The largest and most geographically representative organization of Italian Americans, the Order Sons of Italy in America (OSIA) was founded in New York City on June 22, 1905. While the concept of a nationwide federation for those of Italian ancestry predates the founding of the Order, OSIA has had the longest existence and has been the most successful.

 

Dr. Vincenzo Sellaro (1868-1932) was born in Sicily and graduated from the med­ical school at the University of Naples before migrating to the United States in 1897. He called together a group of professionals to effectuate the uniting of Italian mutu­al-aid societies, some two thousand then extant in the city. Adopting the Enlightenment ideals of A Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity@ as its motto, and the nomenclature and ritual of American fraternal organizations, the new group was structured on the pyramid lodge system, with a “Supreme Lodge” at its apex. The professed purposes reflected in the Order’s first constitution encompassed group affirmation, “ emancipation from every prejudice,” cultural attachment to Italy, and civic participation in American political life. Dr. Sellaro served as Supreme Venerable (national president) until 1908.

 

From the beginning OSIA provided for complete membership parity between men and women; but the Italian version of its corporate name - L’Ordine Figli d’Italia in America - translation unfairly serves as a source of criticism for some. Its institution of English language instruction and citizenship training classes was unique at the time. OSIA also placed an agent at Ellis Island to welcome immigrants.

 

During the early years, the Order grew rapidly through the issuance of lodge char­ters to scores of Italian American mutual-aid societies. It soon organized new lodges in surrounding states. By the time restrictive immigration policies were being put into place during the early 1920s (legislation that the Order would battle until repeal of the discriminatory national origins quota system in 1965), OSIA claimed 125,000  members in more than one thousand filial lodges spread throughout the United States and into Canada. Eventually, the Order would charter nearly three thousand local lodges in all but a handful of states, organized under twenty-one American and two Canadian grand lodges; many of the functions of the Order center at this grand (state) lodge level, and a good deal of decentralization allows for activities of a purely local lodge nature. The first grand lodge was founded in New York in 1911. A biennial national convention format commenced in 1917. Far-flung lodges formed in Guam and British island possessions in North America, as well as those in the District of Columbia, are directly under the administration of the Supreme Lodge.

 

Since it’s founding, assuredly more than a million Italian Americans of various gen­erations have been regular OSIA members. Its far wider, nonvoting social member­ship category can only be estimated. With growing political significance, OSIA lead­ers were first received by President Woodrow Wilson at the White House in 1917; every president has followed suit, and a high point was achieved when President Richard Nixon accepted the Order’s Marconi Award, its highest in 1971. President Carter addressed the Order’s biennial convention in 1979.

 

During World War I some twenty-eight thousand members of the Order served in the armed forces of     the United States. Subsidies to the families of members at war complemented sick and death benefits    that had always been a staple of the Order’s early objectives. Mortuary funds would later give way to   large-scale, actuarial-based insurance programs still operative in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Orphanages that would function into the l97Os were established m New Jersey and Pennsylvania. From its founding until the eve of World War II and the rise of the New Deal beneficent state apparatus, OSIA was perhaps the single most important provider of social welfare programs to Italians in the United States. Likewise, the Order has supported relief efforts for victims of natural disasters in Italy since the earthquake in Sicily in 1914 and established an orphanage at Cassino, following World War II.

 

OSIA was an early and militant order of organized labor; it fought the Ku Klux Klan in the South and, in 1927,dispatched an attorney to Massachusetts to assist in the appeal of the “temple miscarriage of Justice” following the conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. OSIA was responsible for the first Columbus Day measure introduced in Congress in 1932, and annually thereafter until passage of the national holiday in 1984.  In 1977 the Order filed a major brief with the Supreme Court of the United States in Bakke opposing the concept of “preferential racial quotas” in admissions to higher education. (A white applicant Bakke succeeded in convincing the Court that he was denied admission to medical school because the preferential racial quotas unfairly denied him admission in favor of less qualified minorities) In 1990 it was responsible for preventing the American College Board from canceling Italian lan­guage testing as a qualification for advanced college admissions.

 

As the “golden door”   was closed to new immigration in 1924, OSIA turned to the second generation in its recruitment of new members Junior divisions were estab­lished for youngsters to 18 years of age, and one still operates in Massachusetts More than 350 youth lodges were separately chartered, most of them between the wars, increasingly stressing American-style activities such sports, bands, and drill teams.

 

Close political relations with Italy saw the Order officially recognized as the voice of the Italian in America as early as 1922. Student exchanges with and annual pil­grimages to Italy were initiated during this period. In 1935 OSlA mounted intense pressure on Congress and the president to ensure that Ethiopia receive no economic assistance, while simultaneously collecting large sums to aid the Italian incursion there. The Order vigorously opposed League of Nations sanctions against Italy and pressed for a policy of strict neutrality by the United States. These policies of close alignment with the Fascist regime earlier had brought about the most divisive num­ber of schisms in the Order’s history. Ten years before, led by Fiorello LaGuardia and Luigi Antonini, a parallel organization was established in New York. The ensuing legal and polemic struggle caused a nationwide division of the Order that would not heal until 1943. In 1928 a split in Pennsylvania led to the formation of the Italian Sons and Daughters in America, which still functions as a separate national fraternal organization comprised of two hundred-odd local lodges, mainly in seven Midwest states. A 1990 effort at reunification was thwarted by objection from Pennsylvania.

 

Italy’s entry into World War II as an Axis partner in 1941 presented a traumatic moment in Italian American history, and focused public attention and hostility on those of Italian ancestry. Dual loyalties were tested, but the Order and its first American-born national president, jurist Felix Forte of Massachusetts, made it abun­dantly clear that the primary allegiance was to America. Notwithstanding, a brand of infamy, today considered baseless and unjustified, was imposed on Italian language and culture, while indiscriminate curfew, relocation, arrest, and interment of resi­dent Italians, and even naturalized and native-born Italian Americans, was initiated, particularly on the West Coast. The stamp of “enemy alien” was eventually removed in late 1942 largely as the result of the Order’s demonstrated unswerving loyalty and its coordinative political initiative. The position of national deputy was established  that year to lobby the national government; a Washington office was also opened.

 

With the fall of Mussolini in 1943, and the rise of a communist threat to the Italian peninsula, the Order was a key element in reordering Italian American priorities. It played a central role in a united Italian American effort committed to support a demo­cratic government for postwar Italy. It exerted pressure on the Roosevelt/Truman administrations in favor of Italian territorial integrity, and played a significant  role in interim military government planning for the rebuilding of the war-ravished nation. The OSIA News, a monthly newspaper launched in 1946 and published for a half cen­tury, articulated these efforts. OSIA successfully lobbied for Italy’s inclusion in the Marshall Plan and for its membership in both NATO and the United Nations. Italian American prime minister Alcide De Gasperi (1945-1953) gave the Order high regard. In the "Letters to Italy" campaign of 1947-1948, the Order played an acknowledged role in depriving Communist participation in governing the newly constituted Republic of Italy. Since World War II, OSIA has continued to maintain a lively inter­est in Italian political affairs, regularly welcoming Italy’s ambassadors and engaging in projects like the Douhet Mitchell Award that recognizes joint military cooperation between the two nations. As late as 1996 OSIA was urging the Clinton State Department to accept an Italian plan that would assure Italy a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

 

From its inception the Order has endeavored to defend the good name of Italians in America. A series of special committees, culminating in 1978 with the creation of a separate, Washington based legal entity now known as the Commission for Social Justice (CSJ), has vigilantly fought defamatory characterizations by the media. With Declines, it has employed a national proactive strategy of promoting positive Italian American imagery based on commissioned research findings Its cooperative pro grams with representative organizations of other ethnic and racial backgrounds have become models of inter group education and understanding.

 

The Order’s membership decline during the 1950s was stemmed by the ethnic revival of the 1970s. The decade witnessed one new grand lodge organized in Arizona and 247 new local lodges, chartered nationwide, confirming prominence in the suburbs as Italian Americans exited from the older, central cities. During this peri­od the Sons of Italy Bank and Trust Company, a Pennsylvania chartered commercial bank, was acquired by Continental Bank and Trust Company of North America; the OSIA Savings and Loan Association continues to function in Philadelphia Large scale, federally chartered credit unions, such as that operating m New York, have supplanted earlier forms of loan activity as a member service The number of new local lodges organized nationally fell to about one hundred during the 1980s.  As late 1995 a new grand lodge was organized in Colorado.

 

In 1974 OSIA was a founding member of the National Italian American Coordinating Association (NIACA); it continues to play a leadership role in the affairs of this thirty-odd member gathering of national Italian American entities, and the Order has on more than one occasion provided a president for its Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations. Also in 1974 OSIA was instru­mental in the creation of the Italian American Congressional Caucus.

 

The Sons of Italy Foundation, formed in 1959, has since coordinated support for a multitude of OSIA charitable causes. The principal beneficiary through 1987 was the Birth Defects Program, in the amount of $14 Million When the Order’s claim that the sponsoring March of Dimes failed to include an American of Italian descent on its national board was continually ignored, the relationship ended. The Cooley’s anemia Foundation has since received upwards of one million dollars for research and treat­ment of afflicted youngsters. The Sons of Italy Foundation also funds a vast program of scholastic aid in favor of college bound youths; this is organized on every level of the Order-national, state, and local-and grants over one-half million dollars annually.

 

In 1981 OSIA established the full-tune position of national executive director, in 1982, a building was purchased in Washington to serve as a national headquarters; per­manent staff now coordinate a wide array of programmatic thrusts for OSIA’s three main present-day outlets: its Supreme Lodge, the Commission for Social Justice, and the Sons of Italy Foundation. The Garibaldi Meucci on Staten Island in New York, has been owned and maintained by the Order 1914 The Sons of Italy Archives, opened in 1989, is housed at the Immigration Research Center of the University of Minnesota. Surpassing 2,500 linear feet of primary resource materi­al, it is the largest collection of Italian Americana under one roof.