Senter was made and got his non-Italian sounding surname from his family changing it to sound more American.
His parents emigrated from Trentino-Alto Adige, it was their original lastname.
1. Northern Italy had/has a much stronger economy than the South.
Not in the past it didn't.
The "economic boom" started not earlier than the late 1950s/early 1960s and even since then many areas in rural Veneto, rural Piemonte, mountainous Lombardy and Friuli still struggled (and unfortunately still do).
Even during the two decades of fascist regime, big cities aside (milan, turin), the countryside and remote valleys were poverty-stricken.
Out of all italian regions, Veneto is the one that lost most habitants in the past 150 yrs.
2. Northern Italians traditionally settled in California during the mass Italian immigration period to the United States, they generally did not settle in LCN hot beds like NY/NJ/Philly.
Northern Italians
did generally settle throughout the north east, both in the US and Canada.
The early miners in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and West Virginia were Northern Italians. Not to mention seasonal workers in New England.
Of course they also settled in California (mostly), Oregon, Nevada as well as the Midwest, Texas and (the early birds) down south in Louisiana and the delta regions.
The thing with the atlantic seaboard is that they "mixed up" with the ever-growing number of southerns ... no doubt about that ... but saying that they
traditionally didn't settle along the northeastern coast is simply inaccurate.
The reason why California comes to mind when talking about northerns is simply because the lower number of southerns (compared to the northeast) allowed them to remain ethnically distinct longer than their paesani living on the opposite coast.
Even here in michigan the early settlers were italians from Friuli Venezia Giulia who sneaked in from Canada.
3. Northern Italians were discriminated against when they arrived in the United States obviously. However, I strongly suspect that they didn't face nearly as much discrimination as their southern Italian counterparts due to the fact that they had features like blonde hair, blue eyes, red hair, lighter skin, etc.
don't fall for this long-debunked stereotype
Joey Doves what you say is right but it was only until there was the first generation of mobsters who spoke little English and we spoke to each other only in Sicily, but starting from the 50s with the second generations that only spoke in English and only a few words in the dialect, began to see if a person was able to kill,to keep his mouth shut and to be a good earner for the family, seeing only if the man is full-blooded (if both parents were Italian without worrying about which part of Italy were from)
very true
.