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Vulcan exhibit highlights local Italian community

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A bamboo cannoli tube and an antique-looking trumpet sit just over from a large Bruno’s grocery store sign. These objects, along with others in the La Storia exhibit at Vulcan Park & Museum, tell the story of Birmingham’s Italian immigrant community. 

Italians came to Birmingham by way of Ellis Island or Louisiana farms and plantations. Lured by promises of pay in a new industrial city, they settled in Little Italys in Birmingham’s Thomas, Ensley, Blockton and East Lake areas in the early 1900s.

Mary Jo Tortorigi Gagliano, a member of the Italian American Heritage Society of Birmingham, paints a picture of her grandparents’ lifestyle. Her grandfather worked in mines, earning 50 cents a day, part of which he saved to bring his wife, children and mother to the United States. Like most in Birmingham, he had come from Sicily and worked in Birmingham’s mines while her grandmother farmed at their home near where the airport is today.

“Women were just as much a part of the immigrant picture,” Gagliano said. “They were working the land and running grocery stores.”

Moving around the exhibit, Gagliano explains how the Italian community picked up American pastimes such as baseball while maintaining Italian traditions. Perhaps nowhere was their heritage more evident than over the table and at church. The exhibit features a tool used to roll ravioli dough into a grid, among other relics, and Catholic motifs alongside a bust of Father John B. Canepa. Canepa founded three Catholic parishes, St. Mark, St. John the Baptist in East Lake and St. Joseph in Ensley; guided the Italian people through many difficult times; and celebrated many St. Joseph’s altar feasts with them.

According to tradition, during a famine in Sicily, the people had pleaded with St. Joseph. 

“If you bring rain, we will feed the poor,” they said.

Rain indeed came, and each year on his feast day, March 19, the community would bring together “Birmingham Italians were more likely to move into the middle class than Cleveland ones,” Gagliano said. “It speaks to their entrepreneurial spirit.”

The story of Gagliano’s family and others in the community will also be shared at a series of upcoming La Storia events (see sidebar), including a Sicilian cooking class she will teach on March 12.

“We may even end up arguing like Italians in the kitchen,” Gagliano said.

La Storia will be on display at the museum through September.

La Storia Events

Birmingham Revealed: Cooking Southern Italian-An Evening in a Sicilian Kitchen

Gallery Talk: Nina Miglionico’s Legacy

Sunday in the Italian Parlor

Sunday Afternoon Tour of Italian Catholic Churches

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