ABSTRACT
In 1861 military forces led by Giuseppe Garibaldi liberated Italy from centuries of foreign rule; but Italians still lacked any sense of a national identity and had no allegiance to the new government. Faced with more taxes, grinding poverty and epidemics, oppressed peasants sought a better life. Between 1880 and 1924 more than 4,000,000 migrated to the United States. Uneducated and largely illiterate, they had only their bodies, in the form of physical labour, to offer in return. They arrived unwashed and unwanted by the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who enjoyed hegemony over American society. This study analyses the role of sport as a means to gain greater group recognition and eventual acceptance of Italians within the polity. That process differed markedly from the Jewish pursuit of education or the Irish involvement in politics as other ethnics’ means of gaining social capital. The study utilises English- and Italian-language sources, such as newspapers that provided middle-class perceptions, values and goals; oral histories that gave voice to working-class families, their values and generational conflicts in identity and purpose; and archival materials to trace the journey from a lack of a national identity to the development of an Italian identity, a liminal identity as Italian Americans, and the question of full inclusion in the Americanisation process, which necessitated a transition from racial to ethnic classification and evolution from non-white to white status.
