Word: italianized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Long Live the King. De Sapio had to fight every inch of the way to where he is. Even his nativity carried a brand that still sears his political outlook. He was born 46 years ago, an Italian in an Irish sea. The lower Greenwich Village neighborhood of his birth was about 95% Irish, about 5% Italian. (Today, the ratio in that neighborhood is almost precisely reversed.) His father, Gerard De Sapio, came to the U.S. at the age of ten from Avellino, some 30 miles inland from Naples. Recalls Gerard: "We were on a flat-bottomed scow, maybe like...
Carmine found out soon enough that kings are made, not born, in New York's racial and cultural jungles. De Sapio still winces when reminded of the "Wop" cry that came at him from all sides in his boyhood. The fact of his Italian ancestry has followed him always. It held him back in politics for precious years. De Sapio is talking about the old Irish bosses when he says, with low-keyed but intense anger, "I was the first leader they really gave the treatment to; I had to win three elections before they would seat...
...Sapio's reactions to his problem is to bear down on the Italians around him. An aide says: "If an Italian name comes up at the Hall for a prominent public job, Carmine goes into his background with as much thoroughness as J. Edgar Hoover, a thing he never does with an Irishman or a Jew." De Sapio can also set a personal example. His present job as Secretary of State pays him $17,000 a year, the most he has ever made, and never once in his career has there been any evidence that he makes money from...
...Would've Been a Judge." Carmine De Sapio, the first Italo-American leader of Tammany Hall, understands only a few words of Italian (he recently sat next to an Italian diplomat at a dinner, listened politely for an hour, did not learn until later that he had accepted an invitation to visit Italy). He does not remember ever hearing his parents converse in Italian; quick-witted Marietta and hard-working Gerard De Sapio spoke English, tried to teach their son that he was an American, pure and simple. Between them, they established a solid little trucking business, came...
This was unforgivable. "In those days," recalls De Sapio bitterly, "the Irish leaders used to give the Italians important-sounding jobs-without power-to keep them happy; something with a nice fancy-sounding title, like Superintendent of Sanitation, that an Italian would love." But district leader? Never. Tammany's executive committee refused to seat De Sapio. When De Sapio's followers picketed both the hall and Finn's office, Finn cried foul. "It's in line with all the tactics they've been using," he said. Then, darkly: "I might even say it smells strongly...