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Professor Henken

I have taught in the Departments of Black and Hispanic Studies and Sociology/Anthropology since 2003, when I moved to New York from New Orleans. I am a native Southerner and grew up along the Gulf Coast. I was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1971.

As I grew up, I never knew or cared very much about my family's ethnic identity or immigration story - as far as I knew, we were white, Catholic, and American, end of story. However, in my late-20s I had the opportunity to research part of my family's story and discovered a rich and complex history.

My great grandparents on my father's mother's side, Teresa Bertagnolli and Vittorio Lazzari, immigrated (separately) to the United States in 1875 as part of the great wave of Italian immigration that would begin in ernest in 1880.

After arriving in the Chicago area and begining to work in the coal mines outside Chicago, my great grandfather, Vittorio, met and married my great grandmother, Teresa, and they began a family, having five children in Illinois.

In 1895, they moved with their children (a number of whom had already died in infancy) to be part of an Italian-American colony of Daphne and Belforest, Alabama, in Baldwin County, near the Gulf Coast. There, they had six other children, including my grandmother, Josephine Lazzari (later known to all of her children and grandchildren as Mother Henken). They also began setting up farms as the family business.

Here is a photo of my great uncle, Louis Lazzari, who now in his 80s, still runs "Double L Farms" in Loxley, Alabama. Many of his workers on his "family farm" are new immigrants from Mexico - so the immigration saga continues. Behind him is a family photo of his grandparents, my great-grandparents, Vittorio Lazzari and Teresa Bertagnolli.

My grandmother grew up and met and married a man named Theodore "Dorie" Henken. He was not Italian, but a Catholic of German descent. I am named after him. My father, Victor Henken, was the youngest of Josephine and Dorie's three children. He was named after his own grandfather, Vittorio. My brother, also named Victor Henken, keeps the naming tradition alive. My father's elder brother was named Ted Henken and his sister is named Theresa. I also have a cousin named Ted Henken, another one named Victor Henken, and a third named Theresa Henken. I even have a younger brother named Tim Henken and a cousin also named Tim Henken!! Are you confused yet?

In 1998, I had the opportunity to travel to Trento, Italy, in the province of Trentino-Alto Adige, in order to uncover some of this history. Both of my great-grandparents were born within an hour's bus drive of Trento. Teresa was born in the town Dermulo and Vittorio was born in Capriana, a town situated on the very tip of a mountain peak in the Dolomite Mountain Range - part of the foothills of the Alps.

While visiting Capriana, I discovered that, of the towns perhaps 500-600 families, perhaps 30 percent of them had the family name Lazzari - actually spelled Lazzeri in Italy. I visited the church's cemetery and found grave after grave with that last name etched into the marble. I also visited a bar and found a photo collage of all the town's men to have died in World War II. Many of them were my relatives.

Since I speak Spanish, I was able to converse with the woman who ran the local post office in broken Italian. When I told her my story, she immediately closed up the post office and led me to her home where she introduced me to her own aged mother. Her mother's maiden name was also Lazzeri. Small world!!