Why did the Italians Leave Little Italy? Part II Urban Renewal:Elite-WASP conspiracy against working-class Euro-ethnic Catholics

Tom Verso (December 29, 2013)

Part I of this series, about the mid-twentieth century migration of southern-Italian Americans away from Little Italy “Urban Villages” to the suburbs (e.g. from Bronx to Long Island), posited that all migrations in world history are ‘caused’ by a combination of pushing and pulling forces: forces ‘pushing’ people away from their habitat and forces ‘pulling’ them to a new. Southern-Italian Americans like all urban Euro-ethnics experienced the ‘pulling force’ of the higher standard of living in the suburbs, and two ‘pushing forces’: 1) African American sharecropper migration from the South into the northern urban villages and 2) Urban Renewal Programs. Part I discussed the African American pushing force that took the form of clashing diametrically different ‘cultures’ (not races). This article will consider the role of Urban Renewal Programs in empting northern cities of their Euro-ethnic populations and culture – what E. Michael Jones characterized as “The Slaughter of Cities”. Urban Renewal is a very complicated sociological phenomenon that has been voluminously written about. However, there is a propensity to discuss the issue in terms of abstractions such as “government policies, actions and officials”. Little is said about the specific individuals making or influencing those ‘policies and ‘actions’, and how their personal and/or class interests affected government ‘policies and ‘actions’. The southern-Italian Americans lamenting their forced removal from Boston’s West-End urban village had no input into ‘their’ government's urban policies and decisions. Yet, individuals far removed from the West-End representing the interests of the financial and business communities were very much apart of the so-called ‘Urban Renewal’ decision-making. Similarly, Chicago’s ‘urban renewal’ and the destruction of Euro-ethnic communities cannot be understood without taking into consideration the business interest in the area know in Chicago as “The Loop”.

Tools

Sources:

“The Urban Villagers”, Herbert J. Gans 1962

“Reading ‘The Urban Villagers’ as a Cultural Document: Ethnicity, Modernity, and Capital”, Sharon Zukin, City & Community 6:1 March 2007

“Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960”, 1998 Arnold R Hirsch.

“The Slaughter of Cities – Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing”, 2004 E. Michael Jones

WASPS & Euro-Ethnic Catholics

American elite-WASP sociological/political/ethical concerns about Euro-ethnic Catholic 'urban village' communities may not have begun with World War I. However, the war was certainly a significant catalyst that brought such concerns to fore.

(note: elite-WASP = White Anglo Saxton Protestant; the emphasis is on 'elite'. The working-class masses of WASPs were as much manipulated and exploited by their elite brethren as the Euro-ethnic Catholics; albeit in different ways and to different ends. Ultimately, CLASS is the final arbitrator of all social phenomena – material and ideological.)

The American war with Europeans led to concerns about the loyalty of the Euro-Americans, particularly the Germans whom we were at war with, and the Irish who were in revolt against England whom we supported. Then the Russian Revolution gave rise to concerns about Communist, Anarchist and other ‘radicals' lurking in all the Euro-American populations (e.g. Sacco and Vanzetti). These ‘concerns' gave rise to the infamous Palmer [deportation] Raids and the "Immigration Act of 1924" limiting immigration from southern and eastern European Catholic countries.

However, elite-WASP concerns were not limited to national security subversion. They were worried about the threat of political and cultural ‘subversion’ that Euro-American Catholics were having or would have on American society as a whole.

For example, the upper-middle class Harvard educated Walter Lippmann, arguably the most renown journalist of the fist half of the 20th century (e.g. cover of Time Magazine 9/27/37), metaphorically captured the essence of elite-WASP concerns when he wrote in his famous book "Public Opinion":

“What kind of American consciousness can grow in the atmosphere of sauerkraut and Limburger cheese? Or what can you expect of the Americanism of the man whose breath always reeks of garlic.” (p. 24)

However, as it turned out, Lippmann’s metaphor implies: large numbers of the people elite-WASPs were concerned about where Euro-ethnic Catholics (e.g. southern-Italian garlic eaters).

Elite-WASPs and Philadelphia Polish-Americans

A specific and literal example of elite-WASP concerns about Euro-Catholic cultural subversion after the First War comes from Philadelphia.

Albert C. Barnes was a very wealth Philadelphia art collector (see Barnes Foundation) and financial backer of the New Republic magazine for which Lippmann wrote. He was raised by very devote Methodist mother and he was concerned about Euro-American “ghettoes” and “enclaves.”

Accordingly, Barnes financed Harvard’s Brand Blanshard’s research of the Philadelphia Polish American community Bridesburg (aka ‘Poletown’). Significantly, both Blanshard’s father and his twin brother Paul were Congregationalist ministers.

In 1920 the fruits of that research was present by Blanshard as his Harvard Ph.D. Dissertation "The Church and the Polish Immigrant", which cultural historian E. Michael Jones characterized as:

“a study of Polish immigrant mores from the point of view of the Protestant ruling class." (p.10)

Church and State

The first thing that Congregationalist researcher Blanshard noticed, and his Methodist financial backer Barnes appreciated, was the influence of the Catholic Church in the Polish community and how the Catholic Church’s influence differed from Protestant Church influence.

Blanshard wrote:

“The Church occupies in the Polish community a central place…

“Those whose experience of Church influence has been confined to Protestant bodies will have exceedingly little idea of the extent of the Church’s power in a Roman Catholic community…

“The Catholic Church particularly in a thoroughly Catholic community like that of the Poles is pervasive, continuous, aggressive and so ambitious as to demand the control of the whole of life. (Jones, p 10)

Jones comments further about the political implications of Catholic theology as seen from Blanshard’s “Protestant ruling class point of view”.

Jones writes:

“The difference between Catholic and Protestant communities in the United States are based on radical differences in theology and as a result have far-reaching political consequences…

To my mind, historically Catholic Theology has not been an ‘ivory tower’ abstract discussion about spiritual entities (i.e. "How many Angles can dance on a pin?”).

Theology has political implication; think St. Augustine’s “City of God” which drew out the political implications of Catholic theology grounded in Jesus’ “Render Unto Caesar What is Caesar's and Unto God What is God's".

Jones continues:

As a result, the relationship between church and state, which Blanshard [and others] see as typically ‘American,’ is called into question if not inverted…the Catholic Church makes absolute claims on its immigrant flock and, thereby, relativizes the claims of the American regime. (p. 10-11).

"American regime" of course is the "regime" of elite-WASPs!

Parochial Education and State

Further, Blanshard’s concern about the role of the Catholic Church in ‘Poletown’ was not limited to theology and its political implications. Catholic education was also presented in his dissertation; again, from the “Protestant ruling class point of view”.

Blanshard writes:

“The parochial schools in Polish Bridesburg are a world which is simply not our [i.e. Protestant] world, a world in which independent criticism and disinterested sciences must remain unknown, a world which still abounds with the primitive concepts and fancies of the middle ages”….

“[Catholic school] is a world in which the uses of rosaries and relics are a matter of common knowledge and are further evidence of the curious mechanical character of Catholic magic …

The parochial school student is submerged in this bath of superstition and the tide of modern thought sweeps by them almost totally unknown and unappreciated… (Jones, p 13)

In a few words, the Harvard WASP denigrates Catholic education without mentioning the contributions that Catholic intellectuals made not only to America but the whole history of Western Civilization from its inception.

Blanshard goes on and on about the differences between “our [Protestant] world” and Polish Catholics, and by implication all the Euro-ethnic Catholic communities: southern-Italian, Irish, etc. For while they all manifest varying socio-ethnic characteristics: languages, food, music, etc. – in essence, at their core, they are all European Catholics, and the products of Catholic theology, traditons and education.

The Problem with Catholic Education

But, what exactly is the problem with the Euro-ethnic communities generally and the role of Catholic education particularly?

Granted Catholic education differs from the ‘mainstream’ Protestant communities, but why is the difference a problem? Blanshard is not concerned with the 3Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic). He is definitely not concerned with the language and math skills of Catholic students. He is concerned about the ethnic class-consciousness of Catholic students.

Jones quotes Blanshard:

“There can be little doubt that the tendency of these parochial schools keeping together as they do, people of one nationality and religion and preventing that free circulation of all nationalities and faiths together which is the mark of the public schools, contributes to preserving the class consciousness of the children, both as Poles and as Catholics.”

Jones elaborates:

“This is a problem [for Blanshard], because the inevitable product of ‘class consciousness’ and ethnic solidarity is political power. (p. 14)

Specifically, the parochial education creates community class-consciousness whereby all the Poles feel they have common political interests and thereby vote in a block.

Blanshard writes:

“…the Polish vote usually cast in a block in the most unintelligent way…the influence of priest is immense…Polish political power, already significant because of their cultural homogeneity is magnified further by the fact that the priest control other areas of life so rigidly (p.15).

“Cultural homogeneity” is largely cultivated in the Catholic education system both formally in parochial school and informally in Catholic religious tradition and education. The priest, according to “protestant ruling class point of view” is at the core of Catholic culture and politics.

Ultimately, political power is the essence of Blanshard and his financial supporter Albert Barnes’ concerns. Catholic education leads to working-class consciousness, which leads to political power, which ultimately translates into economic power.

Specifically, the concentration of Euro-ethnics in culturally homogeneous ‘urban villages’ that vote essentially in a common block gives those group significant political power and the ability to affect government policies.

The Catholic Problem: Urban Villages and Family Size

Urban (parish) Villages

It is difficult today to appreciate Blanshard’s concern about the role of the Catholic Church in Euro-ethnic communities. Today the American Church is a mere shadow of its former self. For example, consider one Irish parish in 1940s Chicago:

“Visitation Parish, founded in 1886 as an Irish ethnic parish, by the late 1940s had a imposing cluster of buildings on 55^th Street, which housed a convent for 60 Dominican nuns, a grammar school for 1,8478 children, a high school for 1,062 girls and a rectory which held the five priest who said the twelve Sunday masses that were held in the imposing church. The parish also had its own summer camp for parishioners as well. (Jones, p. 209)

In terms of size, this was not a ‘typical’ parish. However, in terms liturgical and educational services, Visitation was very typical of the parishes found throughout America’s Euro-ethnic urban villages.

Brad Blanshard was correct. The Church was the basis of the Euro-ethnic sense of homogeneous communities, which translated into powerful homogeneous political voting blocks, giving them political control over their communities (their lives!).

Such political power placed limitations on the policies, goals and objectives of the elite-WASPs. The elite-WASPs had to compromise with the working-class Catholics. By their very nature, the rich and powerful are not reconcilable with compromise. Dictation is their Modus operandi, most especially with the Catholic working-class.

Brad’s Twin Brother Paul gets into the act

In 1949, Brand Blanshard’s twin brother Paul, a Congregationalist minister and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, published “American Freedom and Catholic Power”. Building on brother Brand’s Harvard dissertation, Paul wrote:

“Often the parochial and public schools are on opposite sides of the same street … The separatism is particularly harmful when, as so often happens, The Catholic group is largely an immigrant group that needs assimilation and Americanization more than any other part of a the community.” (Jones, p16)

What is interesting about this quote is Blanshard’s characterization of 1949 Catholic school students as immigrants. This is categorically FALSE!

Since 1924 immigration was highly curtailed. For the most part the students in 1949 Catholic Schools such as Visitation Parish were the grandchildren of pre-1924 immigrants. They were fully “assimilated and Americanized”, by American movies and war propaganda.

But, Blanshard’s expressed concerns about assimilation and Americanization are cover for his real concern – ethnic-Catholic political power. He writes:

“Several of the most publicized political machines in American cities have been essentially Catholic machines in the sense that their leaders and their most important members have been Roman Catholics [e.g.Tammany in New York … Curley in Boston … Hague in Jersey City.” (Jones, p. 16)

Population growth

What made matters worse for the threated elite-WASP political establishment was the ever-increasing size of the Catholic population due to the Church’s prohibition on birth control.

Not only were the Catholics a formidable homogeneous population and political power in the first half of the twentieth century, but also the Church’s teaching against contraception resulted in the Catholic population growing at a much fast rate than the Protestant.

Brand Blanshard wrote in 1920:

“Catholic immigrants are enormously prolific. … The Catholic education system promulgates an absolute prohibition against divorce and an equally absolute prohibition of any artificial means for limiting the size of families.” (Jones, p. 15)

Brother Paul wrote in 1949:

“In 1941 [according to] the Right Reverend John J. Bonner, diocesan superintendent of school of Philadelphia, ‘the increase in the Catholic births during the past decade was more that fifty per cent higher than the increase in the total population’ … If the disparity in birth rates continue indefinitely, it would not be long before the United States became a Catholic country by default.”

Solving the Catholic Problem: Contraception and Urban Renewal

Contraception

Paul Blanshard wrote:

“My interest in eugenic was closely bound up with my interest in Catholicism …” (Jones, p.17)

The brothers Blanshard were not alone in their concerns. In 1952 the ultimate WASP John D. Rockefeller III established the Population Council, financed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and making important contribution to the development and promotion of (anti-Catholic) contraception devices (e.g. Pill and IUD).

The contraception movement has been wildly successful. If news reports are to be believe, the vast majority of self-identified Catholics use or have used some form of contraception, resulting in the corresponding reduction in family size and the rate of growth of Euro-ethnic Catholic population.

In sum, two problems

The Blanshard brothers saw the elite-WASP power was being challenged by Euro-Catholics. The basis of Catholic political power was their: 1) homogenous urban villages and 2) the much higher rate of population growth.

Accordingly, the only way to break Catholic political power was to overcome Church teaching on birth control and breakup the urban villages.

The first problem of Catholic population growth has been successfully solved with the wide spread use of contraception.

However, even if the rate of population growth is reduced, if ethnic-Catholics continued to stay concentrated in urban village neighborhoods, they still would be a formable political/economic force. Accordingly, those concentrations must be and would be broken up by getting ethnic-Catholics to move to the heterogeneous suburbs.

In short, Euro-ethnics were able to frustrate the political/economic agenda of the elite WASPs. This was not acceptable. Accordingly, the elite WASPs set out to breakup the Euro-ethnic concentration.

If ethnics were spread out in the suburbs, then they would not have a group identity and not vote in blocks. The way to get them to move to the suburbs was “Urban Renewal”; i.e. literally bulldoze the ‘villages’ a la Boston’s West End and force the Euro-ethnics to move.

The migration from city to suburbs was successfully accomplished with a Carrot and a Stick. The Carrot was the improved material life in the suburbs and the Stick was Urban Renewal.

Urban Renewal elite-WASP ‘coup-de-grace’ of ethnic-Catholic Urban Villages

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the elite WASP became concerned about the massive immigrant population pouring into the U.S. They needed the cheap immigrant labor but they feared the affects that the alien cultures would have on America.

Evidence of WASP concerns can be seen the interests that they showed in self-serving social sciences (i.e. social science meant to provide information and recommendations to serve elite-WASP agends).
Martin Bulmer of the “London School of Economics” writes:

“In the early years of the 20^th century … foundations were established by industrialist such as Russell Sage, Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. They provided major support of social [research], which was closely allied to municipal and social reform movements ...[also] major studies of immigrants … between 1923- 1928 John D. Rockefeller Sr. gave twenty million dollars to the University of Chicago for social research.”
(see:http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27702517?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103170501661)

The University of Chicago played a special role in elite-WASP “social research” to facilitate “municipal reforms”:

- Founded in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society

- Land was donated by the very wealthy Marshall Field (founder of the famous Chicago department store) who was descended from the Puritans

- Financial support came from Rockefeller whose mother was a devote Baptist.

One of the beneficiaries of the Rockefeller University of Chicago endowments was sociologist Louis Wirth. In 1941 he wrote a ‘scholarly’ paper “The Present Position of Minorities in the United States”. Minorities were understood by Wirth to be immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who also happed to be Catholic.

While the Catholics were in the minority, they represent a force to be feared by the “Protestant groups”.

Wirth wrote:

“The Catholic population may be regarded, and in certain communities thinks of itself, as a distinct minority, especially since in the some communities Catholicism is also associated with Irish, Italian, Polish or certain other ethnic or national origin.

[Although Protestants are numerically dominant,] the internal division and lack of cohesion of the Protestant denominations detract from their capacity to play the role of a dominant group effectively.

[Whereas,] the relative internal unity and concentration of settlement of the Catholic groups in the urban centers (Urban Villages) increases their capacity to act collectively and to develop an appropriate group consciousness. (Jones, 101)

Thus, as early as 1941, the death knell of ethnic-Catholic Urban Villages was sounded. If the elite-Protestants wanted to dominate American society, something had to be done about the internal unity and concentration of Catholic groups. With the end of WW II the elite-WASPs launched a combined political/economic/propaganda assault on Euro-ethnic Catholic “Urban Villages”

Chicago Loop vs. Slums

Arnold Hirsch writes under the provocative chapter heading “The Loop versus the slums: downtown strikes back”:

[The Chicago Loop’s downtown] business and institutional interests resorted forcefully in the political arena.

A series of enactments, from the Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act of 1947 to the Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953, expanded the municipality’s power and enabled it to begin its “renewal.” (ebook Location 1998-2002).

The above quotes are pregnant with profound ethnic implications. Specifically the word “Slums” and the phrase “Blighted Areas.” Specifically, who decides if a neighborhood is a ‘slum’ or blighted’?
Certainly, not the ethnic-Catholics who live there!

Michael Jones writes:

“Certain ethnic groups got to determine what happened in the neighborhoods of other, less-favored ethnic groups. Groups like the Polish Catholic Union were barred from membership in Chicago’s Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council. (p. 207)

What were the “ethnic groups that got to determine what happened in the neighborhoods of others”? You guessed it! Heading up Chicago’s post war urban renewal were two quintessential elite-WASPs.

Hirsch writes:

“The key figures coordinating the efforts of these large interests were Milton C. Mumford, an assistant vice-president of Marshall Field and Company, and Holman D. Pettibone, president of the Chicago Title and Trust Company. More than any others, they were the architects of Chicago’s postwar plans. Both were almost stereotypically small town, Midwestern, and Protestant in origin (L 2017-2019).

Philadelphia: ‘DITTO’

Like Chicago, ethnic-Catholics whose neighborhood “urban villages” were slatted for destruction, had no input into the “Urban Renewal” decision-making.

Jones writes:

“People in neighborhoods destroyed had no input into the decision making process… the people who could be relied upon to have something of value in the housing field were not the people who lived in the houses which were scheduled for destruction, but rather "professionals”, which meant people with credentials, which meant people who attended WASP universities.
The people who lived in the neighborhoods, according to Reginald Isaacs, who was busy dispensing credentials from Harvard University, didn’t know what was good for their own neighborhoods, much less the city as a whole... Catholic ethnics were, disenfranchise from discussing the fate of their own neighborhoods. (p. 181)

Boston: DITTO

Herbert Gans writes:

“Federal and local agencies prepared plans for tearing down the old structures for building a new neighborhood –not for the West enders, but for high-income tenants of luxury apartment buildings (p. 281)

The vast majority of the [southern-Italian American] West Enders had no desire to leave…they were content to live in the West End. (p. 289)

In sum: in city after city with Euro-ethnic Catholic “urban villages”, Urban Renewal programs controlled by elite-WASPs and acting with the power of eminent domain forcible removed the ethnic-Catholics and bulldozed their villages. – THAT’S A FACT!

The displaced ethnics had no place to go but the suburbs. – THAT’S A FACT!

Conclusion: Why did southern-Italian Americans leave Little Italy - Parts I and II

Clearly, something as sociologically complex as the post-war urban renewal and suburban development cannot be reduced to a couple of simple variables such as African American sharecropper migration from the South into northern cities and elite-WASPs concerned about the political power of ethnic-Catholics.

However, no complete understanding of such a complex sociological phenomena can be gained by ignoring those variables.

Any history or sociology of southern-Italian Americana that does not take into consideration the cultural (not race) conflict that Euro-ethnic Catholics had with southern African Americans, or the elite-WASPs political and business interests is superficial and misleading.

Clearly, there was positive pulling force attraction to the suburbs in the form of housing.

However, as the scholars cited in the books listed above demonstrate in very great factual details, based on voluminous bibliographic supporting documents, there were negative pushing forces in the form of cultural conflict and urban renewal.

In sum

For southern-Italain Americans, the most important single FACT to be gleaned from the work of the cited scholars:

Large numbers of southern-Italian Americans, like other Euro-ethnics, were content with living in their "Urban Villages".

There is significant good factual basis to infer: if it had not been for the ‘pushing forces’, Little Italies would have continued to thrive down to the present.

Therein lies the psychological basis for Little Italy nostalgia, the sub-conscious realization that it was a great neighborhood in which to live.

If we had not been ‘forced out’, we might very well still be there – and why so many southern-Italian Americans say:

"I’d go back in a heartbeat!"

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