Southern European immigrants were lynched for being racialized as Black

Evidence

A case in point were dark-skinned Sicilians in the American South. When a group of Sicilians were lynched in Louisiana in 1891, the press justified the violence by highlighting their brutal nature arising from southern Italian culture and biology. Three more Italians in Louisiana were lynched in 1896 as punishment for fraternization with Blacks. In 1898, some delegates at the Louisiana state constitutional convention argued that Italians should be disenfranchised because they are “as black as the blackest negro in existence.” Similarly, when Greek immigrants were subjected to racial violence, it was justified by pejorative allegations of their “half n—” racial status. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 392

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s scholarship on racial formation and the one-drop rule, and to Whiteness studies (e.g., Noel Ignatiev). — connects to: Bank officials racialized Italians as descendants of Roman slaves — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1406; Southern congressmen framed southern European immigrants as racially impure — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 984; Italian immigrants were lynched for alleged crimes without legal process. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 538 (+1 more)
• SHARE: The 1898 Louisiana convention quote about Italians being ‘as black as the blackest negro’ would land with anyone working on American racial formation.