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The first Italian American in Detroit was Alfonso Tonti (1659–1727) The first Italian American in Detroit was Alfonso Tonti, a Frenchman with an Italian immigrant father. He was the second-in-command of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who established Detroit in 1701. Tonti's child, born in 1703, was the first ethnic European child born in Detroit.
An American teacher who had studied in Italy, Sarah Wool Moore, was so concerned with grifters luring immigrants into rooming houses or employment contracts in which the bosses got kickbacks that she pressed for the founding of the Society for the Protection of Italian Immigrants (often called the Society for Italian Immigrants). The society ...
Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina [254] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing.
Portrait of an Italian American family (1905) European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in Ireland, a full 16% of the Union Army. [48] Many Germans could see the parallels between slavery and serfdom in the old fatherland. [49]
The final phase of colonial immigration, from 1760 to 1820, became dominated by free settlers and was marked by a huge increase in British immigrants to North America and the United States in particular. In that period, 871,000 Europeans immigrated to the Americas, of which over 70% were British (including Irish in that category).
Sicilian immigrants brought with them their own unique culture, including theatre and music. Giovanni De Rosalia was a noted Sicilian American playwright in the early period and farce was popular in several Sicilian dominated theatres. In music Sicilian Americans would be linked, to some extent, to jazz. Three of the more popular cities for ...
In the early days of Italian immigration, Boston Italians tended to vote Democratic. The one major exception was in 1920, when, disappointed that Wilson had not supported Italy's claim to the seaport city of Fiume, they voted for Harding. [48] From 1920 to 1940 they voted consistently, overwhelmingly, Democratic.
Early anti-Italian publications insisted that Italian immigrants were incapable of being integrated to American culture or adopting American values. This wholesale rejection of Italian immigrants would cement the formation of stereotypes associating Italian immigrants with the criminal activities perpetrated by a minority segment of the population.