28, a two-hour funeral procession bearing huge floral tributes moved through the city. Thousands of marchers took part in the procession, and over 200,000 came out to watch. The Boston Globe called it "one of the most tremendous funerals of modern times."

Fifty years later, in 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation—significantly, in both English and Italian—declaring August 23 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day, and asking the public "to reflect upon these tragic events, and draw from their historic lessons the resolve to prevent the forces of intolerance, fear, and hatred from ever again uniting to overcome the rationality, wisdom, and fairness to which our legal system aspires."

In 1997, Thomas Menino, Boston's first Italian-American mayor, and acting governor Paul Cellucci formally accepted on behalf of the city a bas-relief sculpture memorializing Sacco and Vanzetti. The piece, created by Gutzon Borglum (of Mount Rushmore fame), had been repeatedly offered as a gift to the city and rejected. In 1937, Massachusetts Governor Charles Hurley called it "a patently absurd gesture", while Boston mayor Frederick Mansfield said it had "no possible chance of acceptance." It was rejected again in 1947 and 1957. The piece now hangs in the Special Collections lobby of the Boston Public Library. It shows the two men in profile, with a quote from Vanzetti's final prison letter:

What I wish more than all in this last hour of agony is that our case and our fate may be understood in their real being and serve as a tremendous lesson to the forces of freedom so that our suffering and death will not have been in vain.

1930s

By 1930 the North End was more densely populated than Calcutta, with more than 44,000 Italians living in an area less than a mile square. Most lived in overcrowded tenements with shared outdoor toilets. Fewer than 20% of the apartments had baths; residents bathed in sinks or public bath houses. At the same time, there was comparatively little street crime in the neighborhood.