The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the Vieux Carré, a central square. The district is more commonly called the French Quarter today, or simply "The Quarter", related to changes in the city with American immigration after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Most of the extant historic buildings were constructed either in the late 18th century, during the city's period of Spanish rule, or were built during the first half of the 19th century, after U.S. purchase and statehood.
Italian Americans are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. According to the Italian American Studies Association, the current population is about 18 million, an increase from 16 million in 2010, corresponding to about 5.4% of the total population of the United States. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, with significant communities also residing in many other major U.S. metropolitan areas.
The Standard Fruit Company was established in the United States in 1924 by the Vaccaro brothers. Its forerunner was started in 1899, when Sicilian Arberesh immigrants Joseph, Luca and Felix Vaccaro, together with Salvador D'Antoni, began importing bananas to New Orleans from La Ceiba, Honduras. By 1915, the business had grown so large that it bought most of the ice factories in New Orleans in order to refrigerate its banana ships, leading to its president, Joseph Vaccaro, becoming known as the "Ice King".
The muffuletta or muffaletta is a type of round Sicilian sesame bread, as well as a popular sandwich, created by a Sicilian immigrant to the United States, that was popularized in the city of New Orleans.
Little Italy, sometimes combined with University Village into one neighborhood, is on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois. The current boundaries of Little Italy are Ashland Avenue on the west and Interstate 90/94 on the east, the Eisenhower Expressway on the north and Roosevelt to the south. It lies between the east side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in the Illinois Medical District and the west side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. The community was once predominantly Italian immigrants but now is made up of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds as a result of immigration, urban renewal, gentrification and the growth of the resident student and faculty population of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Its Italian-American heritage is primarily evident in the Italian-American restaurants that once lined Taylor Street. The neighborhood is home to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame as well as the historic Roman Catholic churches Our Lady of Pompeii, Notre Dame de Chicago, and Holy Family.
Lupara is an Italian word used to refer to a sawed-off shotgun of the break-action type. It is traditionally associated with the Sicilian Mafia for their use of it in vendettas, defense—such as its use against Benito Mussolini's army when he decided to break up the Sicilian mafioso network—and hunting.
Anti-Italianism or Italophobia is a negative attitude regarding Italian people or people with Italian ancestry, often expressed through the use of prejudice, discrimination or stereotypes. Often stemming from xenophobia, anti-Catholic sentiment and job security issues, it manifested itself in varying degrees in a number of countries to which Italians had immigrated in large numbers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and after WWII. Its opposite is Italophilia, which is admiration of Italy, its people, and its culture.
Joseph, Luca, and FelixVaccaro, known as the Vaccaro brothers, were Italian-American businessmen originally from Sicily.
Sicilian Americans are Italian Americans who are fully or partially of Sicilian descent, whose ancestors were Sicilians who emigrated to United States during the Italian diaspora, or Sicilian-born people in U.S. They are a large ethnic group in the United States.
The New Orleans crime family, also known as the Marcello crime family or the New Orleans Mafia, was an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in New Orleans, Louisiana. The family had a history of criminal activity dating back to the late nineteenth century. These activities included racketeering, extortion, gambling, prostitution, narcotics distribution, money laundering, loan sharking, fencing of stolen goods, and murder. Operating along the Gulf Coast, with its main criminal activity centered in the New Orleans area, the organization reached its height of influence under bosses Silvestro Carollo and Carlos Marcello.
An important part of Italian American identity, the Italian language has been widely spoken in the United States of America for more than one hundred years, due to large-scale immigration beginning in the late 19th century. Since the 1980s, however, it has seen a steady decline in the number of speakers, as earlier generations of Italian Americans die out and the language is less often spoken at home by successive generations due to assimilation and integration into American society. Today Italian is the eighth most spoken language in the country.
The History of Italians in Mississippi is related to the Italian presence and emigration to the State of Mississippi in southern US. The immense obstacles that these Italian immigrants faced in assimilating into the broader society were far from easy, while also attempting to preserve their identity, culture, and traditions in a new land. Italian immigrants are responsible for developing and contributing to the region now known as Mississippi.
The cuisine of New Orleans encompasses common dishes and foods in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is perhaps the most distinctively recognized regional cuisine in the United States. Some of the dishes originated in New Orleans, while others are common and popular in the city and surrounding areas, such as the Mississippi River Delta and southern Louisiana. The cuisine of New Orleans is heavily influenced by Creole cuisine, Cajun cuisine, and soul food. Later on, due to immigration, Italian cuisine and Sicilian cuisine also has some influence on the cuisine of New Orleans. Seafood also plays a prominent part in the cuisine. Dishes invented in New Orleans include po' boy and muffuletta sandwiches, oysters Rockefeller and oysters Bienville, pompano en papillote, and bananas Foster, among others.
Joseph Nicholas Macaluso Sr. is an American teacher, band director, educational administrator, counselor, musician, veteran of World War II and the Korean War, and retired colonel. He is also an author, Italian-American Civic Award recipient, and civic leader.
Chicago and its suburbs have a historical population of Italian Americans. As of 2000, about 500,000 in the Chicago area identified themselves as being Italian descent. As of 2023, this figure had increased to 573,170, making the Italian community in Chicagoland the 3rd largest in the US after New York and Philadelphia, and just slightly larger than that of Boston.
The American Italian Cultural Center(AICC) is a nonprofit institution in New Orleans, Louisiana, whose mission is to honor and celebrate Italian American history and culture in Louisiana. Founded in 1985 by Joseph Maselli and adjacent to New Orleans's renowned Piazza d'Italia, the AICC offers Italian language courses, concerts, events, trips to Italy, and dual-citizenship applications, as well as promotes other Italian American organizations and their events. The AICC also houses an Honorary Consul of Italy. It operates under the parent organization of the American Italian Renaissance Foundation.
As of 2012 Greater New Orleans has over 14,000 Vietnamese Americans and other people of Vietnamese origins.
The 1891 New Orleans lynchings were the murders of 11 Italian Americans, immigrants in New Orleans, by a mob for their alleged role in the murder of police chief David Hennessy after some of them had been acquitted at trial. It was the largest single mass lynching in American history. Most of the lynching victims accused in the murder had been rounded up and charged due to their Italian ethnicity.
Joseph Maselli was a businessman, philanthropist, and American-Italian activist. Maselli was the founder and publisher of the Italian American Digest. Maselli also founded the American Italian Museum and the Louisiana American Italian Sports Hall of Fame as well as the American Italian Federation of the Southeast, the first umbrella organization of Italian American groups in the region and now consisting of 30 organizations.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1890s, arranged chronologically.
