“My Grandfather was Recorded as Black on the Census”

Myths surrounding family lores are often about our ancestors’ origins and struggles. They may or may not be exaggerated versions of the truth, omit or add certain aspects. In a European context, these myths often include narratives of noble heritage; in American families, they tend to be about ethnic origins or how the family came to America. Italian Americans claiming that they had a grandparent who was recorded as “Black” in US censuses may seem to fit the stereotype of a family myth, perhaps much like the one about Native American ancestry. This ethnohistorical study, however, shows that many myths have a grain of truth, as nonwhite categories were indeed assigned to Italian immigrants in the Southern states between 1880 and 1950. Descendant oral histories provide a point of departure for contextualizing these archival data, forming a bridge between the past and the present. Antoinette T. Jackson’s concept of artifacts of segregation is used to situate this study in the Deep South as a social, cultural, and historical space. Further, Jessica B. Jackson’s racial transiency frames the Italian emigrant experience as going beyond a “black and white” one.