Italian Americans (Italian: italoamericani [ˌitaloameriˈkaːni]) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. 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.
Between 1820 and 2004, approximately 5.5 million Italians migrated to the United States during the Italian diaspora, in several distinct waves, with the greatest number arriving in the 20th century from Southern Italy. Initially, most single men, so-called birds of passage, sent remittance back to their families in Italy and then returned to Italy.
Immigration began to increase during the 1880s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than had in the five previous decades combined. From 1880 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the greatest surge of immigration brought more than 4 million Italians to the United States. The largest number of this wave came from Southern Italy, which at that time was largely agricultural and where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign rule and disproportionately affected by taxes implemented by the recently unified Kingdom of Italy. In the 1920s, 455,315 more immigrants arrived. Many of them came under the terms of the new quota-based immigration restrictions created by the Immigration Act of 1924.
Italian-Americans have had a significant influence on American culture, making numerous contributions to visual arts, literature, cuisine, politics, sports, science, scholarship, and music.
Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean for the Catholic monarchs of Spain, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. John Cabot and his son Sebastian explored the eastern seaboard of North America for Henry VII in the early 16th century. In 1524, the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci first demonstrated c. 1501 that the New World was not Asia, as initially conjectured, but a different continent (America is named after him).
The first Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding to the current United States was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian seaman who, in 1635, settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. A small wave of Protestants, known as Waldensians, immigrated during the 17th century, with the majority coming between 1654 and 1663. They spread out across what was then called New Netherland and what would become New York, New Jersey, and the Lower Delaware River regions.
Enrico Tonti, together with the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Great Lakes region. De Tonti founded the first European settlement in Illinois in 1679 and in Arkansas in 1683, making him "The Father of Arkansas." With LaSalle, he co-founded New Orleans and was governor of the Louisiana Territory for the next 20 years. His brother Alphonse de Tonty (Alfonso de Tonti), with French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, was the co-founder of Detroit in 1701, and was its acting colonial governor for 12 years. The southwest and California were explored and mapped by Italian Jesuit priest Eusebio Kino in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The Taliaferro family, believed to have roots in Venice, was one of the First Families to settle Virginia; Richard Taliaferro designed much of Colonial Williamsburg. The period from 1776 to 1880 saw a small stream of new arrivals from Italy. Some brought skills in agriculture and the making of glass, silk and wine, while others brought skills as musicians. After American independence, numerous political refugees arrived, most notably Giuseppe Avezzana, Alessandro Gavazzi, Silvio Pellico, Federico Confalonieri, and Eleuterio Felice Foresti. Giuseppe Garibaldi resided in the United States in 1850–51.
In 1773–1785, Filippo Mazzei, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet containing the phrase, "All men are by nature equally free and independent," which Jefferson incorporated essentially intact into the Declaration of Independence. Italian Americans served in the American Revolutionary War both as soldiers and officers. Francesco Vigo aided the colonial forces of George Rogers Clark by serving as one of the foremost financiers of the Revolution in the frontier Northwest.
In 1789–91, Alessandro Malaspina mapped much of the west coast of the Americas. In 1822–23, the headwater region of the Mississippi was explored by Giacomo Beltrami in the territory that was later to become Minnesota. Missionaries of the Jesuit and Franciscan orders were active in many parts of America. Italian Jesuits founded numerous missions, schools, and two colleges in the west. Giovanni Nobili founded the Santa Clara College (now Santa Clara University) in 1851. The St. Ignatius Academy (now University of San Francisco) was established by Anthony Maraschi in 1855. The Italian Jesuits also laid the foundation for the winemaking industry that would later flourish in California. In the east, the Italian Franciscans founded hospitals, orphanages, schools, and St. Bonaventure College (now St. Bonaventure University), established by Pamfilo da Magliano in 1858. Las Vegas College (now Regis University) was established by a group of exiled Italian Jesuits in 1877 in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The Jesuit Giuseppe Cataldo, founded Gonzaga College (now Gonzaga University) in Spokane, Washington in 1887.
In 1801, Philip Trajetta established the nation's first conservatory of music in Boston. In 1805, Thomas Jefferson recruited a group of musicians from Sicily to form a military band, later to become the nucleus of the U.S. Marine Band. In 1833, Lorenzo Da Ponte, formerly Mozart's librettist and a naturalized U.S. citizen, founded the first opera house in the United States, the Italian Opera House in New York City, which was the predecessor of the New York Academy of Music and of the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Samuel Wilds Trotti of South Carolina was the first Italian American to serve in the U.S. Congress (a partial term, from December 17, 1842, to March 3, 1843). In 1849, Francesco de Casale began publishing the Italian American newspaper L'Eco d'Italia in New York, the first of many to eventually follow.
Beginning in 1863, Italian immigrants were one of the principal groups of unskilled laborers, along with the Irish, that built the Transcontinental Railroad west from Omaha, Nebraska. The first Columbus Day celebration was organized by Italian Americans in New York City on October 12, 1866.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 Italian Americans fought in the American Civil War. The great majority of Italian Americans, for both demographic and ideological reasons, were in the Union Army, including Francis B. Spinola, the first Italian American to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, who served as a general. Some Americans of Italian descent fought in the Confederate Army. They included Confederate generals William B. Taliaferro and P. G. T. Beauregard. Six Italian Americans received the Medal of Honor during the war, including Colonel Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who later became the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York (1879–1904).
The Garibaldi Guard recruited volunteers for the Union Army from Italy and other European countries to form the 39th New York Infantry. The 39th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, with 350 Italian members, was nicknamed Garibaldi Guard in honor of Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1861, Garibaldi himself volunteered his services to President Abraham Lincoln. Garibaldi was offered a major general's commission in the U.S. Army through the letter from Secretary of State William H. Seward to H. S. Sanford, the U.S. minister at Brussels.