Students Involved in Free enterprise.
By Vincent Romano
April 3, 2012

University of Illinois

Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of what you do here today.

The mission statement of your organization, Students Involved in Free Enterprise, suggests that your successes will be measured by your ability, as entrepreneurs, to apply business and economic concepts that will impact upon those, who by accident of nature or nurture, are less fortunate than you.  Your food drive breathes life into the very meaning for our existence.

There are various themes that spin off of the purpose for this organizations existence.  Let me attempt, in the brief time that we have here, to touch upon those themes I believe to have the greater relevance.

Milton Friedman, in his book Free to Choose asserts that the story of the United States is a story of two interdependent miracles:–an economic miracle and a political miracle.  Each miracle resulted from a separate set of revolutionary ideas.  Both sets of ideas, by a curious coincidence, were formulated in the same year, 1776.

One set of ideas was embodied in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which established that an economic system could succeed only in an environment which allowed the freedom of individuals to pursue their own objectives.  The second set of ideas, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, was embodied in the Declaration of Independence.  It proclaimed our entitlement of some self-evident truths…among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

John F. Kennedy, in his book A Nation of Immigrants wrote: That great doctrine “All men are created equal” was paraphrased from the writings of Filipo Mazzei, an Italian born patriot.   One could surmise that the Italians—who first discovered, then explored and later named this great country–were also responsible for the symbiotic relationship of those two interdependent miracles.  In merging, they produced the economic, social and political revolution that spawned, in less than two hundred years, space missions that have taken us beyond our blue planet…beyond our known universe…and even beyond our own galaxy.  Transcending the combined imaginations of Jules Verne and Carl Sagan, we have peered across the cosmic ocean and glimpsed the beginnings of creation.  We indeed have gone where no man has gone before.

Before you get too big-headed about the accomplishments of your species, I remind you that, we have gone all the way to the moon and back again…and still we cannot guarantee the development of a single human being.

The economic and political miracles, which had their genesis in that chance collision in 1776, are best exemplified in the following story:

A minister, taking a stroll down a country road, came across this really impressive looking farm.  The farmer working the field came over to ask if he could be of any service. The minister, who had stopped to admire the view, told the farmer, “The lord has surely blessed you with a magnificent farm.”  The farmer, pulling out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow, replied, “I don’t want to disappoint you, minister, but you should have seen this place when the lord had it all by himself.”   

I shared this story with you as a reminder that your successes, as a free enterprise advocate, will be measured, not by how many mouths you feed…your successes will ultimately be measured by how many farmers you create.  If a society is to produce enough food to support its scientists, its artists, its philosophers–including dreamers who can dream of things that never were and inspire us to ask, “Why not?”—it must be something more than a society of hunters, which requires 100% effort from each of its members in their daily quest for food.

To be fair, I should remind you that there are other measures of success–other than farming–that you can employ to benefit underdeveloped communities.

 One recent example is that of a trader who came into a village and offered to purchase monkeys for $5 each.  This created a financial bonanza for the villagers.  After a few hectic weeks the monkey population was significantly reduced. It became more difficult to catch the monkeys and the villagers began losing interest.  The entrepreneur, a sophisticated trader and business man, raised the ante to $10 per monkey.  This encouraged the villagers.  Eventually the price for the monkeys got up to $20 each.  

Before preparing to return home on a business trip, the trader confided to his assistant that, when he returns, he will begin paying $50 per monkey.  The assistant leaked that information to the villagers.  In doing so, he encouraged them to buy the monkeys he had in stock for $30 each and then sell them back to the trader for the $50 price when he returns.  The villagers took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself.  They purchased the entire stock of monkeys from the assistant for $30 each. 

The trader never did return.  Neither he nor his assistant were heard from again.

So you see: you don’t have to create productive farmers to have an impact upon the lives of those living in less developed countries.  You can introduce them to the complex world of finance by modeling Goldman Sach’s strategy of taking the opposite side of their trades.

Your generation has a greater and graver responsibility.  A responsibility that, while transcending your food drive…is dependent upon the success of that food drive. The difference between mankind and our counterparts in the animal kingdom is that humans have the capacity to record and pass on what they have learned.  Other members of the animal kingdom must learn everything anew from birth.   No Library of Alexandria ever existed in the animal kingdom.

Your generation will be charged with the responsibility of passing on the cumulative knowledge of all preceding human generations.  Knowledge that goes as far back as Prometheus, who gave mankind the gift of fire.  Knowledge as distant as the monolith, in Stanley Kramer’s epic film, Space Odyssey 2001.  Leo Melamed, architect of the successes of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in his 2005 Loyola Commencement address, called it Knowledge Tag.

In the game of knowledge tag, your generation is next up to be IT.  You will be responsible for tagging the next generation with the cumulative knowledge of mankind.  There’s one more thing that you should be aware of:  Your generation cannot simply pass on the knowledge you received.  If that were the case, we would still be using stone tools. We would still be hunting and gathering for our existence.  Therefore, before you can tag the next generation and make them it, you are required to give them more than what you had received.

The commissioner of U.S. Patents, Charles H. Duell, declared in 1899 that “everything that can be invented has been invented.”  I believe it was shortly afterwards that the zipper was invented.  I mention that fact because the movie There’s Something About Mary would never have been made if the zipper had not been invented.

You have committed to donating 5,000 pounds of food to those less fortunate than you.  Whether you know it or not, the impact of that food, upon less fortunate communities, will be greater than it appears at first blush.  The Freudian paradigm, Ericson’s stages of development and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are all intertwined with that food.

For the moment let’s hang with Maslow.  In your pursuit of life, liberty and happiness for those who are too weak, too poor, too unsophisticated, or too unconnected– geographically and otherwise–don’t lose sight of Maslow’s theory.  His Hierarchy of Needs gives credence to your food drive.  If you recall from your 100 level psych courses, we cannot achieve any of our higher level needs without first satisfying, in turn, our lower level needs.

Maslow places self-actualization at the top of his pyramid.  To achieve that peak experience, to become self-actualized, that journey, by definition, must begin at the bottom rung of the pyramid.  Beyond food, beyond safety, beyond love and belongingness, and beyond self-esteem lies the ultimate purpose for our being: — to become all that we are capable of becoming…to achieve self-actualization.

Self-actualization has been defined in a variety of ways by our gurus.  I am told that pre-requisite to becoming self-actualized is an awareness of all that ever was and all that will ever be.  An awareness of the immenseness of the cosmos with a billion stars in each of a billion galaxies…and your place in that infinity of time and space.   An awareness that every element that make us what we are today was formed in the core of stars that existed billions of years ago. You and those for whom you have compassion are all made of the stuff of stars. We are all star stuff.

Richard Bach brought that higher calling to the attention of the masses with his 1976 best seller, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  His book did for self-discovery what Thomas Paine’s Common Sense did for the American Revolution.

Just as a young immigrant from Corleone Italy once proclaimed: “I refuse to live the life of a fool dancing on the strings held by all those big shots”…so did a young seagull named Jonathan Livingston Seagull proclaim that he too refused to live the life of a fool dancing on those strings held by all those big shots.  In Jonathan’s case those big shots were the elders of his flock.  Jonathan, like all of our immigrant forefathers before us, wanted to become more than what had been ordained for him.

Coincidentally, Raymond Franz, who wrote Crisis of Conscience in 1983, was also ostracized by the elders of his flock.  His book is required reading if you, as a business, economics or finance major, want to avoid another Jonesboro or distance yourself from the Goldman Sachs fiasco.

A dreamer, Jonathan challenged the belief that seagulls cannot and should not fly faster than 35 miles per hour.  Each morning, rather than joining the other members of the flock competing for the Garbage thrown overboard by fishing boats, Jonathan took off on his own to improve his flying skills.  Eventually, 12 other seagulls joined him.   Jonathan’s life ended when he veered into a cliff flying at a speed of 200 miles per hour.

Herman Melville defined determinism with Captain Ahab’s explanation of his obsession to pursue and destroy Moby Dick:  It was written a billion years before these oceans ever rolled.   Jean-Paul Sarte, almost a century later, defined existentialism for our 20^th century intellectuals with his Being and Nothingness.  Richard Bach used the life of Jonathan to define Sarte’s existentialist theory that existence precedes essence.   Jane Addams, social theorist, preceded both Sarte and Bach in breaking from the deterministic philosophy of the 19^th century.  Jane Addams used the Hull House neighborhood, this neighborhood, as her laboratory to apply her theory of symbolic interactionism.  It is unfortunate that your university has chosen to disenfranchise the immigrants and migrants who lived the experience of the Hull House neighborhood.  By executive decision, their stories are not considered to be relevant in preserving and reporting the legacy of Jane Addams or Hull House.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was made into a movie.  Neal Diamond wrote the title song “Be.” The opening line “Be like a page in search of a word that speaks on a theme that is timeless” reflects upon your generation’s transition to becoming it in the game of knowledge tag.  When you become it, you will no longer be pages in search of a word.  When you become it, you will, in turn, become the words in search of a page.

In your pursuit to empower less fortunate communities and underdeveloped countries, do not forget the lessons brought to us by Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs and Steel: We did not transcend simultaneously across the planet.  Geography determined the pace at which various societies transitioned from hunters to farmers.  It was geography that caused the parcel of land that lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, the Fertile Crescent, to become the cradle of civilization. Geography, more than anything else, determines the fates of human societies and the course of history.

In India, they have a saying:  “You are my Gemma.”  It is a saying reserved for those rare individuals who cause us to become something more than we would have been had we not met them.  The Gemma is a tributary that flows into the Ganghes River.  It is believed that at the point at which the Gemma flows into the Ganghes, the Ganghes is no longer the same river.  It has forever been influenced by the Gemma as it journeys down to the sea and beyond.  Its ripples, cascading across the vast oceans, shape the landscape of foreign shores.

Your food drive can enable others to seek out their Gemmas; it can free others to become pages in search of a word; it may even produce a future Jonathan Livingston Seagull to dream of things that never were.

Whether you yourself become a Gemma to at least one other person; or you become that word searching for a page; or your efforts make it possible for at least one other human being to reach the zenith of Maslow’s hierarchy…be reminded that what you pass on, individually and collectively, will echo through eternity.

Good luck to you as you pick up the gauntlet in this eternal game of tag.  Whether it’s knowledge tag or Gemma tag, it is a never ending story.

Writers of the Italian American Experience

May 2008 Conference

Casa Italia,Stone ParkIL

TAYLOR STREET*

Beyond Family Values – Beyond the Work Ethic – Beyond Demographics

by

Vincent Romano

Part 1.  Becoming What we Become

Part 2.  My End of Taylor Street.

Part 3.  Family Values and the Work Ethic. Redefining Welfare.

 Part 4.  The Silence was Deafening. Who was Supposed to Watch Out for Us?

 Part 5.  The Jane Addams Hull House complex.  Melting Pot, Smelting Pot – We were Virtually Wall-to-
                   Wall Italians.

*Historians and scholars refer to immigrants who had emigrated from their homeland to America, as first generation Americans.  Taylor Street’s Italian Americans, on the other hand, refers to the children of their immigrant parents as first generation Italian American. For our purposes, the essays and stories contained in the Taylor Street Archives have opted for the colloquial definition:–the children of our immigrant parents are referred to as ‘first generation Italian-Americans.”  Our parents, having emigrated from the shores of southern Italy, are referred to as Italian-American immigrants.

 Preface

The Italian American experience I am familiar with–and will reference here today– is Chicago’s legendary Taylor Street, the port-of-call for Chicago’s Italian Americans. A time, a place and a people that were and will never be again.

I accepted the offer to participate in this conference of Italian American writers because its stated objective was to revisit the Italian American experience with the fresh insights and new perceptions that our changing society now affords us. The theme of the conference is to reconstruct past writings of the Italian American experience…discarding old perceptions in favor of new realities.

These are the three important points I will try to touch on today, time permitting. Hopefully, snippets from the Taylor Street Archives will achieve this goal without offending anyone.

1. We, as writers, should not hide behind the oft repeated mantras of family values and the work ethic. Limiting ourselves to those mantras will leave unexplored and unexplained the important message of the Italian American experience; i.e., the psychological genocide of a people and the power of the media to orchestrate such a holocaust.  “That suffocating feeling of inferiority that enveloped us and devouring our children.”
2.  We boast about writing our own story of the Italian American experience. However, we allow others, those who control and have access to those media outlets that will survive us, to report our history to their liking.  Those who control the media and the media outlets, control our history.   Those media outlets include our schools and our universities. One of those important media outlets, the Jane Addams’ Hull House Museum, controls the reported history of Chicago’s Italian Americans—specifically, Taylor Street, the port-of-call for many of our immigrant parents. Since its inception, the bibliographies and web-sites that they control are void of any reference to the legendary Taylor Street.  Not one writer who lived the Italian American experience of growing up Taylor Street, the inner core of the Hull House Neighborhood, exists in their bibliographies.  The neighborhood that served as the laboratory upon which the social theorists and philanthropists comprising Hull House’s inner sanctum tested their theories and formulated their protests to the establishment has been virtually removed from the legacy of both Jane Addams and the Jane Addams’ Hull House.
3. Redefining the Italian American experience must, by definition, include redefining the gangsterism that had become synonymous with the male figure in Italian American culture. We must revisit the likes of the Godfather, Good Fellas and the Sopranos to explore how new theories of human behavior, which explain the Fates of Societies, and apply those theories to those subcultures that evolved during the mass migration from southern Europe…specifically that distinct and unique subculture that evolved for the Italian Americans who emigrated from the shores of southern Italy.  We must explore the new theories of human behavior that explain the profound failures prophesized by our sociological soothsayers and how they apply to the Italian American experience.

As writers, we acquire, by default, the role of social behavior theorists and, in rare instances, social behavior engineers.  As writers of the Italian American experience, we have the obligation to apply these new theories, these new ways of looking at things, to explore and more accurately explain the Italian American phenomenon.  Remembering that, “We have gone all the way to the moon and back again…and still we cannot guarantee the development of a single human being.”

  PART 1

Becoming What we Become

 Understanding human behavior–attempting to explain how it is that we become what we become and why we behave as we do–has been the elusive mission of writers as far back as Homer.  As writers, we report on human behavior.  As writers, we also attempt to explain that behavior.  That explanation is often influenced by the philosophical and psychological underpinnings of the day.  That journey has taken us from the determinism of Homer’s Gods, who made the decision as to who would triumph at the end of each day’s battle on the plains of Troy…through the breakthrough of the Freudian paradigm…Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness…Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs–the Existentialist theories of Jean Sartre;–and on to and through the various socio-behaviorist theories of the day.

Symbolic Interactionism, a complex matrix of stimulus/response/perception and behavior, between and among individuals and the social milieu they inherit, was the central concept of Jane Addams and her Hull House colleagues in attempting to understand, predict and ultimately improve the human condition of the immigrant population of Chicago’s near-west side.  Symbolic Interactionism was the social theory of the day during the Camelot days of Hull House and the laboratory that constituted the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood:–Taylor Street’s Little Italy.

Ironically, E. O. Wilson’s recent Pulitzer Prize winning book on sociobiology suggests that we have come complete circle.  His theory of biological determinism, a modern day version of determinism, suggests that the behavior of all animals has been genetically coded by a chemical composition unique to each species… our phylum being no exception.  Perhaps Ahab was correct in justifying his obsession to pursue and kill the white whale, when he told his first mate, Starbuck, “It was written a billion years ‘ere these oceans ever rolled.”  (Herman Melville, Moby Dick.)

E. O. Wilson further extrapolates that the ethnic groups to which we identify are also uniquely coded by biological determinism.  Mario Puzo’s Godfather trilogy hinted at the chemical composition that was uniquely Italian decades before E.O. Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book.  How uniquely Italian is Mario Puzo’s descriptions of the Italian persona: “If you do not give, then I must take.”  Did Puzo recognize that chemical determinism which was uniquely Italian when he penned the following: “If you touch my sister again, I’ll kill you…Don’t ever let anyone know what you’re thinking…I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots…or, That is not justice, your daughter is still alive.”  And how about, “Leave the gun, but take the cannolies.”   

 All of those traits described by Mario Puzo were heavily imbedded in the part ofTaylor Streetwhere I grew up, in my Little Italy.  We took what the establishment would not give.  We refused to remain servants to the American Dream.  We ate the cannolies.

If the new frontiers of human behavior are to be applied to the writings of the Italian American experience, we must re-examine and possibly discard obsolete perceptions.  Obsolete perceptions that have inoculated us against applying new understandings of the Italian American experience.  Obsolete perceptions that continue to camouflage and distort our understanding of the Italian American experience.

PART 2

My End of Taylor Street.

 The Italian American experience I’m most familiar with is the east end of Taylor Street,

the Taylor and Halsted neighborhood…the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood.   Like other first generation Italian Americans, my identity was, in-part, the creation of that neighborhood, its people and its institutions.  There are frequent references to the “fashioning identities” in describing the Italian American experience.  In my end ofTaylor Streetidentities were forged, not fashioned.

Everyone feared the establishment.  Come election day, no one believed there was a secret ballot.  If you failed to follow the precinct captain’s instructions, at the least, the city building inspectors would become regular visitors to your house.

The 1895 federal census of the number of Italians residing in the inner core of what Jane Addams herself had labeled “The Hull House Neighborhood.” is a reflection of that fear of the establishment.  Immigrant Italian would never tell a complete stranger, a government official knocking on their door, how many people were living with them.  There were significantly more than the 10,000 people living in those tenement flats than was reported by the census takers.  The census, despite its flaws, does describe the neighborhood as being almost entirely Italians, beginning from the river on the east on west to (and through) Halsted Street. Other immigrant groups lived on the outer fringes of the Hull House neighborhood. Jews and Germans lived south ofRoosevelt Road.  Irish and French Canadian lived north and northwest of the Greek delta onHarrison Street.

Ironically, hanging in the very same room that displays a map of that 1895 Federal census, is Wallace Kirkland’s equally flawed 1924 classic photograph, “The Hull House Kids.” That picture, depicting twenty boys of supposedly Irish descent posing in the Dante School Yard on Forquer Street (now Arthington Street), circulated around the world as a poster child, of sorts, for the Jane Addams’ Hull House.  Imagine, a Federal study, confirming wall-to-wall Italians living on Forquer Street, alongside a picture, taken on Forquer Street, which alleges the twenty Hull House kids to be of Irish ancestry.  Those who control the media and the media outlets—in this case, the Hull House Museum–control history, regardless of how empirically flawed that history may be.  All twenty boys were first generation Italian Americans…all with vowels at the end of their names.  “They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer, and a mob boss.”

There was never any consensus, during those summer evening debates, as to whether or not Mussolini was good for Italy. All I recall from those heated debates was that Mussolini did get the trains to run on time.

Even if you were deaf, you could get the gist of their conversations. The intensity of the body language pretty well conveyed one’s position on whatever the subject matter happened to be. The debates became more intense as the evening wore on and the home made wine began taking its toll. Voices, body language and hand action were raised several decibels. Only when the women broke from their discussions did the forum end. Their beckoning also ended that evening’s street game, whatever it happened to be. We came running, as well. We departed from those evening breezes that were never able to penetrate our tenement flats. Those evening breezes sometimes managed to slithered between the stacked tenement buildings…temporarily benefitting the fortunate few whose mattresses lined the porches and fire escapes during those hot steamy nights

There were books written about blackboard jungles, asphalt jungles and mean streets.  One would be hard pressed to find a street more reflective of the combined theme of those novels thanTaylor Street. We had our share of profound failures that were prophesized by our sociological soothsayers.

Jared Diamond’s recent best seller, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), provided us with an explanation on how physical geography determined the Fates of Societies. The physical geography of Taylor Street had little or nothing to do with our Fate. It was the social geography, framed by the media and implemented by the larger society that determined our Fate.

Willard Motley’s best seller, Knock on Any Door (1949), was a treatise, of sorts, on how social geography determined the fates of individuals within the subcultures of a larger society. Willard Motley picked the right place, Taylor Street, to do his research and expound upon his theory.  Motley’s main character, Nick Romano, prophetically, was given an address on Peoria Street.Peoria Street, buried deep within theTaylor Street matrix, has to be in the top stanine of streets whose alumni are serving prison time. We have at least two Peoria Street alumni currently serving terms of life without parole.  Both were teenagers when Motley wrote his bestselling novel on how it is that we become what we become. They would not only have been neighbors with Motley’s ill-fated character, Nick Romano, a former choir boy who was sentenced to die in the electric chair, they would have been his teenage peers as well.

Social Athletic Clubs, like fiefdoms, proliferated through the neighborhood. They were really gambling parlors. We bet horses, played pool, shot dice, and played cards until the wee hours of the morning. You were more likely to be identified as a member of one of those clubs than you were with the school you attended or the street you lived on.

How it is that we become what we become?  In the Taylor Street Archives is a quote from a sister of one of our club members. I quote:  “You guys are so much alike, you would think you all had the same mother.”  That statement pretty well summarized growing up in the legendary Taylor Street’s Little Italy.

“You guys are so much alike, you would think you all had the same mother.”  Apparently it was the perfect mix of heredity and environment. Confirmation of Edward Wilson’s theory of the biological determinism that exists in ethnic groups, (On Human Nature… confirmation of Jared Diamond’s theory on the Fate of Societies in (Guns, Germs and Steel)… and confirmation of Willard Motley’s social paradigm found in his bestselling novel (Knock on Any Door).

PART 3

Family Values and the Work Ethic. Redefining Welfare.

 Recent works, such as the 2007 WTTW TV documentary, “And They Came to Chicago; the Legacy of Chicago’s Italian Americans,” point with pride toward the family values passed on by our immigrant parents and grandparents. Our writers have championed the “family values” and the “work ethic” mantra of the Italian American since we began writing about our immigrant beginnings. We do so, with passion and conviction. Unfortunately, we do so as if no other ethnic group valued their families or worked for a living.

The Fra Noi, the Near West Gazette, the Amici Journal, and a host of other media outlets regularly contain an article or two in which someone is eulogizing their father or grandfather for teaching them the value of saving for their college education.

My end of Taylor Street was different. There were no college graduates from the 20 square blocks (from the river on the east, Harrison Street on the north and Roosevelt Road on the south) that constituted the Taylor Halsted neighborhood (the Hull House Neighborhood) that I knew and grew up in…other than a Doc Yario or two. The Taylor Street Archives, to date,  has no stories about anyone saving for college. We do, however, have stories about guys gambling away their paychecks and paying juice to the loan sharps to cover their misdeeds.

 …someone is always eulogizing their father or grandfather for teaching them the value of saving for their college education.

No one that I know of, from my end of Taylor Street, the Taylor Halsted neighborhood, ever mentioned having parents or grandparents saving money as a college fund for any of their children. No one else from my grammar school class even graduated high school. The American Legion award winner from my grammar school class, like Willard Motley’s character in, Knock on Any Door, died before age 21. And it was not from natural causes.

I often read about Italian Americans refusing to accept welfare. That fact is often included in support of the “work ethic” values in which Italian Americans pride themselves. My Little Italy was different. When the Sun Times investigative reporters were on a hunt for city pay rollers, our First Ward political appointees complained bitterly that they had to take a ride their work location to pick up their monthly pay checks. They grudgingly pulled themselves away from their card games and pool tables to pick up their checks. Perhaps we need to assign a broader meaning to welfare when it comes to Taylor Street.

Between and among our city pay-rollers, our mob bosses, our loan sharks, and our bookies, it was difficult to uncover the work ethic that others so passionately described and defended by writers of the Little Italies that they knew. The members of the 42 Gang came from Taylor Street…all 42 of them.Taylor Street was a recruiting ground to fill the positions that the Eighteenth Amendment, the Volstead Act, had created. Other careers having been sealed from us, the illegal bootlegging industry was one of the few options available to a subculture in pursuit of their share of the American Dream. Only the most courageous and talented among us applied.

 I suggest to you that the psychological genocide of a people, that media-induced plague, is the unexplored and untold story of the Italian American immigrant.

If Italian Americans were at the bottom rung of the educational ladder, then surely there are greater issues we, as writers, need to uncover, those issues which have a higher priority than stories reminiscing about how we were taught to “save for college.”

If Italian Americans had been excluded from the executive suites, then there is a larger issue to be explored than the “work ethic” we so often boast of in our writings about Italian Americans. Hemingway had better luck finding a leopard on the north slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro than we had finding an Italian in the executive suites of corporate America. Those who were denied access to the American Dream and choose not to remain servants to that Dream, sought unconventional avenues in pursuit of the Promise. Many became entrepreneurs. Was there a biological determinism that we possessed, which genetically programmed us to grab the Dream? “If you do not give, then I must take.”

The politically correct explanation for our shortcomings has been and continues to be the agrarian society from whence we came. I believe otherwise. We were not the only immigrant group that came from a farming culture. Yet, we were the only immigrant group denied its share of the promise. At best, we faced a slippery slope to the American Dream. I suggest that the psychological genocide of a people, that media-induced plague, is the unexplored and untold story of the Italian American immigrant.

No other immigrant group, no other ethnic group, had been so maligned, so vilified by the media as the Italian American people. When the larger society was programmed to reject us, “I detest you people with your greasy hair and your olive oil skin,” (Mario Puzo’s The Godfather) we sought alternative paths in pursuit of the Promise. Taylor Street, as Jared Diamond would have prophesized, evolved into a subculture of entrepreneurs.  Some legal…and many not so legal. After all, how many lemonade stands can one neighborhood support?

The media must bear some responsibility for the results of a federally sponsored study (circa 1972) identifying that Italian Americans, as measured by enrollment in college, were at the lowest rung of the educational ladder of all European ethnic groups. A people who spring from the loins of the Caesars and the Michelangelos at the bottom rung of anything should raise some eyebrows.

PART 4

The Silence was Deafening. Who was Supposed to Watch Out for Us?

 Alistair Cooke….A Date that Will Live in Infamy

What is of greater relevance than our Agrarian roots, in denying us the Dream…the Promise, was the Alistair Cookes of the media world. In a nationally televised TV series called, “America: A Personal History of the United States,” which aired in 1972, on a date that will live in infamy, Alistair Cooke announced to the world that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made to America by Italian Americans.

More painful than Alistair Cooke’s words was the silence that followed – the silence of those who were supposed to watch out for us; the silence of those who professed to be the guardians and spokespersons for justice and liberty for all. Not one voice cried shame!

 More painful than Alistair Cooke’s words was the silence of those
who were supposed to watch out for us.

During WWII, thousands upon thousands of gold stars hung from the windows in all of the Little Italies scattered throughoutAmerica. One of those gold stars hung on the window of Mrs. Favia, just three doors south of where I lived on Peoria Street, the same street where Willard Motley’s main character lived, the same street that must rank in the top percentile of those serving jail time.

Mrs. Favia’s son, Vito Favia, was killed during the battle forIwo Jima. John Basilone, another son of Italian immigrants, was also killed during the battle for Iwo Jima, as well. Not to take anything away from Vito’s heroic events, which earned him the right to the Silver Cross–which his mother refused and then some–John Basilone was the only enlisted man in WWII to win both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.  The two highest awards given by this country for valor under fire. The two Marines, Vito Favia and John Basilone, both first generation Italian Americans, made the supreme sacrifice in defending America from its enemies and preserving our freedoms.

Let me go a step further in repudiating the Alistair Cookes of this world. Approximately one half-million Italian American warriors fought to preserve those freedoms during WWII—(allegedly, more than any other ethnic group). Ironically, it was their valor that won, for Alistair Cooke, the freedom to announce, on a nationally televised TV program, that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made by the Italian American immigrant.

One must wonder what thoughts ran through the minds of Mrs. Favia, Mrs. Basilone and all those Italian American mothers who had lost their sons in the struggle to defeatAmerica’s enemies when Alistair Cooke announced to the world that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made by Italian Americans. They have no prosthetic for that, you know!

What thoughts must have run through the minds of those Italian American mothers who had their sons returned to them with their arms torn out or their legs blown off, when Alistair Cooke announced to the world that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made by Italian Americans. They have no prosthetic for that, you know!

One must also wonder how painful it must have been, for those families, that not one voice, not one writer of the Italian American experience, not one politician, not one Pulitzer Prize winner, not one Nobel Peace Prize nominee cried shame. Yes, more painful than Alistaire Cooke’s words must have been the silence of our friends….the silence of those who were supposed to watch out for us…the silence of those who had pledged to fight for the rights of those who were too weak, too unsophisticated and too unconnected to fight for themselves. The silence was deafening!

PART 5

The Jane Addams Hull House Complex:
Melting Pot, Smelting Pot – We Were Virtually Wall-to-Wall Italians.

 Our identities were forged by the streets and the institutions that served us. Most important of those institutions that served the Taylor-Halsted neighborhood was the Jane Addams’ Hull House.

 I had been the recipient of the influence of those institutions, especially Hull House and the Hull House Summer camp, the Bowen Country Club. Armed with my post graduate courses, as a young man I hired on as a social worker with the Jane Addams’ Hull House. Once a recipient whose identity had been forged by the neighborhood and its institutions, I became a contributor to the fashioning identities of waves of first and second generation Italian Americans that followed me.

 Italian Americans dominated the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood. One of the first newspaper articles ever written about Hull House (Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1890) acknowledges the following invitation sent to the residents of the Hull House neighborhood. Written in Italian, it begins with the following salutation: “Mio Carissimo Amico” and is signed, “Le Signorine, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr.”

Records from the Bethlehem-Howell Neighborhood Center further substantiates the observation that, as early as the 1890s, the inner core of “The Hull House Neighborhood,” from the river on the east, Roosevelt Road on the south, Harrison Street on the north, and on out to the neighborhood’s western most boundaries, was virtually all Italians.

The exodus of other ethnic groups dominating the fringes of the Hull House neighborhood began early in the twentieth century. Only their businesses remained: Greek Town and Jew Town (Maxwell Street).

The 1924 historic picture, Meet the ‘Hull House Kids’, was taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., one of the Hull House directors. All twenty kids were first generation Italian Americans, all with vowels at the ends of their names. “They grew up to be lawyers and mechanics, sewer workers and dump truck drivers, a candy shop owner, a boxer and a mob boss.”  That picture became a classic and was circulated throughout the world with the twenty Hull House kids falsely described as being of “Irish ancestry.”  It served as a poster child for Jane Addams and the Hull House Settlement House. Mr. Kirkland later became a top photographer with Life magazine.  During that same time period, Jane Addams was being marketed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.)

We would not be true to our profession, as writers and historians, if we did not ask:–what encouraged them, the Hull House establishment, to knowingly alter the ethnic identity of the Hull House Kids?

“I detest you people with your greasy hair and your olive oil skin.” That quote from Mario Puzo’s Godfather trilogy is reflective of how Italian Americans were viewed by society in general.  There was no reason to believe that the philanthropists who provided the financial support for the Hull House social experiment thought otherwise. From the beginning of Hull House’s existence in 1889, Italians were being sentenced to death by our courts on the flimsiest of evidence.  Also fully documented is the lynching of Italians with impunity.  A 1942 Gallup Poll further confirmed the existence of that perception…a perception of Italian Americans that had been and continues to be orchestrated by the media.

So! What encouraged the Hull House establishment to knowingly alter the ethnic identity of the Hull House Kids?  Would Hull House have received the necessary financial support, if those philanthropists knew that the inner core of the Hull House neighborhood was primarily Italian-Americans?  One could also surmise that Jane Addams would not market well, as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate if it were widely known that the inner core of the Hull House Neighborhood was virtually wall-to-wall Italians.  Should these questions, with their many inferences, be included in the history of the Italian American experience?  There are many ways to connect the dots.

Fast forward to 2008 and it appears that a similar attempt to disengage and minimize the Italian American experience from Hull House (consciously or unconsciously) is in place by the UIC, guardians of the Hull House Museum.  The Museum’s director, to date, has refused every request to include, in the bibliographies of the Hull House Museum or their websites, the writings of those who lived the Italian American experience of growing up in the Hull House neighborhood.

 ”The Taylor Street Archives is an amazing resource that should be part of
any story we need to tell about the history of this place.” …Lisa Lee, Director, Hull House Museum.  

 Despite the synergy that existed between Hull House and Taylor Street’s Little Italy, from the beginnings of the Hull House experiment in 1889 until its acquisition by the UIC in 1963, they, the UIC, refuse to make students, researchers, historians, and casual visitors aware of the existence of writers of the Italian American experience.  Hence, making them unaware of the people who comprised what Jane Addams called, “The Hull House Neighborhood.”

Lisa Lee, newly assigned Director of theHullHouseMuseum, upon being made aware of the Taylor Street Archives, stated, “The Taylor Street Archives is an amazing resource that should be part of any story we need to tell about the history of this place.”

Despite repeated inquiries, there was no response from the Museum’s administration regarding the request to include, in their massive bibliographies, at least one Italian American writer who lived the experience of growing up in Jane Addams’ Hull House Neighborhood.  The arrogance of their refusal, of even a civil response, was interrupted when, a year later, in a published statement made in response to a black community’s history project, Lisa Lee was quoted as saying, “History should include the stories of those who lived it.”

Once again, despite renewed inquiries based upon that quote, there was no response from the director or the UIC administration regarding the request to include a bibliography of Italian American writers who touched upon Jane Addams’ Hull House Neighborhood.   “You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?”

“History should include the stories of those who lived it. ”
You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk.

 The Italian American community, once again, is powerless to correct the flawed history of Hull House.  It may take another non-Italian to expose the deceit to our heritage and to right another unconscionable wrong. Had this insult been heaped upon any other ethnic group, the community would have called to task both the UIC Chancellor and the assigned UIC staff.  Jane Addams herself, were she alive today, would have called them to task.

 The Jane Addams’ Hull House Neighborhood served as the laboratory upon which the Hull House cadre of elite sociologists tested their social experiments and based their challenges to the establishment.  By omission and commission, the legacy of Taylor Street and the Italian American community that became the laboratory for the Jane Addams and her Hull House colleagues will be flawed.  The Director(s) of theHullHouseMuseumwill have knowingly conspired to distort, for future researchers and historians alike, the history of the Jane Addams Hull House.  Florence Scala, defender of Taylor Street’s Little Italy, the port-of call-for Chicago’s Italian American immigrants, were she alive today, would redefine the Hull House Mob.

One must wonder how Signorine Jane Addams and Helen Starr would react if they knew that the most recent Hull House Mob was systematically and methodically, with professional impunity, eliminating the residents of her Hull House Neighborhood from the Hull House legacy.

The place of the Italian American community in the history of Jane Addams and the Jane Addams Hull House complex, in a decade or so, like Fennimore Cooper’s Mohicans and the crew of the Herman Melville’s Pequod, will have vanished.  Our efforts as writers are meaningless without the media.  Those who control the media and media outlets such as the Hull House Museum control our history and our legacy.  Our legacy is the sum of our stories.  We must not allow others to write our history to their liking.

Prologue:  In January 2011, following a presentation made to the UIC Board of Trustees by Vince Romano, Christopher Kennedy, President of the UICBOT, asked that a meeting with the director be held, during which he suggested an accord be reached in which a link to the Hull House Museum web site, “Stories From the Hull House Neighborhood” would allow all ethnic groups to contribute their stories, as well.  The director, Lisa Lee, failed to show for the meeting.

Gentile Pharmacy left a footprint on the Taylor Street community. Located on the corner of Taylor and Racine, the drug store, as most drug stores during that era, was equipped with a beautiful soda fountain.  It served green river on tap and delicious malted milk shakes.  Gentile’s was also noted for its creative ice cream sundaes. The following is a short story chronicling the history of this iconic pharmacy. Read more…

By GinaMarie Gabrielle Piane

It was 1980; Granma, Mom and Dad, Karen and Rich were at my condo near DePaul University in Chicago playing Trivial Pursuit, the question was “Which president was assassinated in 1901?” Karen is one of my older sisters and Rich is her husband. Granma said, “McKinley, I remember, le Signore told me when it happened.” She was referring to Jane Addams coming into her kindergarten room to tell the children that the president had been assassinated. At this point, I decided that I needed to learn more about this woman who held my face in both her hands and gave me squeaky kisses. Read more…

From:   Camardo, Eleanor

RE:      Archives’ Stories

Dear Mark and Vince:

It would be sacrilegious if I did not express those happy good years. I am not the writer you are so please edit as you see fit. No hard feelings because I trust your journalism. Eliminate or add, I will understand. If not this edition maybe you can print it in the future issues.

Another social meeting place that should be mentioned for our Taylor Street Archives would be Tiritilli ‘s Tavern (Solly ‘s) at 1435 W Taylor St. Today it would be a Sports Bar. How dignified compared to “Solly ‘s Tavern.” Actually it was more like Cheers. Solly ‘s was a much better place. Read more…

The New York Times Bestseller, Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond, reconfigures how various peoples evolved as they had.  How it was that the Inca emperor was slain by soldiers sent across the ocean by the King of Spain and not the other way around?

While the Taylor Street Archives is galaxies short of Jared Diamond’s revelation on the Fates of Societies and how various peoples and their particular circumstances had evolved, the sounds reflecting the games we played and the things we did in the legendary Taylor Street’s Little Italy shed some light on how and to what our culture evolved.  Read more…

‘It was a glorious time.’

By Vince Romano

‘Where are you going?’

‘No place, ma…I’m just going to the club.’

During the 30s and 40s and on through the decades of the 50s and 60s, Taylor Street had clusters of Social Athletic Clubs (S.A.C.s). Growing up in Little Italy you were identified as a member of one of these clubs as much as you were identified with the school you attended or the street you lived on. Like fiefdoms, they were spread throughout Taylor Street’s ‘Little Italy’…from Halsted Street on the eastern boundary of Little Italy to Western Avenue bordering its outer fringes. Read more…

By Luke Capuano

Supporting contributor: Vince Romano

Holy-Moly! June’s here and school is OUT! Let the fun begin! The weight of the world is off your shoulders and the next 67 days are all yours to do with as you please. For everyone except those unfortunate summer school kids.

Read more…

Luke Capuano

Supporting contributor: Vince Romano

The following are some of the early boyhood memories of one of our Taylor Street bred figures.   Luke Capuano became a professional fighter and climaxed his career with two memorable fights with Mike Rossman, former light heavyweight champion of the world.   A hotly disputed split decision over Luke kept alive Rossman’s hopes of regaining his light heavyweight title.  Luke’s career as a professional fist fighter included an exhibition with Cassius Clay, also know as Muhammad Ali.

Read more…

Growing up in Taylor Street’s Little Italy

By Luke Capuano

Supporting contributor: Vince Romano

“A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.”

Elsewhere in these Taylor Street Archives is a story that begins as follows:  In India, they have a saying reserved for those individuals who had influenced and shaped our lives.  That saying is, “You are my Gemma.” The Gemma is a tributary to the Ganges River.  From the point at which the Gemma flows into the Ganges, the Ganges is no longer the same river.  Its course is forever influenced by the Gemma as it winds its way down to the ocean ultimately influencing and shaping the landscape of distant shores.  “You are my Gemma.”  A tribute reserved for those who had become our Gemmas during our personal journeys through life.  A tribute reserved for those who made us something different than we would have been had we not met them.

Read more…