Erie's Italian People The Genesis and Development of "Little Italy"

Abstract

Almost sixty years after the end of mass immigration ethnicity among European ethnics appears alive and well. The children and grandchildren of immigrants have, in many places, preserved the cultural manifestations of national heritage and give evidence for self-identification as ethnic Americans. Although a good deal of the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries forecast the decline of ethnicity, it still remains the subject of much public commentary and scholarly study.