When I go out past our mulberry tree and look out onto the valley, I get pensive if I have a particular folk song roaming in my head. I guess it’s natural to think of all the people I miss on the other side of the great Atlantic, and wonder how I ended up here on this hill with a mile of bumpy dirt road and no humans in sight. Other times I wonder how I ended up born in Michigan, and how my poor mom, coming from sunny Napoli, had to endure those long Midwestern winters missing her own mom. The immigration ball keeps bouncing back and forth across the ocean in our family, starting with my paternal grandpa who went to work in the timber mills by the copper mines in Michigan. During those years he sent money to his family back in Abruzzo so they could eat, but like Pa always said, there wasn’t much use getting a few dollars if there wasn’t much to buy.
Family history gets intense during WWII and beyond, but let’s stick to the beginning of the last century. Lot’s of tough stuff was happening to Italian immigrants back then (and we won’t even get into the exoduses and horrors happening in countries all over the planet today!), but some events in the history of immigrants need to be remembered. Here’s a song by Woodie Guthrie, the American songwriter admired by so many around the world. I like to sing it in front of Italians here, but I need to translate it first - they deserve to understand what went down over there just as much as the English speaking world. Here are Woody’s lyrics to the song, and a link below to hear him sing it (recorded and released in 1945 for the Moses Asch’s Folkways label, now Public Domain in the Library of Congress):
1913 Massacre (“Italian Hall”)
Take a trip with me in 1913To Calumet Michigan in the copper countryI’ll take you to a place called Italian hallWhere the miners are having their big Christmas ballI’ll take you in a door and up a high stairsWhere singing and dancing is heard everywhereI’ll let you shake hands with the people you seeAnd watch the kids dance round the big Christmas treeYou ask about work and you ask about payThey’ll tell you they make less than a dollar a dayWorking their copper claim risking their livesIt’s fun to spend Christmas with the children and wives.There’s talking and laughing and songs in the air And the spirit of Christmas is there everywhere Before you know it you’re friends with them all And you’re dancing around and around in the hall A little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lightsTo play the piano so you gotta keep quietTo hear all this fun you would not realizeThat the copper ball thug men are milling outsideThe copper boss thugs stuck their heads in the doorOne of them yelled and screamed “There’s a fire”A lady she hollered “There’s no such a thingKeep on with your party there’s no such a thing”.A few people rushed but was only a few“it’s just the thugs and the scabs fooling you”a man grabbed his daughter and he carried her downbut the thugs held the door and he could not get outOthers they followed ‘bout a hundred or moreBut most everybody remained on the floorThe gun thugs they laughed at their murderous jokeWhile the childreb were smothered on the stairs in smokeSuch a terrible sight I never did seeThey carried their children back out by a treeThe scabs they laughed at their terrible spreeAnd the children that died there were 73.The piano played a slow funeral tuneAnd the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moonThe parents they cried and the miners they moaned“See what your greed for money has done”.
Thanks for sharing, Lily. I had no idea.
Every time I visit Calumet, I am deeply touched by this horrific tragedy. I will never forget the tireless contributions of our Italian/ American families. Thanks for keeping the lessons alive Lily (and Woody).