Columbus Day and the worst lynching in American history
/By Rubashov
Social media can be a smorgasbord of depravities. The other day, we read a post by a self-proclaimed person “of color” who claimed that Jews were “privileged” and had not suffered as people “of color” had. Apparently this wanker had missed the part about the Holocaust in his high school history class or the part in Sunday School about how Jews were slaves of the Egyptians.
Now it seems that the discrimination faced by Italian immigrants into the United States is also being lost down the memory hole of what was once called public education but increasing has become a form of madrasah, offering modern-day, woke ideological or religious indoctrination.
Ask Senator Cory Booker to discuss lynching and he’ll talk for hours without ever once referring to the worst incidence of lynching in American history. Is that because it happened to Italians?On March 14, 1891, 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans. They were murdered by a mob for their alleged role in the death of a police officer. They were lynched after they had been acquitted at trial. One man was hauled outside, hanged from a lamppost, and shot. Another was hanged from a tree and shot. Nine others were shot or clubbed to death inside the prison. The bullet-riddled bodies of the two men were left hanging for hours.
The lynching took place the day after the trial of nine men indicted in the case. Six of the defendants were acquitted, with a mistrial declared for the remaining three because the jury failed to agree on their verdicts. The lynch mob numbered thousands and included some of the city's most prominent citizens, including a lawyer, local politicians (among them a future Governor), and the editor of the New Delta newspaper. The mob that lynched the Italians even included some black residents, like Colonel James Lewis, a member of the elite Committee of Fifty and an officer in the Louisiana militia.
Mainstream American press coverage of the event was largely congratulatory. A Boston Globe front-page headline read, "STILETTO RULE: New Orleans Arose to Meet the Curse." Those responsible for the lynching were never charged.
But hey, it gets in the way of the current narrative – that all people of a certain skin tone are “privileged” and have always been “privileged” simply because of that skin tone thing. Of course, the truth is a bit more complicated than are the certainties offered by the evangelists of BLM and Antifa. Writing of the Anti-Italian sentiment in New Orleans, Wikipedia notes:
In late 19th-century America, there was a growing prejudice against Italians, although they were recruited to satisfy the demand for cheap labor. They were immigrating to the American South, particularly Florida and Louisiana, in large numbers because of poor conditions at home and to fill the shortage of cheap labor created by the end of slavery and the preference of freedmen to work on their own accounts as sharecroppers. Sugar planters, in particular, sought workers who were more compliant than former slaves; they hired immigrant recruiters to bring Italians to southern Louisiana. In the 1890s, thousands of Italians were arriving in New Orleans each year. Many settled in the French Quarter, which by the early 20th century became known as "Little Sicily."
…New Orleans Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare expressed the common anti-Italian prejudice, complaining that the city had become attractive to "...the worst classes of Europe: Southern Italians and Sicilians...the most idle, vicious, and worthless people among us." He claimed they were "filthy in their persons and homes" and blamed them for the spread of disease, concluding that they were "without courage, honor, truth, pride, religion, or any quality that goes to make a good citizen."
Wow… and people today claim about coded words and dog-whistling???
Say their names! Antonio Bagnetto, James Caruso, Loreto Comitis, Rocco Geraci, Joseph P. Macheca, Antonio Marchesi, Pietro Monasterio, Emmanuele Polizzi, Frank Romero, Antonio Scaffidi, and Charles Traina.
And remember their “privilege” when pandering politicians talk about destroying the monuments to Italian-American culture in America – like those statues to Christopher Columbus, paid for with money collected by Italian-American children. Which brings up another point about the BLM/Antifa gang: Why do they hate art so much that they seek to destroy it? The sculpture they rip down is the work of artists and craftsmen. But instead of replacing one piece of art with another, they destroy art and leave the space empty… without art.
Hank Bukowski was right to warn against such preachers…
They will attempt to destroy anything
That differs from their own
Not being able to create art
They will not understand art
They will consider their failure as creators
Only as a failure of the world
And we cannot close without a mention of Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat, who seems to be channeling some of what that New Orleans mayor, a fellow Democrat, was on about. Gottheimer’s campaign has been pushing that old trope linking a certain looking Italian with criminality. The Gottheimer campaign –
through direct mail paid for by the Democrat State Committee – has been darkening up the image of opponent Frank Pallottaand labeling him a “fraudster” for simply working on Wall Street at around the time of the 2008 meltdown. By “dirtying-up” and darkening Pallotta’s image, Gottheimer invites voters to make the stereotype of the Italian mafioso – long established in the popular imagination of Americans.
Pallotta’s Sicilian good looks aids Gottheimer and the Democrat State Committee in their frankly racist attempt to imply that people who look like Pallotta are criminals or somehow linked to criminal behavior (the Mafia?), as the word “fraudster” plainly indicates. This has long been part of the eastern Establishment lexicon. Consider this
New York Times editorial from March 16, 1891: “These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they... Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans.”They got acquitted, so we need to kill them. A bit like “no justice, no peace”?
Did the New York Times ever apologize for that piece of racism? Will anyone ask them to apologize?
Wikipedia notes that “most anti-Italian hostility in the United States was directed at Southern Italians, particularly Sicilians. This was especially true in the American South, where Southern Italians were not considered full-fledged members of the ‘white race’. The U.S. Bureau of Immigration reinforced this distinction, classifying Northern and Southern Italians as two different races. Between 1890 and 1910, Sicilians made up less than 4 percent of the white male population, yet were roughly 40 percent of the white victims of southern lynch mobs. Before that, many white victims were ethnic Irish. They often had peripheral positions, working on construction of levees and railroads, and as farm workers.”
Well, it appears that a staple of Establishment hatred continues in America – the hatred of Italians and especially Sicilians. Long fanned by the media and the entertainment industry, heavily ladled over political campaigns… and now politicians and their mobs are coming to pull down your statues and erase the memory of your ethnic struggle.
Look on the bright side. At least the New York Times isn’t editorializing that the mob lynch anyone… not yet, anyway.
They will attempt to destroy anything
That differs from their own
Not being able to create art
They will not understand art
They will consider their failure as creators
Only as a failure of the world
Charles “Hank” Bukowski
