Back in the 1980s when I began to get active in Italian American affairs, I wrote a letter to Newsday, the regional newspaper of Long Island, critiquing an op-ed on Italian history. A few days later my letter was published. Shortly after, I received a phone call from activist John LaCorte of Brooklyn praising my letter. LaCorte famously lobbied for a new bridge connecting Brooklyn to Staten Island. He had to buck master builder Robert Moses and Governors Harriman and Rockefeller to have it named The Verrazano Bridge. Before that, he lobbied the FBI to install a statue to FBI founder Charles Bonaparte at their building’s entrance. In between he brought attention to Antonio Meucci’s primacy over Alexander Bell in the invention of the telephone. LaCorte’s call to me was like hearing from the Pope, that’s how I revered the elders of our community. He was part of a generation that gave us the tools and organizations to educate ourselves, to prepare us to advance our cultural legacy.
For my part, I asked LaCorte for an interview on his accomplishments for the community. That interview was the focus story of our first issue of The Italic Way magazine in 1988, with LaCorte on the cover (right). You can find it in our Research Library at www.italic.org. LaCorte’s story will impress you.
These days, something is happening with the youth of our ‘community.’ A few years ago, I was approached by Italian American law students at Tauro College on Long island. Seems they needed to be reassured that Christopher Columbus was really Italian, not Jewish as a professor at their Jewish-run college had been telling them. Without hesitation I arranged a visit to Tauro and gave a presentation to the “Italian Club” on the facts. I even distributed free copies of The Italic Way. In the hopes of bringing 20-somethings into the fold, I also offered to sponsor a monthly wine & cheese gathering of the Club on campus with our Institute leaders that would deepen their understanding of heritage. However, these future lawyers were Italian in name only. Their message to me was ‘thank you and goodbye.’ The “Club” was just a club, a social oasis in a Jewish college, nothing more.
This experience led me to unfavorably compare the Tauro students with an Italian club at Columbia University in the 1920s. That Circolo Italiano, a group of undergraduates, envisioned an Italian Cultural Center at Columbia and managed to have one built in 1927 – a 30,000 s.f. edifice that still stands today. Those students were the sons and daughters of blue-collar immigrants living modest lives in nearby East Harlem. They not only found a benefactor to donate the building, but they helped operate it for 63 years thereafter.
Clearly, times have changed, and Italian American youth has not improved in commitment to heritage. You will find a link below to a recent ‘conference’ in Florida of 20- and 30-somethings. This is apparently their 3rd year of ‘conferences’ all paid by a rich benefactor. See if you can detect a mission or a plan emanating from this gathering. Their ethnic mentor is Chazz Palminteri! But they don’t want any direction or oversight by any other “boomers.” Somehow, their youth will find a way to advance the Italian heritage. Their grounding? Besides admitting to A Bronx Tale and “chicken cutlets,” who can say? -JLM
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