History is Dangerous

I have just read, for the first time, that eleven Italian immigrants were lynched by a mob in New Orleans in 1891. They had just been acquitted of involvement in the shooting of a police official. Apparently, the mob didn't agree with the verdict. I was doing this deep reading in order to better understand my deceased mother's pre-occupation with being an American. Although she was born in this country, and was an American, her parents were immigrants, and my mother was married to my father who came from Italy at the age of four, and who was technically an immigrant. What I learned from this "deep reading" was that the 1920-30s was a period of anti-immigration sentiment following the massive legal immigration to the United States. This anti-immigrant sentiment must have been a part of the reason why my mother changed her first name, to sound more American, and eventually changed her last name on her Social Security card because she thought she would have a better chance of finding a good job.

This led me to contrast the anti-immigration sentiment of the 1920-30s with what we experiencing today. Something to think about.