Between 1880 and 1920, over 4 million Italian immigrants entered the United States. Few came to Minnesota, and the state’s Italian-born population peaked in 1910 at 9,688. When they arrived, they faced a racial ideology of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Nordic superiority.

Italian Americans were seen as “in between” white and non-white, enduring what some historians have called “soft racism.” In a nativist response, the US government passed the Johnson Reed Act in 1924. The act severely limited immigration, particularly from Italy.