Sicilian ancestors lived on the plantation Submitted by Larie Tedesco The Advocate November 5, 1989 Magazine section page 17 ************************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ David Babson's work at Ashland Belle Helene plantation took a rather unexpected turn when he received a phone call from Baton Rougean Nancy Mascaralla-Pate. "LSU put out a press release about the field school, and I received a phone call from a woman who saw the article in the paper. Ms. Mascarella-Pate said her great-grandfather had lived on Belle Helene." "What got me started on Ashland Belle Helene was that article, which said freedmen lived on the plantation, and I said, "Uh-Uh.' I had heard stories that my grandfather was born on a plantation," said Mascarella-Pate. It has been exactly 100 years since the first Mascarella relocated from Sicily to Louisiana, said her father, Lucian Mascarella. "They moved, depending on where they were working. They came in October of 1889. Agents on the big plantations and the state of Louisiana sent over to Sicily for workers. There were three ways they could come here. First, people were sent to Sicily to sign people up at 25 to 50 cents a day. Second, immigrants were met at the docks by agents who hired them, and third,those who had a little bit of money went to New Orleans and became shoemakers, bakers, ice cream makers, longshoremen -- whatever was available. "I used to think the Mafia was a major role in their leaving, but I don't think so anymore. My maternal grandfather raised sheep in Sicily. The sheep were dying of some disease. He sold off and came here. There were a lot of Sicilian families who came over at the same time -- Russos, Nolas, Mumphreys, Scardinas, Cusimanos, Martinas, Macalusos, Catalanos, Losavios, Vacaros, Politzes. Our families bought land along Highland Road from Staring Lane to Dentation. "They left the old country because they wanted to improve their lot," he said. "I used to think the Mafia was a big reason but found out later that there were other reasons." "We went to an Italian course at LSU," said his sister, Josephine Johnstone, to learn about their heritage. "The reason they left was a cholera epidemic," Mascarella said, "and they owned nothing. When slaves went out with the Civil War, they had to have people to work the plantations, so they recruited them. They were mostly farmers who were tired of the contessa (a major landowner). They tried to start the Mafia on the plantations, but they didn't get very far." The city states of Italy were constantly at war until King Umberto united Italy, he said. "People from all countries went through Sicilycausing trouble." Other nationalities were brought to the South as well, he said, including the Irish. Babson had explained that the move to bring in immigrants from Europe and even from Asia was a form of racism on the part of the planters. They believed that white workers would be superior to black workers. At the same time, black workers were organizing and striking, and an entire cane crop could ruin during grinding season if there were no workers to process it. "They brought two families in from Sicily to grow strawberries as an experiment. The Sicilians proved to be good, steady workers. They were nothing more than indentured servants, but they were allowed to have their little plot of ground to grow things," Mascarella said. "Their goal was to own property and their own homes, so they moved around to get the best pay," Johnstone added. "In 1912, my grandfather Mascarella had purchased 76 acres of land on Highland Road from William Flanikan for around $3,000. I believe there was a barn and an old house. That is now Highland Park Drive. In 23 years, they saved enough from making miserable wages to buy this large piece of property. The Territos bought next door, and the Cusimanos next door to them." "I grew up on Highland Road and went to the old Highland School and graduated from Baton Rouge High," said Johnstone. "I went to Beauregard School where the Zoning Commission is," said Marie Johnston, another sister. "It used to be the Asia School. There were seven boys and three girls in our family. My folks lost two kids." There's a framed photograph in the den of Johnstone's home. It shows the interior of a grocery store in downtown Baton Rouge, owned by her parents many years ago. When they first reached America, the Sicilian immigrants "lived in plantation cabins, and the black freed people lived nearby in another area. They worked the same fields and drank water out of the same buckets," Mascarella said. Sicilians in Sicily were overrun by many other cultures, "but they always managed to keep their own identity," he said, "no matter who occupied" their country. Learning about Babson's work at Ashland Belle Helene rekindled the Mascarella family's interest in learning about what life was like for their ancestors at the plantation. "I will try to contact a younger member of the Russo family to see if I can talk to an older member of the Russo family who would have known Daddy and would have heard a lot of things from him," Mascarella said. Mascarella-Pate said that each family at the plantation had a garden plot that provided fresh produce for the family as well as some surplus vegetables, which the women sold at roadside stands for extra income. They were farmers; they came here to work in the cane fields, the cotton fields and the corn fields. Mascarella, Mascarella-Pate, Johnstone and Johnston have worked together in their genealogical research and have acquired an awesome amount of documentation about their family. They have the ship's log dated October 1889 -- with a long list of names they recognize as family or friends. "That's Grandma." "That's Grandpa Territo." "There's an aunt." "They got all of them over here but my Grandpa Mascarella," said Johnston. "I heard he was a mercenary." "Probably was." "There are parts missing, like what they did daily," said Mascarella. "They must have worked very, very hard -- from can see to can't see. Living conditions must have been awful. They did not even speak the language. In 1860, there were less than 20,000 Italians in the U.S.; in 1890, 500,000; by 1972-73, 8.8 million." While they talked, Johnstone served homemade fig cookies. The figs were from her yard; the recipe from her family. "The reason we know what they earned was that when we were growing up, they'd tell us, "Why, I used to make 50 cents a day!' " said Mascarella. "That's when we kids were spending too much," said Johnston. "The plantations were on the river or near the river," said Mascarella. "When they had big parties, black and white workers were excluded. They lynched Italians around Ponchatoula and Bogalusa." The family talked about discrimination toward Italians, which they say continues to this day. One derogatory term used to mean a person of Italian descent, WOP, means literally "without papers," Mascarella said. If immigrants arrived at an American port of entry and had no papers, an immigration official filled out papers for them and stamped them "Without papers." "There are some weird stories about where dago came from. One was Columbus' son was Diego," he said. The Irish immigrants were also ridiculed, he pointed out. "In the northeast, they call them guineas. The Irish people in New Orleans were discriminated against. They dug that channel, and they died working, and where they died, they were buried -- right there," he said. Babson, in a separate interview, pointed out that "they left Sicily to escape several kinds of exploitation and came to the plantations, where they found different types of exploitation. They moved between 1915 and 1930 to the Baton Rouge area," Babson said. The situation in Sicily was comparable to that in South America today, he said, where peasants are being forced off their land and becoming serfs to the large landowners. "This was one of the reasons the Roman Empire disintegrated," he said. "They didn't know that most of the soldiers for the Roman army came from these small farm families. Once they became serfs, they were no longer interested in providing soldiers to the Roman army. They had lost their pride." The 19th century Mafia was "probably very different from today. In Sicily it was more a protection racket. People too proud to pay protection money left Sicily. The cultural stereotype of Marlon Brando as the aging, fat godfather did more to create a bad view of Italians" than any other factors. Mascarella said his Uncle Tony had three sons who fought in World War II in the American armed services. "Seymour was missing on the USSNO at Guadalcanal. My uncle had not received his citizenship papers, so American agents came, seized his firearms, a radio and other things because we were at war with Italy. "It didn't gall me until I came back from the Korean War, put in for courier duty and was told, "Well, three generations of your family were not born in the U.S., but we might be able to get you in.' All I would have been doing in that job was carrying messages between embassies -- and usually false messages." "When I first got in the Air National Guard, they wanted to know if I had any relatives in Italy," Mascarella-Pate said. "I don't know whether I do or not!"