Italian-Americans

The standard history of the Italian-American experience, La Storia by Jerre Mangione and Ben Morreale, speaks of the "five hundred year" span of that experience.

This is a somewhat whimsical reference to the Italian (specifically Genoese) explorer Christopher Columbus: although Columbus' 1492 voyage of discovery did indeed bring an Italian into North American waters, one can hardly call Columbus an "Italian-American." However the annual federal holiday of Columbus Day was initially proposed by a first-generation Italian immigrant, Angelo Noce, and promoted by Italian-American fraternal groups (including the Roman Catholic fraternity, headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut, whose predominantly Italian-American members are called "Knights of Columbus"); the holiday stands as an annual reminder of the size and vitality of the community of Americans who claim descent from Italian immigrants (primarily during the great wave of Italian immigration in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was recognized in the period...
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