“Dr. C,” as students and colleagues knew him, served as a professor of economics, the University’s first faculty senate president, and an executive vice president during his 60-year-plus tenure.

“Joe was the beating heart of Fordham. He was supremely competent, tough-minded, and unfailingly kind and generous. He cared for the Fordham community deeply and was intensely loyal to the institution and its faculty, students, and staff,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

“Until the end, he was deeply involved in University life, and kept in touch with us as much as possible in his gentle but forceful way. We will all miss his sage advice and goodwill.”

Over many years and many leadership roles, Cammarosano contributed to major changes in the University’s finances, governance, and physical expansion.

He enrolled at Fordham as a freshman in 1941 and used to joke that he “only missed the first 100 years” of the University’s history. In 1975, on the occasion of his stepping down as executive vice president to return to teaching, James Finlay, S.J., then the University’s president, said, “If Fordham is alive and flourishing today, it is due to no one more than to Joe.”

Cammarosano was born on March 12, 1923, and raised in Mount Vernon, New York. Although he enrolled at Fordham in 1941, World War II interrupted his studies, and he served as a member of the Army Signal Corps until 1945, when he returned to Fordham. He graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1947 with a degree in economics and went to work as a U.S. customs inspector. After getting a master’s degree at NYU, he returned to Fordham, where he began teaching economics in 1955. He earned a doctorate from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in the subject in 1956.

Leadership During Turbulent Years

In 1961, he joined the Kennedy administration as an economist in the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, then moved on to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. When he returned to Fordham a few years later, he was elected as the first president of the newly formed faculty senate in 1965.

In 1968—a period of financial turmoil for the University—he was named executive vice president. He was one of the key figures in bringing Fordham back from the brink of bankruptcy. That year, the University was operating at $2 million deficit; by 1970, it had been transformed into a $2 million surplus, thanks in part to the advent of Bundy Aid (support for private colleges from New York state), the opening of what became Fordham College at Lincoln Center, and Cammarosano’s fiscal discipline.

Roger Wines, Ph.D., FCRH ’54, a professor emeritus of history at Fordham, served on Cammarosano’s budget committee at the time and worked with him as a member of the faculty senate.

“His committee … was told to cut the University budget 20% in three weeks,” Wines said at a 2015 dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Faculty Senate. “He succeeded in meeting that goal, freezing salaries and hiring, slashing administrative costs and a number of positions. Not one classroom teacher was fired. Financial crisis was averted.”

Wines said Cammarosano also played a central role in helping the University make the difficult transition from Jesuit oversight to governance by a board of trustees with several lay members.

“Joe played an effective central role, because he gained the trust of the faculty, of the Jesuit community, and the lay adviser members of the Board of Trustees,” he said.

“That trust was vital in guiding the University through the tumultuous years 1968 to 70, years when the University faced financial bankruptcy, student unrest, religious reform currents relating to the Vatican II Council, and protests against the Vietnam War.”

In an interview with Fordham Magazine in 2015, Cammarosano recalled how his office was occupied by students several times in 1969 and 1970 as protests against the Vietnam War roiled the country.

“The students took over the switchboard at one point, and when someone called for me, they said, ‘No, he’s no longer with us, we fired him.’ I almost wished they had fired me!” he said, laughing.

Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of theology and the author of Fordham: A History of the Jesuit University of New York: 1841–2003 (Fordham University Press, 2016), noted that Father Finlay was not engaging in hyperbole when he told the Jesuits’ Superior General, Father Pedro Arrupe, S.J., in 1975 that Cammarosano was “the person mainly responsible for the survival of the University.”

“At a time when we had so much trouble with finances and campus demonstrations, he was a rock of strength,” he said.

“I think it’s true that was the worst financial crisis the University ever experienced. It was a time when the South Bronx was burning, and it had made it up to Fordham Road, so that was another factor.”

A Dynamic Teacher with Boundless Energy

In 1976, Cammarosano was honored at the University’s faculty convocation as an “exacting taskmaster” who earned his students’ appreciation by preparing “meticulously” and lecturing “dynamically.” Cammarosano served as executive vice president twice; the second time was to assist the newly appointed president of the University, Joseph A. O’Hare, S.J., who took office in 1984. But he returned to teaching once again.

E. Gerald Corrigan, GSAS ’65, ’71, a managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, studied with Cammarosano during the 1960s, helping him produce economic studies of the Bronx and the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“He’s a dynamo,” Corrigan told Fordham Magazine, recalling how his mentor would deliver “two-hour lectures nonstop at a fevered pitch.”

In 2017, when Cammarosano—then in his 62nd year as a member of the faculty—received an honorary degree at the University’s 172nd Commencement, his citation noted “the personal attention that he gives his students in the classical Jesuit model of cura personalis.”

Dominick Salvatore, Ph.D., a distinguished professor of economics who first met Cammarosano when he joined the economics faculty in 1971, remembered him as a gentleman, scholar, and all-around wonderful human being.

“The greatest compliment that students could pay to me was for them to tell me I reminded them of Joe Cammarosano,” he said.

“The students loved him and he was a rigorous teacher. He demanded things but was always jovial. I’m no young spring chicken myself, but very often I had to remind myself that I was talking to an over-90-year-old person because it was so easy to assume he was 65 or 70,” he said.

Mary Burke, Ph.D., a senior lecturer of economics, said that when one spoke to Cammarosano, he was so full of life and energy, one could be forgiven for assuming he’d be around forever.

“His office is next to mine, and every day he had classes, his office door would be open. He would be there until 5, 6, or 7 p.m. As long as there was a student who wanted to ask a question or just talk, he would be there for them,” she said, noting that conversations related to the Yankees could go on especially long.

“I met Dr. Cammarosano when I was a student. Now, I have known him as a mentor, advisor, and a dear friend.”

Cammarosano continued to teach well after many peers had retired, most recently in the fall of 2018. He submitted his formal letter of retirement in February. Matthew McCrane, GABELLI ’19, took Introduction to Macroeconomics with him, and recalled the boundless energy that belied his age.

“It was a privilege to have been taught by someone who has taught so many alumni before me. It was like I was experiencing a staple part of Fordham. In a way, it’s like I can connect with much older alumni as a result of having had him in class,” he said.

Making a Mark as an Administrator

Stephie Mukherjee, assistant dean and director of Fordham’s Higher Education Opportunity Program at Rose Hill (HEOP), called Cammarosano a “giant” and “Father of Fordham” for his outsized influence on the University. He was responsible for bringing HEOP to Fordham when the state program was created in 1969, and on numerous occasions, he stepped in to save it when funding was threatened, she said.

“He believed in the students, he believed in the underprivileged, he believed in people, and I’m grateful that he believed in me. He knew that this job is my passion, it’s not just a job,” she said.

“He was such a kindhearted, warm, wonderful person. He touched so many people’s lives.”

Sheldon Marcus, Ed.D., professor of educational leadership at the Graduate School of Education (GSE), recalls trying to get funds approved by Cammarosano in the 1970s to reimburse an administrator for weekend hours spent working. The paperwork for the request came back with Cammarosano’s bold script: “Rejected.”

When he went to see Cammarosano in his office, Marcus was greeted with more colorful language that seemed to indicate his case was lost. But then Cammarosano asked for the papers back, scratched out “rejected,” and added, “approved.”

Marcus said he started to leave, “happy to walk out of his office with my head still on.” But Cammarosano said, “Wait a minute.” He put his arm around Marcus and said, “Shelly, you’ve been working too hard, go home this weekend and don’t do another thing; get some rest.”

“He was just the most humane guy behind that tough rough exterior,” said Marcus. “It has been a pleasure to be at Fordham because of people like him; he just made it family.”

Family Above All

Cammarosano’s daughter Nancy Hartzband, FCRH ’77, LAW ’83, said her father was very connected to his own family, including his five grandchildren.

“I think it was such a good relationship because he dealt with young people his whole life, which he loved. He knew them one on one, he guided them, he was a very important figure in each of their lives,” she said.

“He set the bar really high for all of us in terms of morals. Whenever I’m in doubt, I ask, ‘What would my dad do?”

She too marveled at his stamina, noting that two years ago he published An Overview of the Development of Economic Thought (Lexington Books, 2018), the last of his three books about the ideas of economist John Maynard Kenyes.

“I mean, who does that? At that age, I’ll be happy to be sitting in my rocking chair,” she said laughing.

“But that was him. He always wanted to learn, he always wanted to do something new.”

Cammarosano still had an apartment in his native Mount Vernon, she said, but had recently moved in with his son in Island Park, New York.

She said her father was a devout Catholic who maintained his connection to Fordham for eight decades because he believed strongly in its Jesuit mission.

“We always knew we were very special because of the person he was at the University,” she said.

“He was just an incredible presence in our lives. He was almost larger than life.”

Cammarosano is survived by Hartzband and her three children as well as his son, Joseph R. Cammarosano, FCRH ’78, LAW ’81, Joseph’s wife, Mary, and their two children. Two of his grandchildren are alumni as well: Danielle Cammarosano, GABELLI ’19, and Alex Hartzband, LAW ’15. Cammarosano’s wife, Rosalie, died in 1991 and his son Louis T. Cammarosano, FCRH ’74, LAW ’78, died in 2014.

He was interred at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, after a private funeral service. The University will also hold a memorial mass in his honor at a date in the future.

To hear Cammarosano talk about working and living in the Bronx over the years, listen to his interview with the Bronx Italian American History Initiative.

—Tom Stoeker contributed reporting.

“The idea is to inspire people to stay home, but also get to know more about the community that they’re situated within, and also to provoke a response from people and invite them to share their own experiences,” said Desislava Stoeva, a BIAHI graduate project assistant who spearheaded the campaign. 

The Bronx Italian American History Initiative is an oral history research project that documents the lives of Italian and Italian American residents of the Bronx. Over the past four years, BIAHI project staff have pored over cataloged video and audio interviews throughout the 20th century and preserved their stories. They interviewed more than 40 members of the Bronx community and documented their stories in their digital archives, similar to what Fordham’s Bronx African American History Project has done for the Bronx’s black community. BIAHI staff, from faculty to undergraduate researchers, have presented their research in the U.S., Italy, and the United Kingdom. 

Now that people are spending most of their time at home, BIAHI is sharing more of its stories with participants and donors online. In late March, the initiative launched the new social media campaign, marked by the hashtags #stayathomewithBIAHI and #restaacasaconBIAHI (the latter is the Italian translation of the first hashtag). Through its weekly content on Facebook and Instagram, the campaign ties together people from two countries that bore the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic—Italy and the U.S., said Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., co-director of BIAHI. 

“We’re really trying, even in these difficult times, to engage with multiple publics as we do our outreach from home,” said Reich, who is also chair and professor of the department of communication and media studies. 

Full of personal and historical details, the social media campaign’s stories evoke nostalgia about the old Bronx and its residents. There’s Robert Menillo, born in 1923, who recalls when there were no cars on the street and Arthur Avenue vendors sold produce from streetside carts. There’s Joanna Bonaro, who remembers attending Easter Mass with her parents and “how big of a deal” it was to get the coveted chocolate egg. There’s a trio of cousins who reminisce over a restaurant meal that tasted just like their grandmother’s. 

“I was eating in a restaurant in Buffalo, my son lives in Buffalo, and it was an Italian restaurant, I tasted the sauce and it was my grandmother’s sauce, I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t had that taste and that feel in like 50 years … It’s funny the memories that food brings you,” Carl Calò said in a BIAHI social media post. 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

We greet the rainy Monday with a great storytelling trio. Carl Calò, his brother Frank Calò, and their cousin Salvatore Civitello recount their vivid memories from the rich food traditions in their family to their experiences with stereotypes about Italian-Americans from the Bronx. #stayhomewithBIAHI #restaacasaconBIAHI #BIAHI #BronxItalianAmericanHistoryInitiative #stayathome View the full interview on BIAHI’s website at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/video-interviews/#section-group-gduJjZQUKTwzQrHZbEvGp6-5 The full video and transcript are also available at Fordham University Libraries Digital Collections at : https://www.library.fordham.edu/digital/item/collection/bronxitalian/id/4 Archive photos by our interviewees can be explored in our digital photo archive at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/archive-images/

A post shared by BIAHI (@biahifordham) on Apr 13, 2020 at 8:33am PDT

In the full interview, Calò talks about growing up in the Edenwald Houses, a housing project in the Bronx, and what it was like to be the son of a Sicilian immigrant who was a sanitation worker. Eventually, his family left the projects and moved to Long Island. But one family member made his way back to where their American roots began. 

“There’s this story of return in that interview where the cousin talks about how he went back to Edenwald when he was a New York City firefighter in the ’80s or ’90s. He knocked on his old apartment door, and he got to go in and see the little hole where he used to keep his box of army men hidden in his bedroom floor,” said Kathleen LaPenta, Ph.D., co-director of BIAHI and a senior lecturer in the modern languages and literatures department. “This kind of attachment that they have … I remember being affected by that [while conducting]the interview.” 

In addition to posting on social media, BIAHI shares audio versions of its interviews on its SoundCloud podcast channel and the complete set of video interviews on its new digital archive website. In early May, BIAHI staff will talk about its initiative at a faculty webinar for Fordham’s development and university relations team. 

In the meantime, strangers across social media are responding to BIAHI’s new campaign. 

“It was nice to see people not just liking a post, but responding to it. One of our participants shared that his parents would talk to him in Italian, but he would always respond in English,” said Stoeva, a Fordham public media master’s student who plans on becoming a communications strategist. “It was interesting seeing people saying, ‘Yes, that was exactly my experience with that’ or ‘I resonate with that.’”

 

View this post on Instagram

 

For our first #stayhomewithBIAHI or #restaacasaconBIAHI video day, we are sharing the story of Anthony Rosco. He talks about his parents’ journey from Italy to America on the Cristoforo Colombo ship in the 1920s and his own childhood memories of growing up on Belmont Avenue and visiting the old Arthur Avenue Market as a child. Anthony recalls his favorite hangout spots, his first job and the different Italian regions that immigrants in the Belmont at the time came from. View the full interview on BIAHI’s website at: https://biahi.ace.fordham.edu/video-interviews/?customize_changeset_uuid=9b5305ec-2cd8-4292-97f6-124890eacec3#section-group-gduJjZQUKTwzQrHZbEvGp6-2 The full video and transcript are also available at Fordham University Libraries Digital Collections at : https://digital.library.fordham.edu/digital/collection/bronxitalian/id/0/rec/2 And if you want to listen to it in the background while doing something at home, it is available in audio format on BIAHI’s podcast channel on SoundCloud here: https://soundcloud.com/biahipodcast/biahi-podcast-episode-1-anthony-rosco-march-27-2020 #BIAHI #BronxItalianAmericanHistoryInitiative #stayathome

A post shared by BIAHI (@biahifordham) on Mar 27, 2020 at 8:58am PDT

Folklorist and choreographer Martha Nora Zarate-Alvarez, who heads the Bronx-based ensemble, said the group’s lively performance represented the traditions of the Huasteco and Jalisco regions of Mexico.

“We wanted to showcase the importance of Mexican culture in the Bronx and traditional Mexican dance,” said Zarate-Alvarez, who was dressed in a multicolored tiered skirt. “Mexican culture is more than just mariachi music.”

Bronx Celebration Day was presented by the Bronx Collaboration Committee, a division of the Fordham Club, and co-sponsored by Bronx Community Board 6, Fordham University Commuting Students Association, Fordham Road BID, and the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer at Fordham University.

Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Michael Ortiz, a member of the Fordham Club, said the mission of the Bronx Collaboration Committee is to integrate the Bronx with the Fordham campus.Though last year’s inaugural Bronx Celebration Day was held in McGinley Center, organizers took this year’s festivities outdoors.

“Having this year’s event at the [entrance]of the campus where it’s visible and audible beyond the gates was important connection that we wanted to make,” he said.

In addition to supporting local vendors selling t-shirts, handmade jewelry, art, books, and other items, Bronx Celebration Day featured several local music and dance groups, such as Dominican performers Yasser Tejeda & Palotrév; Afro Puerto Rican ensemble Bàmbula; Italian percussionist-dancer-singer Alessandra Belloni; Honduran cultural music group Bodoma Garifuna Cultural Band; and Latin, funk, and hip-hop group Boom Bits.

“The local groups demonstrate the creativity and beauty of the Bronx,” said Rafael Zapata, Fordham’s first chief diversity officer. “The event is really a great way for students who aren’t familiar with the community to learn about the roots of the borough, and also to be affirmed and inspired by the music, dance, art, and culture.”

Wakefield resident Hoay Smith was selling graphic baseball caps and hard copies of Bronx Narratives, a magazine he helped to launch with Dondre Green, the magazine’s founder and creative director. He said events like Bronx Celebration Day invites those who aren’t familiar with the borough to see the community through a fresh lens.

“Our underlying goal is to reinvent the story of the borough and this event helps us to spread brand awareness,” he said.

Nearby, local artist Evelyn Ray of Parkchester was selling vibrant collages and paintings. The work highlighted her Puerto Rican and Bronx pride.

“This is my life, my passion,” she said pointing to a painting bearing the Puerto Rican flag. “I think of this event as my little pop-up shop.”

South Korean artist Sohhee Oh brought along her mobile communal art project called “The Golden Door.” The three-dimensional cardboard door had the American flag painted on the side panels.  During the event, she asked Fordham students and local residents to write down where they were from on Post-it notes, which were then placed on the golden door.

“The project is for the immigrants of the Bronx, but I also wanted people at the event, who are not immigrants, to know that the project widens the meaning of what an immigrant is.”

Looking out at the diverse group of attendees who gathered in the lot, Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Abigail Kedik said Bronx Celebration Day has helped to deepen Fordham students’ relationship to different ethnic groups that continue to make their mark on the borough.

“We’re guests in the Bronx and we should be open to collaborating,” said Kedik. “This is a great experience that helps students learn more about the community that we are a part of.”

University Efforts in the Digital Humanities

Baker Josephs’ talk resonated with an audience of digital humanities practitioners, but it also carried special resonance for the University which has been at the forefront of the Digital Humanities, starting with the Medieval Studies program, which was an early adopter of digitization. The Bronx African American History Project and the newly launched Italian American History Initiative continue to grow the field.

The Fordham Research Council also recently recommended that a digital scholarship be established to encourage the “use of new technologies to advance methods of inquiry and scholarly communication, as well as research on digital technology and media.” Micki McGee, Ph.D., and Gregory Donovan, Ph.D., will coordinate the effort under the newly formed Digital Scholarship Consortium.

Keeping the Focus

Baker Josephs emphasized that no matter the discipline, keeping focus is key.

“It’s easy to get distracted, so if you’re in collaboration with a community you need to make sure you’re not just ham-handedly going out and doing whatever you want,” she said. “Listen to the community, and they will show you how they want the project to go.”

She added that some projects have very specific audiences, such as the community itself. Others are geared toward researchers, and some address both groups. Regardless, researchers need to decide upfront what the goals of the project will be, as it will affect the design of the interface in both practical and aesthetic ways, she said.

She cited the recently redesigned site, Slave Societies Digital Archive, hosted by Vanderbilt University, as an example of an archive specifically geared to researchers. The archive holds a half million images documenting the history of nearly 8 million slaves, primarily though ecclesiastical documents.

“The original technical design wasn’t serving their researchers. They couldn’t search or save things the way they needed to,” she said. “Sometimes you need to revisit the aims that were from one year, two years, or even five years ago.”

Open Ended vs. Ongoing Projects

Many projects, like the Bronx African American History Project and the Italian American History Initiative, are “living” projects where materials, in this case oral histories, are continuously added over time.

“That’s the tension one can find in some projects, it’s not always like at the end of the book where you close it,” said Jacqueline Reich, Ph.D., the co-director of the initiative. “With digital humanities, it can be opened ended, a living breathing organism.”

But not all projects are designed to be updated or upgraded, said Baker Josephs.

She cited an elegantly designed interactive site called HOPE: Living & Loving with HIV in Jamaica, as an example of a project with limited parameters and meant primarily for a public, rather than academic, audience. The site included poems by Kwame Dawes, testimonials by people living with HIV, analysis from researchers, videos, and music. But even though the mutli-media project was completed in 2008, the stories of the people living with HIV continued. When one of the subjects died in 2015, a tribute by Dawes was published by the Pulitzer Center.

“The thing with the HIV project was that it was static and done,” she said. “There was no space for the story to continue and so they had to put that story somewhere else.”

The start of the project thus becomes all the more important, she said.

Baker Josephs said that her examples correspond to an emerging digital humanities moment where activism blends with research, particularly when the research involves “diverse minority communities.”

“One can hack or yack all one wants, but if either is divorced from a real-time community then what use is the work?” she said.

She cautioned against a “rush to be timely political and radical” for “underprivileged populations in ways that make us feel relevant and then patting ourselves on the back while also accepting rewards and accolades of the academy.”

“We must collaborate with these communities.”

The Bronx Italian American History Initiative (BIAHI), the latest undertaking within the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP), is conducting interviews with Italian Americans who have resided or presently reside in the borough. The initiative will include audio interviews with Italian Americans and Italians who migrated from different regions in Italy, as well as personal narratives from other ethnic groups in the area.

According to Kathleen LaPenta, Ph.D., director of the new initiative and an lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, the BIAHI seeks to honor the cultural diversity of the Bronx— which was also home to a significant number of Irish, Latinos, Jews, and blacks during the mid-20th century. 

“While [it will] very much celebrate the rich Italian-American heritage in the Bronx, it is also about putting that heritage in contact with the heritage of others who were living in the Bronx at the same time, as well as calling to mind the notion that we are all in some way very transitory,” she said.

Gabelli School senior Bentley Brown, a research assistant on the BAAHP and BIAHI teams, said the new initiative is a microcosm of immigrant contributions to American society.

“We’re helping to build a narrative that includes everybody,” said Brown. “Everybody has had a part. Everybody has had a hand in building this country, and the Bronx happens to be a great example of the necessity of multiculturalism in building a country like ours.”

In January, the initiative’s staff interviewed a first subject, Fordham’s own Joseph Cammarosano, Ph.D., FCRH ’47, GSAS ’56, professor emeritus of economics and the University’s first president of the Fordham Faculty Senate. Cammarosano, 93, whose parents emigrated from Sorrento, Italy, has been a part of the Fordham community for more than 70 years. He spoke about growing up in an Italian and Jewish neighborhood north of the Bronx in Mount Vernon, and shared his recollections of Fordham’s involvement in the local community from the time he enrolled at the University in 1941.

“[The interview] gave us a starting point in terms of where to dive deeper and who to talk to next,” said Brown.

Most recently, the team interviewed Riverdale resident Fred Ponterotto, who spoke about his experiences growing up in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx during the 1950s. Among the topics that Ponterotto discussed with LaPenta and BIAHI co-director Mark Naison, Ph.D., professor of African and African-American studies and principal investigator of the BAAHP, was his upbringing, racial tensions in the community, and the political climate at the time.  

“I like to tell stories of those times,” said Ponterotto. “I revel in it.”

“Philosophically, you can’t understand the present if you don’t understand the past, and therefore you can’t affect the future.”

Changing demographic

LaPenta said the BIAHI has become imperative, especially since Italian-American neighborhoods that were first established in the 1920s have been declining over the years.

According to figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2006-2010 American Community Survey, there are approximately 57,527 Italian Americans living in Bronx County. In 2000, there were about 69,289 Italian Americans in the borough, bureau records show.

“We’re open to whoever wants to be interviewed and has an experience to share,” said LaPenta. “But the urgency of the project is for those people who are elderly, who might not have their stories to offer [because]they are getting up there in age.”

One of the goals of the BIAHI is to bring to light lost narratives from Italian-American immigrants, some of whom were marginalized, when they emigrated to Bronx neighborhoods such as Pelham Bay, Morris Park, Williamsbridge, City Island, Castle Hill, Melrose, and Belmont (“Little Italy”) decades ago.

“What we want to do is try to recapture what was there 50 years ago,” said Naison.

Race relations in the Bronx

Since the Bronx is often regarded as a cultural melting pot, LaPenta, Naison, and their student researchers have been exploring the BAAHP’s vast digital archive to gain a deeper understanding of how Italian Americans in the Bronx might have gotten along with other ethnicities in their communities during that time.

“People from different backgrounds and cultures were converging in a really concentrated way onto one geographic area of New York City and living on top of each other,” said LaPenta. “There was a unique intermixing of languages and cultures that took place [in the Bronx]that did not take place in other areas of the country.”

When the BAAHP first began, Naison and his team interviewed a small number of Latino, Italian, and Jewish residents who lived in the same communities and housing projects as African Americans. These interviews not only provided a more comprehensive look at what life might have been like for blacks in these culturally diverse neighborhoods, but also helped to jumpstart the BIAHI.

Naison and LaPenta said collectively the projects have provided new perspectives on racial tensions in various neighborhoods in the borough.

“There were these informal boundaries even at the public beaches and if you went into the wrong area, you could get into a fight,” said Naison.

While there were moments in which the Bronx’s dominant black, Irish, Latino, and Italian populations diverged, there were points when they came together too, particularly when it came to music, he said.

“The unparalleled musical creativity of the Bronx is in large part because of the mixing of cultures that took place in Bronx neighborhoods and Bronx schools,” said Naison. “This was true in the era of doo wop, mambo, and jazz. It was true during the rise of salsa and it was also true during the formative years of hip hop.”

Through the testimonies of Italian Americans and other ethnic groups that have helped to transform the Bronx, the BIAHI is capturing a part of the borough’s history that is often overlooked.

“Some of the experiences that we’re trying to uncover has to do with the ways in which the change in the neighborhood affected the individual with whom we’re speaking,” said LaPenta. “While the history [or]the public sphere note this market change in the demographic of the region, the individual processes that very differently.”