Twelve years ago, I began researching a family murder that happened in Southern Italy in the 19th century. It took a decade to find the details of the crime, but the facts I uncovered about the daily life of my ancestors and the racism they faced — even from their own countrymen — were more shocking than the killing. In today’s climate of refugee bans and xenophobia, the facts have taken on a new urgency and are even more disturbing to me, as they should be to anyone whose family traces its roots to Southern Italy.

Women like my great-great grandmother Vita Gallitelli came to America for more than simply a better job. Subject to the whims of their padroni — the men who owned the feudal land upon which they toiled — Italian women were commonly the victims of institutionalized, systematic rape. There was a practice known as “prima notte” that allowed the landowner to sleep with the virgin bride of his worker, which extended into the 20th century.