Overcoming Prejudice

We had taught Italian to our son John so that he could converse with his grandmother. His grandmother loved him because he was named John after her husband. John was nine years old. He really couldn't figure out what happened. He loved his grandmother very much and missed having her to talk to in Italian. One day John was playing with his friends and forgot. He was answering them in Italian. His friends called him a wop, a dago. My son didn't even know what those words were so he came home crying. We thought his heart would break. We consoled him and told him he did nothing wrong. We swore we would teach him such good English that no one would ever make fun of him again. It really wasn't smart of me to do that, because today none of my five children can speak Italian very well.

The children were growing up. They were happy to live in Florham Park, with all the trees they could climb, plenty of land for them to run around on and a large house with eight rooms. When we moved to Florham Park I had an 11-month-old baby. Now we had five children.

We had a beautiful school for them to go to. I had four children in school. Ann was four years old. One day, I had to go and talk to the principal. I took Ann with me. She was dressed nice and she looked pretty.

As the principal and I were talking, he said, “You have five children and they are all normal.”

I said, “Yes, I have five children and they are all normal, thank God.”

He said, “Do you realize how lucky you are?”

I answered, “I do.”

He then looked me over and he said, “You don't look Italian. You are so well dressed and wear silk stockings. The other Italians I know wear cotton stockings and they are twisted most of the time.”

The other Italians lived on the other side of town. Many had been born in Italy. I was born in America. Both my husband and I were Americans from Italian extraction. We always did our best to be good Americans and we were proud of it. My parents both came to America at an early age. My father was 16 and my mother 15 when they came to this country to make a better life here. My father came from Abruzzi and my mother from Salerno.