The Perspective of Improvemnt and Progress

I‘d like to share an excerpt from the book The Story of the Italians in America - Your Ancestor Series - ( Doubleday & Company Inc.,  Garden City, New York , 1965) by Michael A. Musmanno, a jurist of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and a politician of Italian heritage. The author depicts the hardships and prejudice Italian immigrants faced in the USA but also their achievement. Here is one of the most touching and meaningful pages of his book:

  Though the children’s garments were left much to be desired, they were getting the best clothing in the world for their minds. They were being dressed with education in the free schools of America. Itwas only a little country school they attended but the teacher seemed to know everything and the children brought home books that excited even Antonio and Maddalena who dreamed of the day their offspring would take their place with dignity and respect in the life of America, earning wages that would supply them with good clothing, nourishing food and warmth no matter how wintry the winds of life might blow.

    When the United States went to war with Spain, Giovanni joined Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, fought in Cuba and came back in a blue uniform with yellow stripes and a sombrero pinned up at the side, a dashing hero to two sisters and three brothers. And as the first three sons reached working age, they got jobs on a railroad section gang, toiling close to their dad. The fourth one, Francesco, worked in a steel mill by day and went to school at night, steering his life by a star which pointed to a lawyer’s career. The other daughter, Rosina, became a telegraphist. Antonio and Maddalena offered prayers of thanksgiving for the opportunities of America to live in self-dependence, self-respect and with a continuing prospective of further improvement and increasing happiness. They now had a more substantial home, shaded by a slight mortgage and five fine mulberry trees, the saplings of which had come from Antonio’s paese.

    When America declared war on Germany, two of the brothers sailed away to the battlefields of France. One did not return and the mulberry trees spread their melancholy shade for young Raffaelo resting in eternal peace and glory in Flanders Field. Maddalena, with a sob in her throat, placed a golden star in the window. Antonio hung in the next window the American flag. He knew now he was truly an American because the blood of his boy was in the red stripes.
    Fifteen years later, Francesco, who had become a successful lawyer, was elected judge. On the day he was to be installed in office, Antonio and Maddalena sat in the courtroom, trembling in their ecstasy. It was true and yet it could not be true. The forlorn immigrants who had landed in America many years ago had had many dreams, but even in the rosiest clouds of hope and promise they could not visualize a shining judicial robe for one of their own children. At the moment that Francesco took the oath, Antonio lifted to his lips the folds of an American flag at this side and kissed the nation’s ensign, murmuring at the time some words. That night at home, Francesco said to his father: “Papà, I saw you kiss the flag at the swearing-in ceremony and I know you spoke some words because I saw your lips move. What did you say?” Antonio lowered the large-bowl pipe at which he had been puffing and, as creamy clouds of smoke ascended to the ceiling, he replied: “My boy I said: ”Thank God for a country where even the son of an Italian immigrant coal miner and railroad section hand can become a judge.”