US paid indemnities to Italy’s lynched citizens but nothing to undocumented victims

Evidence

Italy again pressed into service Ambassador Baron Fava, who demanded an indemnity from US secretary of state John Hay. Eventually, President McKinley asked Congress for relief funds payable to the families of the deceased. Once again, on March 3, 1901, Congress appropriated a sum of 4,000 (just under 150,000 today) to be paid “out of humane considerations, without reference to the liability thereof, to the Italian Government as full indemnity to the heirs of Joseph (Giuseppe) DiFatta and John (Giovanni) Cirano, Italian citizens lynched at Tallulah, on July 20, 1899.” The other three victims’ families received nothing because a Department of Justice investigation found they were not Italian citizens. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 143