Ethnic Groups and Descrimination

I am of French and Italian decent. My mother's side of the family is mostly made up of French and Italians. My father's side is of Sicilians and Italians. Unfortunately, only my grandparent's spoke the Italian language and they are now deceased, and most of us left in the family do not speak the language, only the English language.

Italians immigrated to mostly South America during the 18th and 19th century, after World War II, due to the poor conditions of southern Italy having a series of natural disasters occur. Two volcano's had erupted, Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna. In the year of 1908 an earthquake occurred and then a tidal wave washed away parts of Sicily and the Italian mainland, killing thousands, if not millions of people. Most of the men came to the United States for work, hoping to get higher paying jobs so that they could support their families and some day return back to Italy to rebuild. Most northern Italians who immigrated to the United States became fruit merchants in different parts of New York and wine growers in some areas of California. Although they came to the United States with "high hopes", when they originally first arrived here, they were treated like peasants and faced a lot of prejudice, rudeness and unkindness. They were given mostly the low class jobs such as paving the roads and railroad work. They naturalized in England and became accustomed to Americanizing their names to fit in to the American society. The English pursued Italian immigration because they were very impressed with the Italian arts and craftsmanship. "It is ironic that the first Italians to come to the New World stood on the decks of the ships that they captained while later their countrymen would arrive as refugees or indentured servants, huddled together as steerage passengers in the decks below. From the very beginning, however, Italians participated in the economic and artistic life of this country". (http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/partii.html).