Phases From Doorway to Dinner Table

 Phases From Doorway to Dinner Table

We tend to break our travels into phases.  It's not that everything is planned to the n^th degree or that every detail conveniently falls into place.  In the fog of travel, as in that of war, plans require the occasional off and on ramps, with Plans B and maybe even C kept close at hand.

Especially at the beginning of a getaway, we usually know what we’ll be doing, or at least what we must accomplish to get somewhere.  Our most recent adventure was no different, although it came right from the start with a less-than-enjoyable twist, one that probably deserves a descriptive word of its own.

Phase One began when with the usual phrase, “Bye house,” from Maria Elena as I locked our door and repositioned ourselves for an overnight stay at our daughter’s home, conveniently closer to our departure airport.  The next morning, Phase Two got underway with a bus ride to the airport.  Our

daughter drove us to the bus station, we unloaded our luggage, said our goodbyes, and waited for the bus to arrive.  That was when Maria Elena realized she had forgotten her tote bag containing her prescription drugs.  She wasn’t willing to take a chance to go without them.  Neither was I, especially since we’d be out of the country for two months.  She had worked too hard to make sure she had enough medication for the entire trip to leave it sitting at our daughter’s home. 

There we were, with about thirty minutes to go before our slated bus arrived.  I checked the schedule.  The next bus wouldn’t arrive for another hour and a half.  Plenty of time to retrieve the pills.  Yes, but doing so would eat into our precious cushion for getting through beltless TSA screening, not to mention eliminating any margin for the inevitable “What could possibly go wrong?” hiccup.

Then I realized our granddaughter was still at home.  She could shuttle the wayward bag to rendezvous with her mother, who was already headed her way.  Like a relay race, our granddaughter could pass the baton to her mother, who could then hopefully zip it to the bus station.  With a smidgen of luck, they could complete the transfer before our bus departed the station.  It hadn’t even arrived yet.  But time was ticking away, and me of little faith didn’t think they’d make it.  Maria Elena was confident, but then, she had to be.  Somehow, they pulled it off, likely aided by the police granting them a pass on the likely speeding involved and by the bus driver, who herself was running late.  When the driver heard of our plight, she seemed perfectly willing to move at a more leisurely pace while loading the luggage of her passengers.  

Before the bus doors closed and Phase III, the drive to the airport, could begin, our daughter pulled in front of the bus, winning the race.  Like a seasoned drug mule, she passed the bag to me.  We were back on our original schedule.  And now, finally relaxed, we had plenty of time for the Transportation Security Administration to do its due diligence.

    The last of our departure phases, call it “Up, Up, and Away,” had Maria Elena, me, and friends Joann and Leonardo flying nonstop to Roma.  As a perk, Delta offers drinks on its international flights.   And I thought it a treat especially for us for choosing to fly Delta over our normal carrier to Italy, Aer Lingus.  What we gave up was a 5:30 a.m. Guinness during our usual layover in Dublin.  Other advantages like one less takeoff and landing, and less opportunity to misplace our luggage in an aircraft swap, seemed like clear-cut bargains.  

Tailwind or not, whether Delta or Aer Lingus, the choice of chicken or pasta as an entrée seems universal.  But could it all be a ploy, preparing us for a greater appreciation for what lay ahead, the ambrosia of the immortal gods, Italian food?  We were, after all, enroute to Italy, the motherland of nonstop food, often disguised by the simple sounding word antipasto: a colorful assortment of cured meats, cheeses, olives, vegetables, seafood, or bruschetta served to stimulate the appetite before the main course.  As comedian John Pinette once put it when he described staggering into an Italian trattoria famished to ask: “Can I order?”  “No,” said the waiter.  “First-a we gonna bring out some’a food.  Then we come’a and take’a your order.”  By the time seven or eight plates of antipasti have arrived, you have to be more than affamato (famished) to bother ordering.  Well before we’d be fortunate to hear those cherished words, we still had miles to go, and following our landing, a little bureaucratic delay to navigate.

A big unknown upon arrival concerned the newly introduced European Entry/Exit System, or EES, inaugurated on 10 April 2026.  Get ready.  The EES will now closely monitor your stay in a majority of

Entry/Exit System Participating Countries

European countries by tracking your international arrivals and departures throughout its participating countries.  It applies to non-European Union and non-Schengen nationals visiting for stays of up to 90 days within any 180-day period.  That means American travelers, unless lucky enough to travel with an EU passport, will encounter the system.  This computerized system of digital records and biometric checks replaces the familiar manual stamping of passports we’ve become accustomed to through the years.  Frequent travelers will need to monitor their visits, so they don’t get caught short of the number of days they plan to stay.  Upon arrival you wouldn’t want to learn that you must leave in a few days because of an earlier visit when you had planned to stay considerably longer. 

We hadn’t been to Italy since the EES debuted.  We therefore anticipated that it would take some time to satisfy their data needs, which involves scanning our passports, having facial images taken, and registering our fingerprints.  During the rollout, some airports experienced 90-minute waits, and in extreme cases, two-to-three-hour queues had resulted in passengers missing connecting flights. 

To compound matters, we were seated toward the tail of the aircraft, predisposing us to becoming “tail-end Charlies” in any EES queue.  When we finally arrived at passport control the time needed for our initial EES registration could have added considerably to an already long day.  Fortunately, things worked out just fine.  Italy, being especially popular, was among nine countries allowed to delay full EES implementation because of concerns about queues and the potential for cascading operational problems.  Thankfully we weren’t delayed that morning. 

Medieval Calitri Borgo

The rows of EES machines stood idle like Stonehenge pillars in a cavernous room, perhaps for the last time.  It being six in the morning may also have played a part.  Instead, we had our passports stamped the old-fashioned way.  There was no need to push on an already open door.  Sometimes, even bureaucracy knows when to take a day off.

Our journey continued into additional phases, but they were less precise as to exact timing and largely out of our control.  We had arrived in the bosom of the motherland, Rome, but there remained several more hours before we would reach Calitri.  Fortunately, the morning was yet young.  We had landed early and saved time by bypassing the EES. 

Our dash to the finish line next involved a railroad relay.  Now with our checked bags in tow, our first railway jaunt took us from the Fiumicino Airport train station to Rome’s main rail terminal, Termini.  Rather than meaning “terminus” or the end of the line, Termini derives its name from the Latin thermae, or baths, referring to the Baths of Diocletian (Thermae Diocletianae), which once stood nearby.  About then, we’d all have appreciated a visit to the thermae.  But if as they say, “All roads lead to Rome,” they along with the train tracks, lead away.

Arrived at Termini, it didn’t help that we had to roll our luggage the entire length of the arrival banairo (rail platform) to reach the station.  We waited there about half an hour before learning the  number of the banairo needed to board our high-speed train headed south to the modern Naples area terminal, Afragola.  The platform was nearby, however, our seats were in the second car from the engine.  Reaching them, unfortunately, required us to once again trek the length of the platform with our retinue of unruly baggage in trail.  About then, I wondered if Maria Elena’s recovered bag of drugs

Ultra-modern Afragola Trai Station Outside of Naples

contained any painkillers and found myself yearning for a numbing Delta mixed drink.  By this point, anything would have suited my urge.  Once seated, I settled for a room-temperature Coke, absent the ghiaccio (ice) I’d asked for which seemingly is still a rare commodity even in first class.  Still, it was a pleasant ride, lasting about an hour and a half, which we all enjoyed in the air-conditioned compartment.

The new Naples Afragola terminal began another phase.  It was modern, beautiful, and judging from the activity we saw while pulling in, still expanding.  More tracks were being added, and storefronts were beginning to appear along the concourse.  For us, its primary advantage, and no doubt for many others, was that we no longer had to travel deep into Naples to reach Garibaldi Centrale, its central train station.  Afragola was so new that when we disembarked, we had no idea where the exits were.  We had arranged to meet our driver there.  But where was “there”?  I asked someone who looked to be a police officer where the exits were, and he went above and beyond, personally escorting us to an elevator.  In all our years of travel, it was yet another reminder of how hospitable Italians can be.  The elevator itself was a pleasant surprise.  It worked.  That may sound like a small thing, but after encountering so many elevators that hadn’t worked forcing us to hoist our bags up flights of stairs, this felt like a minor miracle.  And lo and behold, when the elevator doors opened another miracle materialized.  There stood our driver, Claudio, prepared for the final sprint.  

Claudio is part of a musical family.  His father, Benito, lived in Argentina for a time and sang under the stage name Roberto Luna.  Popular for a time, today the name Benito is less common.  At the time he took his first breath, however, parents were incentivized by the Fascist regime to name their children Benito or Rachele after Mussolini's wife.  Many seized on the 500 Lire offer and another Benito, a.k.a. Robert Luna, was christened.  I never learned whether Benito played an instrument, but his three sons do.  The oldest, Rodolfo, now the retired manager of Calitri’s former SIGMA supermarket, proudly plays a cherished Gibson guitar.  The youngest of the trio, Daniele, is an accomplished drummer with a steady gig as the operator of a magazine shop.  Claudio expresses his musical genes as a low-frequency end of the spectrum base guitarist while performing with numerous area bands. 

Palazzo Clock Tunnel Leading Us Home

      Close on Claudio’s tail through the terminal, we were soon outside.  Minutes later, Claudio pulled up with his van that was already chilling down.  It had turned hot. The cool breeze in the van was worth the risk of colpo d’aria, a term that reflects the traditional Italian belief that a draft or sudden exposure to cold air can give you a sore throat or other illness.  We were soon on the A16 Autostrada, in familiar territory, headed east from Naples, across the Apennines and into the verdant fields of Campania, closing in on Calitri.

We had approached the finish line or at least the place where we had to leave the van.  To reach the actual finish line required us to roll our luggage just short of a quarter mile into the borgo.  It is a cobbled medieval lane too narrow to accommodate automobiles.  Absent breaking a ribbon, our finish line is marked by the insertion of a very long key into our door.  This final walking phase is the part Maria Elena dislikes most, especially after hours upon hours of travel.  About all we have in common with a footrace finish line is that we, too, are out of breath when we finally arrive.  In need of rest, we found our

Len & JoAnn's Room for a Much Needed Rest

rooms and each in our own way implored Morpheus, the god of dreams, to allow us to escape the reality
of our fatigue and find refuge in the refreshing sustenance of sleep.

Claudio served as more than just our driver.  Pulling into the tunnel entrance to the Borgo from the town hall piazza, he didn’t just drop us off.  Instead, like The Hulk superhero, he transformed into a strongback as he hoisted luggage on his shoulder and to the clitter-clatter of the wheels across the cobbles proceeded to tote an overage of luggage to our door.

We’ve been incredibly lucky to cross paths with some truly wonderful friends here in Calitri, like Claudio.  The English-speaking community has become a tight-knit group, and we love getting together whenever a quorum is in town.  On this visit, our foursome had the opportunity to catch up with four dear friends visiting from the UK, while also welcoming the niece of one of the regulars.

The trick was finding a night that worked for everyone and securing a prenotazione, a reservation, that could accommodate our gathering of nine on a busy holiday weekend.  As luck would have it, the only time that fit everyone’s schedule was the very evening the "Fab 4" (Mary Elena, Leonardo, JoAnn, and I) had arrived.  An empty refrigerator on a Sunday arrival only added to the appeal of dinner at L’Antica Grotta. 

At the moment, now pedestrians, we were coaxing our seven suitcases past the L’Antica Grotta on the way to our door, when our good friend and the restaurant’s owner, Enzo, flagged us down.  He excitedly showed us a magnificent Bistecca alla Fiorentina he was saving for the “Fab 4 grown to Nine” that evening.  Complete with a characteristic

Enzo's L'Antica Grotto

T-bone shape from a Italian Chianina bovine, it looked almost prehistoric in scale, often weighing well over two pounds and standing several inches thick.  Just the sight of it made our already weakened knees weaker.  While we always say the company matters more than the food, the incredible aromas drifting out of the cave’s restaurant caused us to question the validity of this long-held tenet.  It was pretty clear this meal was going to be an absolute treat for both hearts and senses, especially after a long 20-plus hour journey covering 4,300 miles by bus, plane, trains, and automobiles, to finally conclude on foot.  More than relieved, we’d finally made it.  It was a finish marked not by the wave of a flag but instead by the brandishing of a steak.  Minutes later, as I turned the key in our door, the first multi-phased segment of our Italian adventure officially concluded.

Later that evening, after much-needed naps and showers, we were shown to our beautifully prepared L’Antica Grotta table.  In true Italian style, the food and wine kept flowing, along with the conversation of long-distance friends.  I’m not sure if we were mended or spoiled with carafe after carafe of Enzo’s delicious house wine that paired perfectly with every course throughout the meal.  Since our UK friends had never been to L’ Antica Grotta, we knew the incredible menu Enzo had put together was guaranteed to win them over.

The antipasti was a feast in itself, but none of us had the willpower to slow down.  Honestly, who
would blame us?  It began with fresh buffalo mozzarella, each a globe about the size of a tennis ball, one for each of us along with hard cheeses.  We were then treated to a savory frittata, and three different pizzas sliced into small wedges to share with wine.  Together, they formed a novel antipasto.  Every pizza had a unique flavor, and each proved better than the last.  This motherland of nonstop food had only begun.  Now Enzo came to “take’a” our orders.

A Serving of Calitri's Famous Cannazze

      For our primi piatti, Enzo brought out two huge, family-style bowls of the local favorite, cannazze, tossed in a rich, velvety meat sauce.  For those who have never had the opportunity to enjoy cannazze, it’s a wonderful homegrown Calitri specialty made from Italian durum semolina wheat.  The term “durum” derives from the Latin word durus, meaning “hard.”  Initially, long pasta tubes resembling hollow candles are snapped into five pieces before being cooked al dente, making it perfect for catching rich meat sauce complemented with heaps of a 50/50 combination of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiana-Reggiano cheeses.  High praise for the town’s deserved culinary claim to fame.

The sauce had been simmering for hours before our arrival and was further enhanced with beef braciole, that classic Italian dish of thinly sliced meat rolled around a savory filling.  Additional cuts of tender pork added to its incredible, savory depth.  According to JoAnn, who contributed this description of our feist, “Enzo makes the absolute best cannazze and ragù in all of Calitri.”  

As if all that incredible food wasn’t enough, the staff kept shuttling additional plates back and forth, one following another.  The feast continued with grilled sausage, those tender beef braciole, and cotica.  For those unfamiliar with cotica, it is a traditional dish made of thin pig skin stuffed with grated cheese, cracked black pepper, fresh garlic, and parsley.  Each is rolled, tied with string, and simmered until tender.  I’d never heard of it, but for JoAnn it brought back many happy childhood memories.  Surprisingly, it was the very first time she had ever seen it served during all her years of travel throughout Italy.  It was also a lifesaver after the bland fare of airline food.

Just when we thought we were approaching an end of the repast, the pièce de résistance was wheeled out to the oohs and aahs of all the grotto’s patrons.  It was the steak Enzo had flaunted before us earlier that day, the

magnificent loin of Bistecca alla Fiorentina, now grilled to sizzling absolute perfection.  It was so tender you could cut it with a fork.  Just thinking about it still makes my mouth water.

Totally satiated by evening’s end, we were nevertheless not quite across the finish line.  We were soon showered with fresh biscotti and a lineup of digestivi.  Bottle after bottle was set on our table for everyone to enjoy, completely gratis.  It's such a warm and wonderful tradition.  As the night wore on, the staff even pulled up chairs to join us in a toast.  One of the absolute highlights was a cooled mela or apple liqueur, that was so crisp, refreshing, and delicious, that we couldn't leave without buying a bottle for home.  But then, this being Italy, it wasn’t simply about the food or the drink.  It was about warmth.  It was about friendship.  And it was about the remarkable ability of an exhausting journey with forgotten medications, buses, trains, planes and endless terminals, biometric systems, luggage marches, elevators, hot weather, and more than a little uncertainty to somehow arrive exactly where we wanted to be.  Around a table savoring the moments and flavors with friends.  Eating and drinking in celebration of our arrival in Calitri in the architectural intensity of Enzo’s ancient grotto. 

Maybe that’s the real lesson of travel: its phases don’t always go according to plan, they need not.  Sometimes they go sideways, stall, speed up, or threaten to derail altogether.  But if you don’t let them phase you, and as my dad professed, “Don’t make-a the worry,” there’s usually a wonderful something waiting at the other end: that bowl, the plate, the pot at the end of a rainbow.  And sometimes, it’s a two-inch-thick Bistecca alla Fiorentina.

From That Rogue Tourist, 

Paolo

 

Monument to the Immigrant

Elevator to Little Palermo

Recently, the United States celebrated its 250^th birthday. I thought it a good time for a tablespoon of introspection.  Not a self-examination of myself, mind you.  Enough of me already seems to leak into what I write.  Rather, I found myself wondering how much America owes to its Italian heritage.  The thought struck me when I saw a picture of Dean Martin placarded inside an elevator, of all places, during a getaway to the “Big Easy” — New Orleans.  

Given our frequent travels, it would seem we have developed a serious inability to commit to a single zip code.  Maybe so. But Dean got me thinking.  Suppose I could press a button beside his picture and when the elevator doors next opened, find myself transported into some event significant to Italian-American involvement during our nascent nation-building years.  Where would I land?  As it happened, I found just the sort of place I was looking for: a museum devoted to the positive and negative aspects of Italian immigration to this area.  I suspected this particular elevator ride was going to have some very dark floors.

The story of these hyphenated Italian nation-builders, however, begins well before the birth of the United States, with familiar Italian-born Christopher Columbus and his 1492 voyage that opened the Americas to European exploration.  Another stop on another floor might follow Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first to sail into NY Harbor, and on up the ladder of time to Florentine explorer and navigator  

Filippo Mazzei

Amerigo Vespucci, whose multiple voyages to the New World eventually gave the Americas their name.  Then there is Filippo Mazzei, a multitalented Tuscan-born physician, philosopher, diplomat, winemaker, merchant, and author.  In London, Mazzei met Benjamin Franklin and shared his idea for importing Tuscan products to the New World.  After arriving in Virginia, he visited Thomas Jefferson at his estate, and the two became good friends.

    In 1774, Mazzei published a pamphlet containing the phrase, "All men are by nature equally free and independent." [5]  His writings on liberty were directly incorporated into the Declaration of Independence in the memorable words, “All men are created equal.”  Clearly, the United States is undeniably shaped by Italian explorers, thinkers, craftsmen, and immigrants at virtually every stage of its development. 

My elevator might stop on several other important floors adding further testaments to the list, but a complete conjugation of every Italian contribution, would require an elevator shaft outstretching well beyond the high-wire performances of the Italian steelworkers who later built New York City’s skyscrapers.  To portray the whole story would mean recounting the struggles, successes, and lasting impact of every Italian emigrant who arrived during the Great Immigration between 1890 to 1920 when four million, mostly southern Italians, arrived on Ellis Island alone.  Some accounts are supported by hard facts.  Others survive as little more than glimpses.  And one of the most interesting glimpses, at least to me, led south.

While New York’s Ellis Island served as an enormous national gateway for European immigration, I was surprised to discover that New Orleans, though nowhere near as large an operation as Ellis Island, was another major arrival hub.  New Orleans functioned as an important port of arrival, especially for Sicilian immigration into the South.  Its Italian population was not simply a portion of northeastern Ellis Island émigrés who migrated south after landing in New York.  

More than 80% of Italian immigrants arriving in New Orleans were Sicilian.  I found this interesting particularly after spending time in Sicily and writing at length about our time there.  Sicilian migration to Louisiana was already substantial by the 1870s and 1880s, largely due to a well-established Palermo-to-New Orleans shipping route connected to their citrus and sugar trade.  Passenger manifests document ships sailing directly from Palermo and arriving in New Orleans throughout the period.

The journey was hardly a cruise.  But for thousands of Sicilians, it was a passage toward a life they hoped would be better than the one they were leaving behind.  Garibaldi had foretold a better life following Italy’s unification, but his idealistic vision of political participation, civil rights, and economic fairness collided quickly with political reality.  Northern Italy enjoyed the fruits of modern industrialization while southern Italy and Sicily remained mired in poverty, much of it under absentee landowners.  The peasant was still, in many respects, essentially a serf.  Emigration offered an escape from subsistence living and, perhaps more importantly, the possibility of owning a farm, a shop, or some other small piece of the future. 

New Arrivals

    Many of the newly arrived dreamers concentrated in the Lower French Quarter, better known today for Mardi Gras along Bourbon Street than for the Sicilian immigrants who once crowded its streets.  Soon the shiploads after shiploads of immigrants saw the concentration of Italians in New Orleans climb to the highest in the state.  By 1900, New Orleans had the largest Italian community in the American South, with roughly 20,000 people of Italian background.  The city acquired a nickname that tells you something about the community that had taken root there: Little Palermo.

By the end of the immigration wave stretching from the late 1880s to 1920, more than four million Italians had arrived in America.  Many arriving in New Orleans did not stay.  Some moved North; others scattered throughout Louisiana and the South in search of better paying jobs.  Thousands went to work on sugar and strawberry plantations, other type farms, and other communities, while others remained in New Orleans to gradually grow to become merchants, fruit sellers, grocers, and restaurateurs.  In other words, they began doing what immigrants do: work, adapt, open businesses, raise families, and quietly become part of the place that initially regarded them as outsiders.

But there was a darker side to the welcome.  Louisiana planters looked to Sicily for a solution to their labor needs following emancipation.  With the end of slavery, immigration, in their eyes, offered a replacement for the loss of the black slave population and the possibility of restoring something resembling the antebellum plantation system they previously enjoyed.  By September 1881, three steamships a month were running between New Orleans and Sicily, at a cost of forty dollars per person.  For those without forty dollars, there was another arrangement.

The padrone system, sponsored by plantation owners and labor contractors, employed  recruiters to bring Italians to southern Louisiana.  It was distressingly similar to the centuries-old system many of these immigrants had hoped to escape.  Corrupt, exploitative, and often little more than indentured servitude, it could enslave entire families almost as soon as they arrived.

Others were ensnarled in the human trafficking scheme even before they departed.  Steamship advertisements helped sell the dream.  Brochures promised fine living quarters, the opportunity to purchase land, and a climate that sounded suspiciously Goldilocks-like: not too hot, not too cold, just right for working the fields.  They went so far as to advance funds to those willing to travel to America but lacked the necessary capital.  After arriving they could work off their passage fee - just sign here.  Even though the Foran Act of 1885 prohibited the system, it continued through much of the golden age of Italian immigration.

Life Magazine, 1911 Anti-Italian
Cartoon

        Some of the arrivals found jobs on the city docks unloading citrus and Mississippi River cargo.  Others helped build levees and railroads or worked the farms and plantations.  The area grew denser with Italian immigrants.  The need to work often eliminated any chance for their children’s education who grew to join their fathers in the fields.  Some resorted to thievery to survive, some to prostitution.

As with many immigration tsunamis, the people already there began to get nervous and grew to view the new arrivals as underclass “peasantry.”  Gradually, economic competition, overcrowding, cultural suspicion, and fear began to ferment into something uglier.  There were accusations that immigrants were taking jobs from Americans, that money sent back to Italy was hurting local businesses, that Italians carried diseases such as yellow fever and cholera, and that they were connected to violence and criminal organizations.  The result was a growing political, cultural, and ethnic hostility toward people of Italian ancestry known as Italophobia.  The native population had, conveniently, managed to forget that their own ancestors had once been newcomers trying to build a new life.  

On the evening of October 15, 1890, New Orleans Irish Police Chief, a thirty-four-year-old David Hennessy was assassinated.^[4]  Hennessy’s killers were widely believed to be Italian, which was hardly surprising in a city already simmering with anti-Italian prejudice.  Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare did little to cool things down.  He declared Hennessy the “victim of Sicilian vengeance” and called upon citizens to “teach these people a lesson they will not forget.” 

American newspapers largely anti-Italian in their coverage, helped to cement the widespread belief that Italian organized crime had been responsible for the killing.  Newspaper stories portrayed them as dangerous and a criminal menace. Newspaper stories portrayed them as dangerous and a criminal menace.  The Mafia, a criminal organization associated in the public imagination with theft, terror, and murder, became the convenient explanation.

Mass arrests of Italians for the murder followed as anti-Italian sentiment reached a fever pitch fueled by the rhetoric being voiced.  Largely anti-Italian American newspaper accounts added to the widespread belief that Italian-American organized crime was responsible for the killing of the police chief.  The perpetrators were presumed to have been involved with the Mafia and therefore deserving of their fate.  The murder had become something larger than a murder investigation.  And the fuse had been lit.

The Old New Orleans Parish Prison

     Chief Hennessy had a colorful and strong-arm past that provided any number of motives and enemies, other than the Mafia, none of which the police seemed particularly interested in investigating.  It was, in effect, a “round up the usual suspects” operation without regard to the much larger struggle beneath the surface.  In the shocking aftermath that followed, the city passed an ordinance giving control of New Orleans dock work to the newly formed Louisiana Construction and Improvement Corporation, headed by several city leaders entangled with Hennessy.  Had his death been convenient, even arranged, with Italians the convenient scapegoat?  Things certainly changed.  Italian waterfront merchants and workers, who had been making remarkable economic progress, were initially dominated and then eliminated as competitors.

The Italian community had become an easy target for political rivalry, commercial competition, and the racial politics of the era.  Within 24 hours of Hennessy’s death, 45 Italians had been arrested.  By some accounts, as many as 250 Italians were rounded up.  Most were eventually released for lack of evidence.   For several days, Italians were afraid to leave their homes. but eventually the furor died down and they returned to work.  Nineteen Italians, through involved with the assassination, were arrested and held in the Parish Prison prior to the trial that followed.

Nine went to trial beginning February 16, 1891.  There was only one problem.  The evidence was weak, contradictory, or based on hearsay.  Six men were acquitted and three trials ended in mistrials.  That should have been the end of it.  It wasn't.  The six acquitted men were not released.  Instead, they were returned to prison pending another charge of “lying in wait” with intent to commit murder.^[8]  Prosecutors admitted they would not pursue the additional charges, but the men remained behind bars.  This decision would prove fatal for many of them.  The legal system had reached a peculiar destination where an acquittal apparently did not necessarily include the benefit of being released.

The New Orleans Henry Clay Statue
(Note the Ad for the OPera Il Trovatore by
Italian Giuseppe Verdi)

      The court’s decision infuriated local residents.  The city, already awash in anti-Italian sentiment fueled the belief that Italian organized crime had somehow corrupted the jury.  How much of this was true will never be known but the Italian community was an easy target to blame for political reasons, struggles for commercial dominance, white supremacy issues.

Italian-American voters were also known to favor the city’s political machine over that of the mayor, whose own role in inciting the violence that followed may well have been tied to an attempt to
use government power against political opponents and the strong Italian voting bloc.^[2]  Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare’s role in inciting what followed may well have gone too far when he complained that the city had become attractive to "the worst classes of Europe.  Also fueling a desire for vengeance was the misinformation and newspapers articles stating that the jury had been bribed by organized crime thought under Italian control.  Whatever the mixture of motives, the result was combustible.

On the morning of 14 March 1891, one day after the court verdicts, an ad appeared in local newspapers prepared by a group of about 150 people calling themselves the “Committee of Safety” calling a mass meeting at the City’s statue of Henry Clay near the prison.  Citizens were told to "come prepared for action."^[7]  They were.

A mob estimated four to five thousand strong gathered at the statue and included some of the city's most prominent citizens.^[2]  Among them, Attorney William S. Parkerson exhorted the crowd to "set aside the verdict of that infamous jury, every one of whom is a perjurer and a scoundrel."  When the speech ended, the emboldened crowd marched to the prison.  What happened next was not justice

Mob Storms Parish Prison

    Provoked by speakers and city leaders, the enormous mob forced open the prison doors where the men were being held.  A relatively small, disciplined vigilante “execution squad” within the mob carried out what became the largest known mass lynching in Louisiana history.  Eleven of the nineteen Italian men indicted in the Hennessy case were lynched or shot.  None had been convicted.  Some never even tried.  Six reportedly suffered more than one hundred gunshot wounds, many to the head.  They were killed, as one account put it,  "on proof” of being 'dagoes' (Italians). ^[7]  Their only crime was that they were Italian.

The incident reverberated far beyond New Orleans.  The New York Times published a lengthy statement charging city politicians with responsibility for the lynching of the Italians.   The Italian consul Pasquale Corte in New Orleans protested the killings and was himself threatened at gunpoint.  He eventually left the city in May 1891 at his government's direction.  Italy took a further step and recalled its ambassador from Washington sparking rumors of war. The United States recalled its delegation from Rome.  The Italian government demanded that the mob leaders be prosecuted and reparations paid.  When the United States declined to prosecute those responsible, a grand jury was convened to decide whether to bring criminal charges against individuals involved with the lynching. 

The grand jury’s conclusions were, to put it mildly, unsatisfying.  The judge presiding over the grand jury was a longtime friend of several lynch-mob participants.  The report concluded that members of the Hennessy jury had been bribed to acquit the Italians yet offered no proof.  No criminal charges followed.  It also claimed it could not identify the participants in the lynching.  No indictments followed that, either.  Increased anti-Italian sentiment led to calls for immigration restrictions, with the word “Mafia” entering the American lexicon amid claims that had never been substantiated.  

Then, in April 1892, approximately one year following the lynchings, the United States paid $2,211.90 in compensation to each family of the eleven victims.^[10]  Only a few months later, in July 1892, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed “Columbus Day” as a one-time national celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World.  At least in part, it was seen as a symbolic gesture intended to ease tensions with Italian-Americans and the Italian government without directly confronting the political forces that had allowed the violence to go unpunished. ^[9].  

History has a strange sense of timing.  We tend to perceive the past steeped in the paradigms of our time.  Conjecture is a convivial pastime but putting ourselves in another person’s shoes is much harder.  Imagine being one of those Italians stepping off a ship in New Orleans.  You have arrived carrying hopes and aspirations shaped by what you were escaping, what you had been promised, and what you imagined the New World might be.  No Statue of Liberty greeted these travelers to the promising new world only 100 plus degree heat, hard labor, and with each boatload the growing antipathy of indigenous nativism.  And there was, increasingly, the hostility of people who had decided that you did not quite belong.  For decades after the events of 1891, New Orleans children taunted Italian-Americans with the question: "Who killa da chief?"^[4]  The words became a cruel echo of a terrible event.  And echoes, like memories, have a curious half-life. They can fade for generations without ever quite disappearing.

While the story remains more widely known in Italy, this incident has largely disappeared from American memory.  I certainly knew nothing about it.  Not until I pressed a few elevator buttons and found myself emerging into a different world.  There, on a wall, tucked low among photographs, memorabilia, and artifacts, I found a framed official document.  The sort of document that can make history suddenly feel less like history and more like something that happened to actual people. 

First, it was a proclamation from President Harrison.  And then, much farther along the elevator shaft of time, came this other document.  One hundred twenty-eight years later, on 12 April 2019, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell issued a Certificate of Recognition at the American Italian Cultural Center in New Orleans, formally apologizing for the 1891 lynching of eleven Italian-American men of the city.  It was of such note that it was attended by the Italian Ambassador to the U.S. and the Italian Consul General in Houston, TX.

This framed certificate acknowledged what had happened and, importantly, acknowledged the complicity of political leadership, the anti-Italian climate in which the crimes occurred, and the fact that no one had ever been indicted or prosecuted for perpetrating them.  It offered the city’s deepest apologies to the victims’ descendants and to New Orleans’ Italian-American community.^[6]

And then it did something else.  It recognized the numerous contributions of Italian-Americans to the cultural and economic life of New Orleans and the nation.  The final sentiment looked forward as much as backward: recognition of the anti-immigrant sentiment of the past, coupled with the hope that New Orleans would remain welcoming to immigrant groups in the future.

Sometimes it takes centuries for justice to rear its head.  Sometimes an apology arrives long after everyone who needed to hear it is gone.  When in the colors of forgiveness, there are no red eyes.  And sometimes recognition of achievement comes only after the people who did the building have disappeared from the scaffolding.

    I began this little journey wondering how much America owes to Italy.  The answer, I suspected, would be impossible to gauge, especially in New Orleans, of all places.  But I learned that it began with explorers whose names became geography.  In the thinkers whose words found their way into the language of American liberty.  In the immigrants who crossed an ocean seeking asylum because staying home had become untenable.  It is in the dockworkers, farmers, grocers, fruit sellers, restaurateurs, laborers, craftsmen, and steelworkers who helped build a country that did not always welcome them while they were building it.  Perhaps that is the oddest thing about the American story.  We are forever constructing the country and then forgetting who carried the hods full of bricks. 

     Our adventure began with a Dean Martin photograph in an elevator.  It ended with eleven men, a city, an apology, and a much longer view of what it means to become American.  Maybe that is the real lesson of pressing the buttons.  You never quite know what you will find on each floor you reach.  But if you are willing to get off the elevator when the doors open, history, that fervent chronicler of time, may still be standing there, waiting to introduce itself.

From That Rogue Tourist,
Paolo

References:

1.  1.  Sicilian Heritage, https://sicilianheritage.com/immigration/passenger-voyages-from-palermo-to-new-orleans-1903/

2.  2.  1891 New Orleans Lynchings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings?utm_source=chatgpt.com

3.  3.  David Hennessy, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hennessy#CITEREFGambino2000

4.  4.  The Crescent City Lynchings: The Murder of Chief Hennessy, the New Orleans "Mafia" Trials, and the Parish Prison Mob, Tom Smith, 2007.

5. 5.  Philip Mazzei, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Mazzei

6. 6.  Official Apology of the City of New Orleans, Italian Government, Ambasciata d’Italia a Washington

7. 7.  Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History (2^nd ed.). Toronto: Guernica, Gambino, Richard, (2000)

8.  8.  Italian Louisiana: History, Heritage & Tradition, Alan Gauthreaux, The History Press, 2014

9.  9.  Columbus Day, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day

10 10. On This Day in Mob History, https://nationalcrimesyndicate.com