Danielle Maldonado           

Research Posting: Immigration patterns of Sicilian Americans

When searching for a research topic, I looked to my own family for inspiration. My grandfather, Joseph Girgente, and his siblings were born in Agrigento, Sicily. The town “Agrigento” means “Girgenti” in Italian. While not a scholarly source, the following Wikipedia entry offers a map and some basic information on Agrigento for your viewing pleasure. The few stories that were passed down to me in the dozen or so years my grandparents were alive in my lifetime, involved immigration.

Sicily is an island off the lower coast of Italy nestled between the Strait of Messina and the African coast (Best of Sicily). Fossils found suggest that in prehistoric times, Sicily was attached to Africa (Best of Sicily). Could this close association with Africa cause Sicilians to be viewed as African-Americans were – the minority? Like immigrants, most all Sicilians came to the United States in search of a better life, falling closer to the immigrant narrative. But on the other side of the world, the Moors, who were Arabs from North African settled and intermarried with Sicilians. In fact, by 903 AD, Islam was the official Sicilian religion (Best of Sicily).

For one, when my grandfather’s family arrived at Ellis Island when he was a a young boy, the spelling of his family name was changed from “Girgenti” to “Girgente.” In addition, my great-aunt’s name was changed, against her will, from “Nicolina” to “Katy.” He and my grandmother told me that when you arrived, if the United States agents could not understand you, they simply changed your name or spelled it the way they imagined it would be spelled. I would also venture to guess that the language barrier led to these problems as well. When they immigrated, my family only knew how to speak a dialect of Italian. This dialect is referred to as “a unique blend of Greek, Latin, Aragonese, Arabic, Longobardic and Norman-French elements,” because of the many settlers and conquerors of the island from the middle ages on. This dialect wasn’t close enough to the standard Italian spoken widely in Rome or other large cities; therefore, there simply was no translator (Best of Sicily).

In fact, being Sicilian, they faced even more harsh discrimination because among Italians, Sicilians were minorities.  There existed animosity between northern and southern Italians already because many Northern Italians were skilled workers who enjoyed prosperity, acting as a model minority. The southern Italians and Sicilians were mostly unskilled peasants. And the American reaction to Sicilians was even more hostile (Rudolph). “Sicilians were labeled ‘dirty,’ ‘diseased,’ and ‘political anarchists’ and were accused of introducing a criminal element into the United States, namely the Mafia,” and so Sicilians combated this discrimination by living in close-knit communities and being untrusting of Americans (Rudolph). I even remember my mother telling me that her grandmother would never allow her to play in the front yard with the other neighborhood children and carried with her, throughout her life, many superstitions and old world beliefs that she simply refused to modernize. 

Sicilians have been immigrating to the United States for approximately 300 years but this immigration was slow until the end of the nineteenth century. From the 1880s to the 1930s, one out of every four Italian immigrants was Sicilian. The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 slowed this immigration pattern, however, reducing the amount of Italians the United States would accept (Rudolph). According to my research, the Sicilians faced agricultural failure on the island and were exploited and overtaxed by the government. Many who were disillusioned were seeking a better life for their families in the United States. According to my research, many Sicilian men came to the United States to work for a short time and then return home or send for their families to come over. This was not the case for my grandfather, however, since his parents moved their entire family over. According to my mother, however, “tyranny was a big issue and the Mafia in Sicily” (Nazarena Girgente Feld).

Sicilian settlement existed mostly in “industrial centers of the country, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Illinois, and some parts of the South, including Louisiana and Texas. The heaviest concentrations of Sicilian Americans were in New York, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, and San Francisco, where jobs for unskilled workers were readily available” (Rudolph). My own family settled in Jersey City, New Jersey where my grandfather did not continue his limited 5^th grade education and shortly after, joined the Army and fought in World War II. After returning and marrying, he found a job working in a plant called GAF as an unskilled worker. My mother does say, however, that “all I remember is that he was very tiny when he was born; and they kept him warm in an oven,” giving testament to the fact that Sicilian families kept their business to themselves.

This brings us to Sicilian assimilation. Sicilians' “seemingly stubborn resistance to assimilation was fueled in part by the hatred they aroused in their new country” (Rudolph). Americans viewed Sicilians as an inferior race “destined to remain in ignorance and poverty” (Rudolph). In addition, what’s loosely referred to as the mafia was also brought over from Sicily. “The American Mafia was still a part of our lives; but I don’t remember it being as brutal as Sicily. Maybe that’s because I was a kid and didn’t realize what people were actually dying from. I remember the American Mafia as a huge help to me when it came to goods that I could afford” (Nazarena Girgente Feld).

The Sicilian pattern of immigration is not that of the Native Americans or African Americans and therefore cannot be considered a Minority pattern. However, on the other side of the world, Sicilians could be considered minorities because of the many groups who conquered, settled and ruled the island since the Middle Ages. Bringing with them this minority status to the United States, Sicilians could then be considered a minority in this country.

Works Cited

"Agrigento." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 4 Jun 2008, 01:00 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Jun 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agrigento&oldid=216969131.

Best of Sicily.2008. Best of Sicily Travel Guide. 13 June 2008. http://www.bestofsicily.com/history.htm.

Girgente Feld, Nazaena. Personal Interview. 13 June 2008.

Rudolph, Laura C. “Sicilian Americans.” Countries and their Culture. 13 June 2008. http://www.Rudolph/multi/Pa-Sp/Sicilian-Americans.html.

"Sicilian-American." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 3 Jun 2008, 04:44 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 15 Jun 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sicilian-American&oldid=216780658.