Italians make up a very large part of our society.  Most Italians came to America between 1880 and 1920 with a large part of this group coming from Southern Italy and Sicily.  The immigrants came as poorer people rather than upper class Italians.  When these Italians came, they primarily went to the Northeast to live.  The Italians who went to the Northeast to live worked in mill towns and mining camps.  There were some neighborhoods so plentiful with Italians that people would call the neighborhoods “Little Italy.”  These neighborhoods were, more often than not, slums.

When the Italians came in 1880- 1920, they were stereotyped as very violent people.  In the 1920s, Americans used the Sacco and Vanzetti case as a way to denounce Italians as being anarchists.  In fact, the Italians were considered so violent that in 1891, twelve Italian Americans were lynched in New Orleans because of the suspicion that they were involved with the Mafia.  The lynching of these twelve Italians was the largest mass lynching in the history of the United States.  Even to this day, Italians are frequently associated with crime and the Mafia largely because of the gangster movies that relate the Italians to the Mafia such as The Godfather and Goodfellas.