Il Corriere del  Connecticut

by Rafaele Fierro

When leading New Haven Italians established Il Corriere del Connecticut in 1896 the goal was as much to shape the news as to report it. Holidays, banquets, marriages, and important musical events dominated its pages. Upon visiting the state in the early twenties, for instance, famed operatic singer Enrico Caruso was written about as extensively as anyone. Astute observers could not help but notice the disconnect between Il Corriere’s reportage and the reality of the Italian experience in Connecticut.

Caruso’s crooning in Connecticut occurred contemporaneously with the imprisonment of a large segment of the state’s Italian population. The manuscript to the 1920 census, made available to historians in 1990, revealed that nearly 30 percent of prisoners in the Connecticut State Prison were of Italian descent, more than all other ethnic groups combined. The Italian language press, however, underreported these incidents and painted glowing portraits of the state’s Italian communities instead.

New Haven’s Il Corriere became Connecticut’s leading Italian newspaper in longevity and readership. Other newspapers were subsidiaries of it, including La Verita (the truth), based in Waterbury and Il Corriere di Bridgeport. Of the thirty Italian newspapers in Connecticut, all established in the fifty years after Italian immigration to the state began, Il Corriere lasted as long as any other. It, as well as La Tribuna di Hartford, Il Corriere di Waterbury, and Bridgeport’s La Sentinella, tried hard to divert attention away from Italian crime and toward middle-class respectability.

This type of front page news would not be what one would commonly expect from an American newspaper. On January 5, 1907, for example, Il Corriere announced on page one that “Signore Alessandro Capasso” was “to open to the public his grand Cigar and Tobacco Shop.” Or in another issue of the newspaper, was word that “valiant Professor Verdi, honored by the colony, was returning from Germany.” As importantly, the newspaper reported that the Vittorio Emanuele III Lodge, one of the dozens of Italian societies established in the state, was opening in New Britain.

Italian newspaper editors attempted to achieve respectability for the New Haven colony and Connecticut Italians generally in other ways. Every May, the newspaper wrote about the importance of Memorial Day, which it called “one of the most beautiful holidays in America.” It went on to say that “no Italian or Italian organization should be missing from the parades in honor of the day,” as if to show the host society that Italians were aware of the importance of remembering fallen soldiers of yore, and to remind lesser educated Italians of their civic duty in America.

Il Corriere, however, considered Columbus Day the greatest of all holidays, even surpassing Christmas in importance. The fifteenth-century explorer received full front page coverage every October. Articles and portraits venerating him inundated the newspaper every year in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps most importantly, Columbus was invoked in such a manner as to remind those who found Italians less than desirable of the unique connection between Italian and American culture. Indeed, the newspaper took care to say that without Columbus there would be no America.

As late as 1938, Il Corriere proclaimed the importance of Columbus Day—now not only in Italian but English as well, a clear sign of the changing times—by arguing that “the story of Italy is a universal one.” Columbus, along with Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Marconi were proof positive of the contributions Italians had made to the world.

Occasionally world events interrupted the happy flow of community news. On the eve of America’s entry into World War One, Il Corriere exhorted its readers to remain loyal to the fatherland, but to also show their support for the United States. They gave Woodrow Wilson moral support for his decalaration of war against Germany, though the newspaper did not view him favorably. No wonder then that it had supported the election of Wilson’s opponent, Republican Charles Evans Hughes, in 1916, before America took part in the great conflict.

Reflecting its long-standing support of the Republican Party, the prominenti who established newspapers such as Il Corriere, were slow to warm to Franklin Roosevelt years later, even after he had won over Italians in Connecticut and throughout the country. Prior to Roosevelt’s bid for a third term in 1940, the newspaper questioned whether it was good for democracy for the President to defy precedent by seeking more than the standard two terms. This, of course, after the New York Times had announced that Roosevelt had been “crowned king by the American people.”

By the 1940s and 1950s, Il Corriere began taking an interest in writing sports articles. A weekly set of stories was called “The Sportsman,” a series dedicated to the state’s Italians, who excelled in high school baseball or football. Sports became the latest way in which the publication showed its readers and the host society of the worthiness of Italians.

After World War Two a national sports figure was written about extensively, just as Columbus had been. His name was Joe DiMaggio. The Italian-American baseball legend exemplified the latest positive contribution of this proud people, though crime still continued to plague their communities. DiMaggio, the son of Sicilian immigrants, became one of Il Corriere’s favorite sons because he played the most American of sports, but did not disavow his Italian roots. In other words, DiMaggio symbolized the era by showing one could be a good American and a good Italian at the same time.

Il Corriere ended its weekly in July 1953, around the same time that virtually every one of the thirty Italian newspapers in the state ceased publication. The timing was right because by then it succeeded in showing the sunnier side of what one Yankee had called “the swarthy sons of Italy.” Italian middle class status had become plain for everyone to see—despite the continued label of Italian criminal--without Il Corriere and the others having to report it.

Sources:

Il Corriere di Connecticut

Manuscript to the Census of 1920, Population Statistics for Connecticut, Connecticut State Library

“The Evolution of Ethnicity: Connecticut’s Italians, 1900-1930,” Rafaele Fierro, Doctoral Dissertation, 2000.