The heritage of Italians in the United States begins at the origins of the country. Important explorers came soon after Christopher Columbus under the flags of different countries. Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) sailed under the British flag and was the first to explore parts of New England. In 1497, it is thought, he was the first European since the Vikings to touch land in North America (probably Newfoundland). Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed under the French flag and explored the American coastline from North Carolina to New York in 1524. Italians settled in what became the United States and played an important role in its history. Filippo Mazzei, from Tuscany, influenced Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence and Mozart’s librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, from Venice, settled in New York and Philadelphia. Although the first Italian immigration came from the North, during the late nineteenth century mass immigration of Italians to the America (including the United States) occurred, and it came overwhelmingly from the Southern part of the peninsula. The Italian emigration of the period was the greatest movement of populations in the modern era.

America represented the great hope of Italians—not only the United States but Latin American countries such as Argentina and Brazil as well. Conditions of Italian laborers who came to the United States were very bad. They were expected to do most of the back-breaking labor that had to be done in order to build the country. The tale is told that they came expecting that the streets were paved with gold, but found not only that they were not paved with gold but they were not paved at all and that they were expected to pave them. In addition, discrimination abounded. For example, in March 1891, a mob lynched eleven innocent Italian Americans after they were found not guilty of a murder by a court; lynching of Italian Americans in the American South was second only to that of African-Americans. Signs prohibiting Italians and African-Americans from applying for jobs were common, and generally other ethnic minorities already had a lock on jobs such as policemen and firemen.

Italians suffered from two other handicaps: they came from rural areas and were not used to cities; and—unlike the Irish for example—did not speak English. Nevertheless, they worked hard and saved their money and sent part of their earnings to their homeland. Many of them returned to Italy, but others brought their families here. Italians were important in building railroads, tunnels, highways, and subway systems; they worked under primitive conditions in coal mines, and factories. The deadliest coal mine disaster in the U.S., the 1907 Monongah mine explosion in West Virginia, officially claimed 362 lives but was probably over 500 and most were Italian. The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York City, the worst industrial disaster in New York City, claimed 146 victims, many Italian. In both of these disasters, the conditions were abysmal.

Despite these handicaps, Italian Americans prospered in the United States. Over 5.4 million Italians immigrated to the United States between 1820 and 1991, making many positive contributions to the history of the United States. There are now about 26 million Americans of Italian descent making them the fifth largest ethnic group. They have contributed in large measure to building this nation both physically and spiritually and achieving prominence in diverse fields of endeavor.

The contributions of American Italians to American life are too numerous to summarize briefly. They have been essential to this country from its beginning, not only as explorers but also in the arts, literature, government, and business. Famous names of the modern period include Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City (whose mother was Jewish and who could speak Yiddish); Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York State; Judge John Sirica, who played a crucial role in upholding the rule of law in the Watergate case; Geraldine Ferraro, first female vice presidential candidate of a major American political party; John Foster Furcolo, the first Italian-American Governor of Massachusetts; A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America; Lee Iacocca, the businessman who saved Chrysler in 1978; Constantino Brumidi, who painted the Capitol in Washington, D.C.; Thomas M. Menino, who won five elections for Mayor of the City of Boston; Pietro Di Donato, author of Christ in Concrete; Joe Di Maggio and Rick Pitino; Frank Capra, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Quentin Tarantino, Danny De Vito, Francis Ford Coppola, Gary Sinese…. The list could go on—and on.