An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians

by Paul Moses

Overview

An Unlikely Union tells the dramatic story of how two of America’s largest ethnic groups learned to love and laugh with each other after decades of animosity.

They came from the poorest parts of Ireland and Italy and met as rivals on the sidewalks of New York. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Irish and Italians clashed in the Catholic Church, on the waterfront, at construction sites, and in the streets. Then they made peace through romance, marrying each other on a large scale in the years after World War II.

The vibrant cast of characters features saints such as Mother Frances X. Cabrini, who stood up to the Irish American archbishop of New York when he tried to send her back to Italy, and sinners like Al Capone, who left his Irish wife home the night he shot it out with Brooklyn’s Irish mob. The book also highlights the torrid love affair between radical labor organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Carlo Tresca; the alliance between Italian American gangster Paul Kelly and Tammany’s “Big Tim” Sullivan; heroic detective Joseph Petrosino’s struggle to be accepted in the Irish-run NYPD; and the competition between Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby to become the country’s top male vocalist.

In this engaging history of the Irish and Italians, veteran New York City journalist and professor Paul Moses offers a classic American story of competition, cooperation, and resilience. At a time of renewed fear of immigrants, An Unlikely Union reminds us that Americans are able to absorb tremendous social change and conflict—and come out the better for it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479810246
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	07/03/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	989,750
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Paul Moses is Professor Emeritus of Journalism at CUNY-Brooklyn College and a former reporter and editor at Newsday. He is the author of An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York's Irish and Italians and The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS Acknowledgmentsix Introduction1 Part I. In the Basement:The Church as a Battleground 1. “Garibaldi and His Hordes” 11 2. “The Italian Problem” 27 3. Tipping Point 42 4. “Race War” 56 Part II. Turf Wars:Rivals in the Workplace 5. “Can’t They Be Separated?” 73 6. “The Other Half of Me!” 100 7. Black Hand 113 8. On the Waterfront 155 9. White Hand 179 vii viii Contents Part III. Sharing the Stage:Politics and Entertainment 10. The Pols 201 11. Cool 248 Part IV. At the Altar:Becoming Family 12. Love Stories 273 13. Food and Family 296 14. Sharing the Bastions of Power 312 Conclusion 327 Notes331 Bibliography361 Index367 About the Author381

Editorial Reviews

"Moses has written an irresistible history of how the Irish and Italians fought throughviolent differences to find common ground. He provides riveting accounts of how theIrish and Italians collided in the arenas of work and entertainment, in New York politicsand law enforcement, and even in organized crime as the & Black Hand challenged the& White Hand."

New York Irish History

"Even the future saint, an Italian, Mother Frances Cabrini, and the Irish Archbishop of New York, Michael Corrigan, argued and couldn't at first get along. The Irish and Italians here in America shared a common faith and hope, but, sometimes charity only came later! What a colorful chronicle of the spice, diversity, yet unity, of the Catholic community, and the magic of America."

0 - Cardinal Timothy Michael Dolan

"A wonderful, important book. Paul Moses does a masterful job explaining the complex relationship between two ethnic groups that helped define New York City in the 19th and 20th centuries. With great research and a writer's touch, he tells a story that every New Yorkerand would-be New Yorkerneeds to know."

Terry Golway

"Adelightful book, part academic and part journalistic."

Italian American Review

"Author Paul Mosesrevisitsthe days whenItalianimmigrants first arrived in the United States and settled in New York City amidst the Irish who came before them. The eventual union both ethnicities formed did not come easily."

Italian American

"The masses of Italian immigrants who arrived in New York City in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found Irish Americans everywhere in charge: as cops and robbers, saints and sinners, and wary gatekeepers of nearly all the occupations the newcomers hoped to pursue. By Paul Mosess delightfully insightful, warm, and witty account, ethnic tribalism proved no match for enterprising immigrants who saw their opportunities and took them. From Paolo Vaccarelliwho as Paul Kelly insinuated himself deep into the heart of the citys political and labor establishments before reclaiming his original identityto Francis Albert Sinatra, who far surpassed his Irish-American musical 'foreman' Tommy Dorsey, Italian-Americans forged a 'mixed marriage' with the Irish that transformed both communities."

James T. Fisher

"The authors engaging thesis is built with historical research, archival records, photographs, and personal narratives. Recommended for young adult and adult readers, as well as any reader interested in American cultural history."

Catholic Library World

"Award-winning author and Brooklynite Paul Moses is back with a historic yet dazzling story on the complex relationship between New York's Irish and Italians."

Brooklyn Eagle

"There is much in this book to savor. Written with a loving hand, it offers a warm understanding of two ethnic groups that eventually came to accept each other."

HNN.com

"Readers will discover much inAn Unlikely Unionthats news to them and will be intrigued by what they find on each absorbing page. After reading about the police detectives, union leaders, nuns, and mobsters at the center of ancient Irish-Italian conflicts, readers will be left to ponder their own family histories."

U.S. Catholic

"InAn Unlikely Union, Moses has crafted a book worthy of its mighty subject."

Irish Voice

"For all their avowed differences, the Irish and Italians gradually came together. Moses argues convincingly that once the two groups mingled in churches, schools and other public realms, and started to share the same set of cultural norms, tensions eased. It is partly a story of assimilation, and partly a story of rising up the economic ladder."

Newsday

"Delivers nothing less than a revelation on every page: clashing cardinals and brawling bootblacks; torrid love affairs ignited on picket lines; distant revolutions launched, nurtured, and suppressed from New York tenements and parish halls. Unforgettable characters from two mighty tribes of New York, the Irish and the Italians, are woven into this astonishing, wonderful book by one of the city's greatest reporters. In Paul Moses's pitch-perfect prose, the human history of New York comes alive as never before. And not a moment too soon: the untold sagas and struggles of the Irish and the Italians, their journeys from rumbles to romance, are being lived again today and will be tomorrow by other newcomers."

Jim Dwyer

"An Unlikely Union is a welcome and magisterial account of the evolving andimproving relationship between two important immigrant groups in New York City. Moses's smooth and engaging prose carries the reader from encounters where Irish mothers encouraged their children to throw bricks at Italian immigrants to the point where the 'Irish and Italians became the two most intermarried ethnic groups in America'. The arguments are supported by archival sources, secondary literature, and interviews. The ideas presented are novel and compelling and will be of interest to a wide range of scholars historians, sociologists, theologians, immigration scholars, etc. Most important, however, Moses provides a narrative that is accessible and engaging to an audience outside of academia."

American Catholic Studies

"[] Mosess deep intimacy with New York and his unique blend of social history, sociology, biography, and autobiography distinguish this book from the otherwise excellent historical scholarship with which it engages. Historians of New York City, Irish and Italian immigration, and American Catholicism should seek outAn Unlikely Union."

Journal of Jesuit Studies

"Moses, a Brooklyn College journalism professor and formerNewsdayreporter and editor, brings to his subject a reporters instinct for a good story (including his own) and a professors skill in mining and interpreting historical records. The result is a thoroughly engaging and eminently readable account of the people and institutions that helped shape Irish-Italian relations."

James Hannan

"A splendid array of characters passes through these fast-turning pages. They include saintsliterally, in the case of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who stood up to New Yorks archbishop in 1889 and was canonized a half-century later. And there are sinners, among them Al Capone, who murdered an Irish mob leader in Brooklyn and was an odd match for his loving Irish wife, Mae."

America

"This is an informative and entertaining book that is thoroughly researched and beautifully written"

Catholic Historical Review

"A splendid array of characters passes through these fast-turning pages. They include saintsliterally, in the case of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who stood up to New Yorks archbishop in 1889 and was canonized a half-century later. And there are sinners, among them Al Capone, who murdered an Irish mob leader in Brooklyn and was an odd match for his loving Irish wife, Mae."

America

Delivers nothing less than a revelation on every page: clashing cardinals and brawling bootblacks; torrid love affairs ignited on picket lines; distant revolutions launched, nurtured, and suppressed from New York tenements and parish halls. Unforgettable characters from two mighty tribes of New York, the Irish and the Italians, are woven into this astonishing, wonderful book by one of the city's greatest reporters. In Paul Moses's pitch-perfect prose, the human history of New York comes alive as never before. And not a moment too soon: the untold sagas and struggles of the Irish and the Italians, their journeys from rumbles to romance, are being lived again today and will be tomorrow by other newcomers.”-Jim Dwyer,Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist

From the Publisher

2015-03-29
How two ethnic groups made peace. Former Newsday city editor Moses (Journalism/Brooklyn Coll.; The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace, 2009) sees himself as "a social science statistic": a third-generation Italian-American New Yorker, educated in Catholic schools, who married an Irish-American woman. Their 1976 marriage, he realizes, was not unusual, but a century earlier, it would have been almost scandalous. In this lively history of the clashes, compromises, and eventual bonding between two feisty immigrant groups, Moses looks at Irish and Italian expressions of religion, social customs, and family life; access to political power; competition for jobs; and cultural forces that shaped their images. Irish immigrants had gained a foothold in American life before waves of Italians arrived in the late 19th century. Although both groups were predominantly Roman Catholic, their religious practices were starkly different. "The Irish shunned…loud shows of faith," a result of persecution by the British; southern Italians, on the other hand, celebrated noisily, with feasts and fireworks that the Irish deemed crude. The two groups did not bond in their churches, nor in the workplace, where they often competed for jobs, causing dissension, especially in hard economic times. Italians' feeling of powerlessness was underscored by a criminal justice system dominated by the Irish. "Like later minority groups in New York," Moses writes astutely, "Italian immigrants believed that police, judges, and juries were biased against them." Taking justice into their own hands, Italians waged gang warfare in the form of the Mafia and Black Hand. The author offers deft capsule biographies of such figures as activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and her Italian lover, Carlo Tresca; spunky New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia and his rival, the suave Jimmy Walker; Al Capone and his quietly elegant Irish-American wife, Mae Coughlin; and Frank Sinatra, who got his big break from tough Irish band leader Tommy Dorsey. A brisk, well-researched look at a significant part of New York's boisterous past.

Kirkus Reviews