Italian immigrants were lynched for alleged crimes without legal process.
Evidence
In 1891 a wild rumor that drunken Italian laborers had cut the throats of a whole American family in West Virginia set off further rumors of a pitched battle between a sherift’s posse and the assassins. In 1895, when the southern Colorado coal fields were gripped by violent labor strife, a group of miners and other residents systematically massacred six Italian workers implicated in the death of an American saloonkeeper. A year later a mob dragged three Italians from jail in a small Louisiana town and hanged them. … But when some of the accused were tried, the yury (which may have been suborned) stunned the city by refusing to convict. While officials stood idly by, a mob proceeded “to remedy the failure of justice” by lynching eleven Italian suspects. With apparent unanimity local newspapers and business leaders blessed the action. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 538
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Italians were lynched for refusing to uphold Southern racial hierarchy.; Southern European immigrants were lynched for being racialized as Black — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 392; The US government paid indemnities to Italy for lynched Italian citizens. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 717 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Southern European immigrants were lynched for being racialized as Black
#expands(0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 392 - The US government paid indemnities to Italy for lynched Italian citizens.
#expands(0.80) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 717 - The US paid reparations for lynched Italians only when Italy proved citizenship.
#qualifies(0.80) - Italian immigrants faced Jim Crow and anti-miscegenation laws
#expands(0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 393 - Italians were lynched for refusing to uphold Southern racial hierarchy.
#qualifies(0.75) - International diplomatic leverage forced federal reparations for lynched Italians
#expands(0.75) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 126 - The United States once paid reparations for lynched Italian Americans
#corroborates(0.70) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 24