10. To Have Courage
Between 1861 and 1985, 29,036,000 Italians emigrated to other countries. Poverty was the main reason for their leaving. They risked everything in emigrating to a new country. Usually moving across the ocean at a time when Ocean Travel was precarious at best only to find that they had much Prejudice and hardship to overcome when they arrived. But they kept coming. Continually trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.

The coming of World War II saw Italian Americans step permanently into the center of U.S. cultural life. Nearly one million Italian Americans served in the armed forces, about 5 percent of the Italian-American population, and millions more worked in war industries. As with many other immigrant groups, national service brought Italian Americans even greater social mobility, more access to education, and a higher profile in the nation's popular imagination. According to one account, an Italian-American aircraft worker, Rose Bonavita, became the inspiration for a 20th-century icon, Rosie the Riveter.

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Source: http://everybodylovesitalian.com/