The Mahdi Times The Mahdi Times July 2014 | Page 90

When Italians Were “Blacks”:
The Dark Skinned Sicilians
by Laila Ali

Did you know that in Italy, the Southern
Italians were considered “black” and
were subjected to the Jim Crow laws of
segregation? Neither were they allowed
to marry “whites.”, it was difficult, near
impossible.
They were designated as “black” on
census forms if they lived in the South
and that is because the majority of them
were dark-skinned Sicilians. Mass
lynching’s happened to them often.

were of a different race than them in
order to save face. This wasn’t true, and
there are actually dark-skinned Italians
all over Italy, not just in the South, as
well as light-skinned Italians.
The reason I say very few is because
over 80% of Italian immigrants were
from Southern Italy (Sicily, Abruzzo,
Calabria, Campania, Sardinia, Naples,
etc.)

In America, one of the biggest mass
lynching’s happened to Italians in New
Orleans when they thought that an
Italian immigrant had killed a “white”
police officer.

It was highly unlikely (near impossible)
for a Southern Italian to own a slave
because they were seen as the same as
blacks, and at the time, they were the
second (right behind blacks) most
discriminated against group.

The very few Northern Italians that
immigrated to American perpetuated the
myth that Southern Italians and Greeks

The mass immigration for Italians didn’t
start until 1880 and even then, they were
discriminated against. However, this