The horrifying supernatural scenes in "The Exorcist," which releases a sequel this Halloween, pale in comparison to the shocking, real-life scenes Richard Gambino described in his 1977 book, Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in American History.

On March 14, 1891, a mob of angry citizens, led by those described by The New York Times as the city’s “finest citizens,” broke into Parish Prison in New Orleans. Holding torches, rifles, and ropes, in a grisly scene all too familiar to African Americans, the crowd of 5,000 shot 11 Italian Americans, and then pulled them out into the street and lynched them. The day before, six of the 11 had been acquitted of charges for the murder of police chief David Hennessey, but that didn't stop the vigilantes. The police, overwhelmed by the size of the crowd, were forced to step back as the crowd surged forward. They shot and stabbed most of the victims inside the prison, then pulled them out into the street, and ripped apart their bodies for souvenirs before hanging them.

“It was the worst of more than 40 lynchings carried out against Italian Americans between the late-19th and early-20th centuries,” noted Basil Russo, the National President of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America (ISDA).

The repercussions linger to this day. The word “mafia” appeared in the American vocabulary for the first time, Gambino wrote, and—in actions that seem ripped out of the headlines today—some native-born American began calling for measures to restrict immigration and repress the influx of immigrants into America.

I didn’t learn about the New Orleans lynchings until 2019, when a Jewish friend shared the New York Times article, “How Italians Became White,” with me. The darker-skinned Sicilians who settled in New Orleans were called “white niggers” or “nigger wops,” noted the writer, because they “often accepted ‘black’ jobs in the Louisiana sugar fields or because they chose to live among African-Americans.” At times, the Italians were barred from schools, movie houses, labor unions, and forced to sit in church pews set aside for black people.

Every page of the lengthy article upset me. How did my grandfather Concezio find the courage to immigrate to America just a few years later? How desperate he must have, I began realizing.

But then I became angry. Why I hadn’t I heard about New Orleans in my American history classes, or around the dining room table when my father talked about important events?

The United States and Italy almost went to war over the incident, but it accomplished something that Ida B. Wells, the African-American newspaper editor, couldn’t achieve: it led to a broad anti-lynching effort. It also led to the creation of Columbus Day, which I’ll talk about in my blog on October 8, "Why I Choose to Celebrate Columbus Day."

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