Birminghams italian heritage

http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/09/post_270.html

Get outta here. You serious?

The Bruno family is very very freaking rich. They own a ton of grocery stores here, not sure if they sold them all or not but they still have a hand in a lot of stuff here. Ensley now is the most dangerous part of Birmingham as is Gate City.

Most of them immigrated in from New Orleans. I'd say very little came here from Ellis Island as most stayed up North yet most that immigrated through New Orleans went North and came through here.

Even Vito Rizzuto took that route before he was killed in New York (Vito's Grandfather)

And to the part where they claimed the Italians had crosses burned in their yard is a load of horseshit. They would have been considered "white" here in the South back in those days as well so the KKK (the idiots that they are) wouldn't have been harassing them. We have a good bit of Catholics here as well and have had for years, so Italians have always fit in here pretty well as have had the French/Creoles and the Indians. The government ran them off, not us. Many of us married into all 4 of those mentioned above.

The south is mostly Protestant is it not Dixie?

That actually is true dixie, Italians were often discriminated in the south. Look it up, the biggest mass-lynching in the United States happened to Italians, not blacks as you would think.

Yes, mainly Baptist. But we have our fair share of Catholics believe it or not. Actually I live just a few miles from a Catholic Church here in town.

Actually the further South you go in Alabama the more Catholics you run into. Mobile is probably one of the biggest cities in the South with a huge Catholic population probably outside of New Orleans.



I would have to see something different then. Even to my ancestors (who were plenty racist) they considered Italians to be "white people" and not of any other color. It might have been different in other states but here in Alabama the KKK was not burning crosses in yards of Italians unless they married a black woman/man. Otherwise they were "one of us".

Even in the middle of the Civil Rights era my Sicilian Aunt was never bothered and she lived in one of the biggest racist cities known in man in Montgomery.

Jimmy Buffett was born Catholic in Pascagoula, Mississippi and raised in Mobile, Alabama, where he went to Catholic school. He's since converted to Parrot-Headism. But you get the point.

On my phone right now Dixie. I'll post some links tomorrow.

Actually I think Buffett was raised in Gulf Shores but that could be his sister I'm thinking about but yes you get my drift though. The whole panhandle of Florida has a large Catholic presence as well as the MS Gulf Coast all the way to South Louisiana.

The thing with Protestantism is that there are so many different varieties it gets confusing.

In the South it's heavily Baptist as Dixie pointed out but also very Evangelical. In the North, Protestants are more mainline like myself. In the Midwest I know Methodist and Lutheran are big, especially in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. They all are pretty similar just some ceremonial and interpretive differences on how they see the bible along with God and Jesus