This collection houses video oral history interviews that have been conducted as part of the Bronx Italian American History Initiative (BIAHI), a community engaged research project that studies the history of Italian and Italian American residents of the Bronx in the 20th century.
Founded in 2017 with the support of the Bronx African American History Project, the BIAHI has conducted over 40 full-length interviews with Italian American political and community leaders, educators, musicians, artists, social workers and business owners, who have lived in the Bronx since the 1920’s. The interview collection documents the migration of Italians to the Bronx, the relationships with family and friends who remained in Italy, the personal experiences of settling into an “American life,” as they interacted with individuals and communities of African, Irish, Jewish, and Spanish descent and investigates the demographic shifts that began to take place in the Bronx in the early 1960’s.
We hope our work will be of use to community members, researchers and teachers seeking information about the experiences and memories of Italian immigrants and their descendants in the Bronx.
The interviews, all of which are conducted by scholars associated with Fordham’s Departments of African and African American Studies, Communication and Media Studies and Modern Languages and Literatures, provide an in-depth portrait of the cultural, political and social circumstances of Italian Americans as seen through the eyes of Bronxites.
Our project has been made possible by generous support from the Calandra Italian American Institute, the Bronx African American History Project, individual donors and Fordham’s Office of Research.
To learn more or to support our work, visit our website!
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