Sal Salerno, Ridgewater College

On February 14, 1920, 100 Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, assisted by members of the American Legion, raided the homes of 29 Italian anarchists living in Paterson, New Jersey.   These immigrants were part of L’Era Nuova, a group affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World and a center of the international anarchist community since the turn of the nineteenth century.  While researchers believed the federal government destroyed the files connected to L’Era Nuova, a cache of these records was recently located.  Sal Salerno’s talk will focus on the importance of this discovery and the questions it raises for understanding Italian American radicalism.