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# 63 • June 28 , 2015
Saint Louis had many Italians
arriving during the big waves,
late 1800 and early 1900, then
between the wars, and then
after World War II: pretty much
the immigration stopped in
the 1960/70s.In Kansas there
are different industries, it depends on which city you went
to. Kansas City was a big meat
packing distribution area; Chicago was the largest, but for a
long time right behind it was
Kansas City. Nowadays we also
are the second largest commercial rail hub in the United
States. We have every major
rail line coming through here,
and used to have a lot of livestock brought to market here.
So, because of that there were
a lot of stockyards and slaughter houses, and the meat
packing business was huge.
ber the Italian presence in Missouri and Kansas?
In Kansas City and in St. Louis
we both have Little Italy neighborhoods, just like other cities.
In Kansas City it’s the north
part of downtown, called “The
North End”. Historically it was
where the Italian community
lived: but then, as happened
elsewhere, a lot of highways
were built around downtown.
They essentially destroyed
this neighborhood by putting
a highway right in the middle
of the city. The Italians didn’t
have the power nor the money
to fig ht this, so around the 40s
or the 50s they started shifting
outside the city center, north
or north east, into the suburbs. So, that’s where Italians
are now. The North End is still
very active these days, but the
So, Italians came and worked vast majority of Italian Amein the meat packing industry rican population has spread
and in the rail industry. A lot of everywhere.
Italians came to work in those industries. Then there was
southeast Kansas, places like Is there an anecdote that
Pittsburg, where there was a
lot of immigration from Italy
because of the numerous coal
mines: these coal companies
went all over Europe, especially southern and eastern Europe, to recruit mine workers.
Entire villages were basically
emptied out and brought to
the US, some of them in Kansas. They had come to the United States and so in Kansas
you had Italian mine workers
not only in the deep shaft but
also a lot of surface mining.
you’d like to tell to explain
one aspect of the relationship
between Italy and your area?
I’m going to tell you a few of
them. We have the largest
World War I Museum in the
world, here in Kansas City. It
honors all of the combatants,
not just from one particular
country. It opened in 1921,
soon after the end of the war,
and that was the first time that
all the allied generals teamed
together in the same place,
including General Armando
Diaz, who travelled all the way
from Italy to Kansas City.
Another story is about 1955.
Alberto Sordi visited Kansas
City and he received the honorary citizenship, because of
his character in “Un americano
a Roma”, who always told people “sono di Kansas City” (I am
from Kansas City). So he came,
there’s a video where he has
a cowboy hat, he’s waiving
his gun around, and we made
him honorary citizen.
Are there places that rememWE THE ITALIANS | 9
www.wetheitalians.com