THE MACARONI RIOTS

Febbraio 1, 2022

245

THE MACARONI RIOTS
America’s Little Italy Part # 1
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Buongiorno amici:

America’s Little Italy is a new feature dedicated to the Italian immigration colonies created after the second arrival influx dating after 1886. We begin with Providence, the city on the Atlantic shores, and specifically Federal Hill, one of the oldest and most significant settlements in North America.

{Image Attribution via Rhode Island Historical Society}

In 1914 the city of Providence was convulsed with riots. Starting in late August and lasting into September, the city’s Federal Hill section streets came alive with violence and social unrest. Ostensibly caused by an increase in the price of macaroni, this predominately Italian immigrant neighborhood was the flashpoint where Marxists, anarchists, and others fanned the frustration beneath the community’s calm veneer. The unrest became known as the Macaroni Riots.

The war in Europe—ignited at Sarajevo in June 1914 by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire—would soon turn into a world war. While it would be another three years before the United States would become an active participant in the conflict, in Providence, citizens felt the effects of the war immediately with a rise in food prices. The rapid and unexplained price rise caused Providence’s Mayor Joseph Gainer to call for an in-house investigation. To conduct the investigation, the mayor contacted the Rhode Island Retail Grocers and Market men’s Association members to conduct the investigation.

Of course, the members expected some findings; they declared that they were in no way responsible and that any price raises corresponded to the wholesaler’s increase. One committee member stated, “For years, the retail grocer has absorbed the onus and the stigma of raising prices, and he has borne the blame patiently.”

Also calling for an investigation was Rhode Island’s Governor Aram Pothier, who asked the state’s Commissioner of Industrial Statistics, George H. Webb, to investigate the causes of the price increases. Webb’s report noted that “Beans, flour, sugar, olive oil, macaroni, spaghetti, and meats have advanced materially because of pressure outside of Rhode Island. It is noticeable that such advances are so varying in amounts that Rhode Island dealers could not have taken any concerted action in the matter.”

Rhode Island’s political leaders could in good conscience feel the problem was outside their jurisdiction and that there was nothing they could do. Perhaps they would have felt differently if there were more registered voters in the Federal Hill immigrant community or if they knew what was to happen next.

The Labor Advocate, a socialist newspaper, noted: ”What is needed more than an investigation is an awakening on the part of the people. They are being robbed! We need to end this by eliminating the system of controlling life’s necessities and selling for excessive profit.

The “people” prodded on by Marxists and anarchists were now ready to take action. Luigi Nimini organized laborers into unions and founded the Karl Marx Club at the corner of Atwells and Dean. Nimini also published the Italian newspaper “La Ragione Nuova”, a radical publication, intended to destabilize the democracy in the state.

The first signs of unrest occurred on Saturday evening, on August 22.

The Italian Socialist Club planned a mass meeting to protest the high cost of food. The club operated out of the Karl Marx address at 206 Atwells Avenue in Providence RI.

Handbills had been widely circulated several days before the meeting inviting workers to attend and express their outrage.

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{F.P. Ventrone’s Market on 240-244 Atwells Avenue, Federal Hill, Providence}

Nearly 2,000 people attended the speaker’s program at the corner of Dean Street and Atwells Avenue, in the heart of Federal Hill. Also in attendance was a beefed-up police detachment of more than seventy patrolmen and officers, including seven officers mounted on horseback drawn from every police station in the city.

At 7:15 p.m., more than a dozen speakers ascended the specially erected stand for the protest meeting. The speakers, all members of the Italian Socialist Club, took turns denouncing the high cost of foodstuffs, especially pasta, which was a staple of the Italian immigrant’s diet. Coming in for special denouncement was Italian specialty food importer and wholesaler Frank P. Ventrone who ran a large-scale operation at 240-244 Atwells Avenue. Supposedly, Mr. Ventrone had placed foreign food labels on domestic products for a price increase.

One speaker railed on about the police, but the police were unfazed by his remarks because he spoke in Italian. One of the frustrations within the Italian community was the perceived lack of respect they received at the hands of the police, a force made up mainly of old Yankee stock and Irishmen. These sentiments would soon take center stage in the riots, but for the time being, the large crowd dispersed quietly after the protest rally ended.

Handbills were circulated throughout the ensuing week, calling for a labor rally on Saturday, August 29. The handbills urged readers to attend and plan to “offset” the injustices they claimed inflicted upon the laboring man. Having secured one of the handbills and believing that it implied an attack on his store, Frank Ventrone requested police protection. Like the previous week’s rally, the rally consisted of many impassioned speeches by the Italian Socialist Club members. Still, this time the speeches had the effect of enraging the crowd of nearly one thousand. When the rally ended, the crowd moved down Atwells Avenue, and within a matter of seconds, the large plate windows of Ventrone’s store crumbled on the sidewalk, and the store’s contents scattered onto the street. Numerous other storefronts also fell pretty to the mob’s violence.

The police on duty were too few to quell the mob, and officials quickly called for reinforcements. Soon the focus of the mob’s anger shifted from the Ventrone business to the police, and an exchange of stones and bullets ensued. Jubilation met the police squad on their arrival. With a full complement of police in place, the mob was finally dispersed but not before citizens, and police officers alike suffered injuries. The police only arrested even rioters despite the dangerous level of violence,

The day following the riot was a Sunday, and for the Italians, a day of rest included church attendance and family gatherings. On this Sunday, however, another riot gripped the city. This one was even more destructive than the one of the night before. Unlike Saturday’s riot, fumed by inflammatory speeches, Sunday’s riot was set off around 3 p.m. by the police arresting in the street an unnamed man. The man’s wife filed a warrant for his arrest for missing child support.

Believing that it was an arrest due to the riots of the night before, people in the streets came to the man’s defense, thus setting off a riot that lasted nearly four hours. The police called for reinforcements and what ensued was a free-for with police firing their weapons into the crowd and some in the crowd returning fire. The center of the battle was at the intersection of Atwells and Arthur Avenues. The official count was eighteen people injured: six policemen, one fireman, and eleven citizens—a fifteen-year-old boy shot in the chest and was initially believed to be fatally wounded.

In reality, many more people in the crowd suffered injuries. Still, the injured, fearing arrest if they went to the hospital, sought medical attention elsewhere, either at home or at Italian doctors. Finally, around 7 p.m., the police had taken control of Atwells Avenue and its adjacent streets. For the remainder of the evening, an uneasy quiet settled on Federal Hill. Following two consecutive nights of rioting, the police patrolled Federal Hill with a force of over 200 in uniforms on Monday evening, August 31. Every street and lane intersected Atwells Avenue, Federal Hill’s main thoroughfare, was guarded.

A large Socialist Party gathering assembled in Olneyville, a short distance from Federal Hill, on Labor Day. As was the case in previous protests, a handbill printed in Italian circulated several days before the scheduled meeting and appeared in some newspapers. Olneyville was home to the Atlantic Mills, and its workforce represented many nationalities. Socialist speakers addressed the crowd in English, French and Italian. Nearly one thousand working men and women attended. The event went off without any disturbances. The police, having learned some recent lessons, had plain-clothes officers detailed within the crowd.

As the crowd dispersed, a group of about one hundred young men made their way up Broadway and down Ridge Street to their homes on Federal Hill. An older man addressed the crowd and urged them to take up sticks and stones to reach Federal Hill. In a short time, the crowd turned into an unruly mob, and its participants began to throw stones at every building lining Atwells Avenue, damaging private and business dwellings. Several policemen reported to duty at the various station, perhaps anticipating another uprising.

A call by the plain-clothes officers soon brought out the reserves, including twenty-five mounted officers. The mob did not advance three blocks before the mounted force working as a unit moved down the street, followed by police offices with nightsticks and weapons drawn. Given the unfortunate number of casualties of the week before, the officers were under strict orders not to shoot. Miraculously nobody was shot, and the riot was over in less than thirty minutes. The police arrested 23 people.

Following the Labor Day riot, quiet soon returned to the streets of Providence. Both the Providence Journal and the Providence Tribune stressed that this was a riot of hoodlums and not related to the price of macaroni. In actuality, the riots had become as much a revolt against police treatment of residents in Providence’s Little Italy as it was about the cost of macaroni.

{Text courtesy of Russell De Simone}

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