From The Peopling of New York City
A World in a Class, a Class in a City
Introduction
Throughout our display, we will be taking you through the interesting journeys of hypothetical families representing three influential groups of immigrants: the Italian Valentino family, the Irish Callaghan family, and the African-American Senkofa family. Based on the information learned throughout the semester, we will create fictional situations that we believe are accurate representations of the real life stories we studied.
We have traveled throughout New York City to various landmarks allowing us to obtain hands-on knowledge about the ethnicities studied. First, we experienced the iconic location of Ellis Island. A major group that came through this port was the Italians. To represent this vast group, we have created the Valentino family. Arriving from Palermo, Sicily with no money and no home, the Valentino family came only with the hope of the “American Dream.” Upon arrival, the Valentino’s quickly discovered that surviving in America would entail taking a low paying job to support the entire family. The patriarch of the family, Giuseppe, took a job in a slaughter house for next to nothing in terms of wages. The lady of the house, Antoinette, was a Casalinga, or an Italian housewife. She worked hard to raise both her children, Francesco and Maria.
Similar to the Italians, the Irish immigrants came from a distant shore. The Callaghan family faced a problem of their own. They came a long way from Dublin, Ireland. Upon arrival in America, the Callaghan’s faced enormous difficulties finding a place to live. Out of desperation, the Callaghan’s settled in the slums of the Lower East Side Tenements. The conditions were cramped, working plumbing was a rarity, and life expectancy was dangerously low, especially for infants. This held true for their youngest daughter, Kelly. Because of these terrible conditions and consumption of the toxic “swill milk,” she died at the young age of 6 months. This only added to the other problems they and every other immigrant faced in America, a new land. Thomas and Meghan Callaghan, mother and father, kept their heads held high and relied on their Irish pride and determination to overcome these difficulties. The optimistic Irish always looked at things as a positive. They knew times were hard, but in the end the result would be a better future for their children and descendants. The Irish prospered.
The Senkofa Family struggled with a vastly different problem than that of the Valentino’s and Callaghan’s. They did not come here of their own volition. They were slaves and were bought by a New York based company and forced to build up the area of Lower Manhattan. Their struggles included a cruel master, the hatred directed at them by other ethnicities, and being reduced to property. They worked and slaved to make Manhattan partially what it is today. The father and mother, Kwame and Keisha, even under the oppression of slavery, managed to give birth to their daughter, Ayana. She grew up living the life of a slave girl and nearly died of starvation. Their horrific plight finally came to an end when the three family members died from consuming poisoned meat. They died in the place where they had the least respect, their master’s land. Their bodies were eventually moved to the African Burial Ground.
