1. Southern California’s Italian Roots    

Italians and Italian Americans have played an instrumental role in the development of Los Angeles as one of the world’s greatest metropolises, yet the history of Italians in Los Angeles is a largely unknown topic in our country’s history. Though Los Angeles is home to the nation’s fifth-largest Italian population today, and the Italian presence in the American West predates the nation’s founding, seldom is the city mentioned in dialogs surrounding contemporary Italian American communities. As early as the 16th century, accounts of Italian explorers encouraged colonial interest in present-day California. Fray Marco da Niza’s electrifying statements about the legendary “golden” city of Cibola inspired Coronado’s 1541 expedition of present-day New Mexico. Sicilian Jesuit Eusebio Chino, nicknamed the “Father on horseback,” explored California and declared in 1702 that it was a peninsula, not an island, as previously believed. Explorations by Father Juan Crespi led to the European world’s discovery of the San Francisco Bay in 1772. Crespi, the diarist of the Portola exhibition, said the first Catholic Mass in Southern California, established the famed Camino Real trail and named the Los Angeles River. The Los Angeles Italian experience contrasts from that of Italian immigrants elsewhere in the country and reveals the complexity of the Italian American diaspora. Given the tremendous upward mobility achieved by Italian Americans, it may seem implausible that at one time, prejudice and discrimination punctuated the lives of Italian immigrants. Italians were the second most common targets of lynchings in many parts of the United States during the 1800s. In the early 20th century, eugenicists described Italians as racially inferior while political cartoons of the era depicted Italians as rats embodying the “ills of immigration.” In Los Angeles, however, a city profoundly influenced by its Spanish and Mexican heritage, Italians faced little hostility.