This chapter describes the daily life for the great masses of ordinary Sicilians at the turn of the 20th century, including the desperate living conditions and their hopes and dreams for their families. The chapter that explains why approximately 1.3 million Sicilians, roughly 20% of the population, emigrated from the island, vast majority to the United States. This was the First Great Italian Migration, the founding event of the Sicilian diaspora in America and around the world.
The chapter describes the conditions that drove emigration: desperate rural poverty, the continued dominance of the latifundia (massive feudal estates worked by landless laborers for absentee owners), crushing tax burdens that had greatly increased under unified Italian rule, the collapse of Sicilian agriculture, frequent outbreaks of deadly diseases, and the growing threats posed by the rising Mafia power. It describes the dire living conditions in Sicily, forming direct comparisons between the misery of the Sicilian people to the recent evils of African-American slavery and the brutal living conditions faced by former black slaves during the repressive “Jim Crow” era in the deep southern states of America.
