Vendetta: The True Story of the Largest Lynching in U.S. History

by Richard Gambino

Book Overview

Eleven Italian Americans were lynched in New Orleans on March 14, 1891, by a mob of twenty thousand people, gathered together by the political, business, and labor elites a day after a jury acquitted six Italian Americans of the murder of the city's police chief. No one was charged or punished for this injustice. The lynching caused a disconnect between the president and congress of the United States, and Washington and Rome. The crisis was used by...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550711032
• ISBN13: 9781550711035
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Guernica Editions
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.3" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

More Strange Fruit

Gambino makes one of the most heinous crimes in American history into a fine narrative. In some parts of the US, hatred of Italians was more pervasive than the animus directed at blacks and for decades Italians - specifically Southern Italians and Sicilians - were placed at the lowest rung of the social scale. This all came to a head when local, state and national officials all played a part in the worst mass lynching in US history. Even the president thought it "a good thing." There are lessons to be learned and Dr. Gambino delivers them in a fast-paced tale of the greed and hatred that resulted in a mass murder.

Excellent. A simple account of a complex and tragic event.

A simple, if not scholarly, account of a mass murder perpetrated on a number of helpless innocents. This would be a fine True Crime book, but Richard Gambino does not want to simply tell a story America forgot. He delivers the details of the henious crime set in the intrigue of the New Orleans political scene. And gives insight, with historical perspective, to the diplomatic backlash and the response of an apathetic America. A must read for Italian-Americans, who crave a little righteous rage or for those who have any interest in the Immigration debate. This book is a reminder of one of a series of pass sins commited by a "multi-cultural conscious" society.