Immigration and Italian Culture in Buffalo

       
            According to an article I saw on the Library of Congress website, Italians were forced to leave their old world homes because of poverty, crop failures, and taxation. Many of them found their way to Buffalo, New York. In 1900, these were the cities with the largest number of Italian immigrants, in order: New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Newark, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Jersey City, Buffalo.

           Between 1900 and 1920, Buffalo's population of Italian born citizens rose from 6,000 to 16,000. Buffalo was and is very much a city of immigrants - in 1920 Italians accounted for 10% of Buffalo's foreign born population, and 7% of her population overall. I found these figures in a book by Virginia Yans McLaughlin called Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo 1880 - 1930. 

            Italian society in the old world was distinctly family oriented, and things were no different when they came to Buffalo. Even if a whole family could not immigrate together, the first arrivals scrimped and saved so that they could send for those left behind. The insularity of some Italian villages was repeated here so that it was not unusual to find many families from the same village living in the same tenement block. The fabric of the neighborhood was woven of family and friends. Just as in Italy, one's nuclear and extended family was the hub of one's social life. They helped each other find work or a place to live, and they formed mutual aid societies to carry each other through especially hard times.

              Italian women rarely left their homes to work. That was the man's job. Her sphere was the home; it was her responsibility to hold the family together. The book I mentioned quotes an Italian proverb: "If the father should die, the family would suffer; if the mother should die, the family ceases to exist." Women's honor and chastity were important, and to be protected. Girls were taught at a young age how to cook and do the marketing; they were often expected to care for younger siblings. Everything women did was done within the neighborhood.

Photo courtesy Buffalo & Erie County Public Library

The only boys present in the scene at left are very young. The older boys may have been at school - education was important to the immigrants - but just as important was helping in any way they could to feed the (usually large) family. I imagine bananas were a rare treat then.

Young boys sold newspapers, shined shoes, acted as messengers, sold apples - in short, they helped in whatever way they could and contributed their earnings to the family pot.

This photograph from the Library of Congress was taken in Buffalo in 1910 by Lewis Hines as part of his 'child workers' series. It is called 'Italian newsies'.

Was there a newsie in your family? I'm always so glad to hear from readers.














references
Italian Immigration: The Great Arrival, Library of Congress, http://www,loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/immigration/italian3.html
McLaughlin, Virginia Yans. Family and Community: Italian Immigration in Buffalo, New York, 1880-1930, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.