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May 2008
Casa Italia, Stone Park IL
TAYLOR STREET
ARCHIVES: Beyond Family Values…Beyond the Work Ethic…Beyond Demographics.
by
Vincent Romano
Due to unforeseen time restraints that occurred during the event, an abbreviated
portion of the following was presented to the Fulbright Scholars.
These are the two 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 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 that holocaust.
2. We boast about writing our own story of the Italian American experience. However, we allow others, who control and have access to those media outlets that will survive us, to report our history to their liking.
The Italian American experience I'm most familiar with is the east end of Taylor Street… the Taylor and Halsted neighborhood. Like other first generation Italian Americans, my identity was, in-part, the creation of that neighborhood…its people and its institutions.
Everyone feared the establishment. Come election day, no one believed there was a secret ballot. There was never any consensus, during the 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.
As first generation Italian Americans kids, we learned quickly that our world was far removed from that of the major culture. It did not take long for us to sense that we were a subculture within a dominant culture that was very different from us.
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 than Taylor Street. We had our share of profound failures
as prophesized by our sociological soothsayers.
Jared Diamond's best seller, Guns, Germs and Steel, 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, 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.
His main character, Nick Romano, was given an address on Peoria Street. Peoria Street, buried deep within the Taylor 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 life terms. Both were teenagers at the time Willard Motley wrote his best selling novel. The recipient of the American Legion award, given to the top graduate in my grammar school class, like Willard Motley's main character, was dead before reaching age twenty.
Social Athletic Clubs, like fiefdoms, proliferated 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 identified as a member of one of those clubs than
you were with the school you attended or the street you lived on.
In the Taylor Street Archives is
a statement made by the 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. It pretty well summarized what it meant to be Taylor
Street bred. "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.
Recent works, such as the 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 the Italian American experience. We do so, with passion and conviction. We do so as if no other ethnic group valued their family or worked for a living.
The Fra Noi, 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.
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 that I knew…other than
a Doc Yario or two. The Taylor Street Archives 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.
No one that I know of, from the Taylor Halsted neighborhood ever mentioned having parents or grandparents saving money as a college fund for any of their children. No one 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, dies before age 21. And it was not from natural causes.
The people residing in other Little Italies refused to accept welfare. 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 report to work to pick up their monthly pay checks. They grudgingly pulled themselves away from the card games to take a trip down town to pick up their pay. Perhaps we need to assign a broader meaning to welfare when it comes to Taylor Street.
Between and among our city payrollers, our mob bosses, our hit men, our loan sharks and our bookies, it was difficult to uncover the work ethic that others so passionately described when writing about 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 had created. The 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.
If Italian Americans were at the bottom rung of the educational ladder, then surely there are greater issues we, as writers, need to uncover. 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 refused access to the American dream and choose not to remain servants to that Dream sought unconventional avenues in pursuit of the Dream. Many became entrepreneurs.
The politically correct explanation for our shortcomings has been and continues to be the agrarian society from whence we came.
I believe otherwise. I suggest that the psychological genocide of a people, that media induced plague, is the unexplored and untold story of the Italian American immigrant.
The media must bear some responsibility
for the results of a Federally sponsored study (1975) 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 Michaelangelos
at the bottom rung of anything should raise some eyebrows.
What is of greater relevance than
the agrarian culture from whence we came, is the Alistaire Cookes of the
media world. In a nationally televised TV program, he announced to the world
that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions
made to America by Italian Americans.
No other emigrant group, no other ethnic group, had been so maligned, so vilified by the media as the Italian American. When the larger society was programmed to reject us, "I detest you people with your greasy hair and your olive oil skin," we sought alternative paths to the American Dream. Taylor Street, as Jared Diamond would have prophesized, evolved into a subculture of entrepreneurs. Some legal. Many were not so legal. After all, how many lemonade stands can one neighborhood support.
More painful than Alistaire Cooke's words was the silence. 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!
During WWII, thousands upon thousands of gold stars hung from the windows in all of the Little Italies scattered throughout America. One of those gold stars hung on the window of Mrs. Favia, just three doors south of where I lived on Peoria Street….just 3 doors south of where Willard Motley's main character lived.
Vito Favia was killed during the
battle for Iwo Jima. John Basilone, another son of Italian immigrants, was
killed during the battle for Iwo Jima, as well. 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. 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 Alistaire Cookes of this world. Approximately a half-million Italian American warriors fought for our freedom during WWII. More than any other ethnic group. Taylor Street sacrificed its fair share of young men. Their valor won, for Alistaire Cooke, the freedom to announce on a nationally televised TV program that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made by the Italian American immigrants. How ironic!
One must wonder what thoughts ran
through the minds of Mrs. Favia and all those Italian American mothers who
had lost their sons in the struggle to defeat America's enemies
when Alistaire 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 ran through the minds of those Italian American mothers who had their sons returned to them with their arms torn out and their legs blown off, when Alistaire Cooke announced to the world that Alphonse Capone was representative of the contributions made to America 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.
JANE ADDAMS HULL HOUSE
The Jane Addam's Hull House was among those institutions that served us.
Our identities were forged by the streets and the institutions that served
us. Most important of those institutions was the Jane Addams" Hull
House.
Jane Addams labeled the Taylor-Halsted Street community as "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. It begins with the following salutation: "Mio Carissimo Amico"…and is signed, "Le Signorine, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr."
The Bethlehem-Howard Neighborhood Center Records 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 predominantly Italian. The neighborhood was wall-to-wall Italians as far back as 1890.
On a summer day in 1924, a historic picture, Meet the 'Hull House Kids', was taken by Wallace K. Kirkland Sr., a Hull House director. The picture depicts twenty young boys, "all of Irish descent," posing in the Dante school yard on Forquer Street (now Arthington Street). That picture became a classic and was circulated throughout the world. 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.
On April 5, 1987, over six decades later, that picture, Meet the 'Hull House Kids', appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. The Sun-Times article lists the names of each of the young boys and refutes an earlier attempt to label them as being of Irish ethnicity. 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." Our end of Taylor Street was a breeding ground for those who pursued the American Dream in unconventional ways.
The Italian community was powerless to correct the flawed description of the Hull House Kids which circulated around the globe for over a half-century. It took a non-Italian to expose the deceit to out heritage.
What encouraged them, the Hull House establishment, to knowingly alter the ethnic identify of the Hull House Kids?
Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1931. During the same time period that Jane Addams was being marketed as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, Italians were being sentenced to death by our courts on the flimsiest of evidence and Italians were regularly being lynched with impunity.
"I detest you people with
your greasy hair and your olive oil skin," was not an invention of
Mario Puzo. That statement, captured by Mario Puzo, was reflective of how
Italian
Americans were viewed. A 1942 Gallup Poll confirmed that perception. A perception
of the Italian American that had been and continues to be orchestrated by
the media. . ,
So! What encouraged the Hull House establishment to knowingly alter the ethnic identify of the Hull House Kids? Why did Jane Addams herself tolerate this misrepresentation?
Taylor Street's Little Italy was
the laboratory upon which the inner sanctum of sociologists and philanthropists
tested their theories and the rationale upon which they based their challenges
to the establishment. One could surmise that Jane Addams, serving wall-to-wall
Italians in her settlement house, may not have marketed well to the rest
of the world. Perhaps it was not good copy to have been providing socials
services to a race
of people who lived in the filth of our inner city slums and were despised
by the larger society. Should these questions, with their many inferences,
be included in the history of the Italian American experience and the history
of this country? 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 faculty, guardians of the Hull House Museum. The UIC faculty
has refused every request to include, in the bibliographies of their websites,
the works of those who have written about the Italian American experience.
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 faculty, refuse to make students, researchers and casual
visitors aware of the existence of writers of the Italian American experience.
Lisa Lee, newly assigned Director
of the Hull House Museum, upon becoming 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 UIC administration regarding the request to include a bibliography of Italian American writers who touched upon 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?"
Once again the Italian community is powerless to correct the flawed history
of Hull House. It may take another non-Italian to expose the deceit to out
heritage and right another 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 would have called them to task.
By omission and commission, the legacy of Taylor Street and its Italian American community that became the laboratory for the Jane Addams Hull house, will be incomplete and distorted.
The Director will have conspired to knowingly distort, for future researchers and historians alike, the history of the Jane Addams Hull House and Taylor Street's Little Italy. The Jane Addams' Hull House Neighborhood served as the laboratory upon which the Hull House elite had tested their social experiments and based their challenges to the establishment.
How appropriate the quote from
Martin Scorcese's movie, The Gangs of New York, "And it came to pass,
it was as if we never were."