After the American Civil War, when African American slaves were freed, Southern plantation owners had a problem—how to harvest cotton when you no longer have an oppressed, unpaid workforce. An Eastern speculator had an idea. He had purchased the massive Sunnyside Plantation in Southeast Arkansas. The problem was the plantation would be worth nothing unless he could figure out a way to find workers. He concocted a scheme to import Italian farmers, He promised them land as sharecroppers, and he involved the mayor of Rome, promising him stock in his company, if the mayor could supply low wage laborers, desperate for jobs. Dozens of families were recruited, blessed by the Pope, and sent to America, arriving by boat to New Orleans, and on to Lake Village, Arkansas.
Growing and picking cotton at the Sunnyside Plantation in the Mississippi River Delta was hot, backbreaking, unhealthy work, nothing like they were accustomed to in the hills of northern Italy. Farm Laborers fell sick with “yellow fever” and dysentery. About 125 of the original Italian immigrants died of malaria, contaminated water, and poor sanitation. A federal investigation was launched, but squelched when a Mississippi Senator convinced President Theodore Roosevelt there was “nothing to see” down there in the Arkansas Delta.
By early 1898, about 40 families chose to follow Father Pietro Bandini, the plantation’s resident priest, to the Arkansas Ozarks, where the climate, terrain and small-scale agriculture were similar to northern and central Italy, where they had originated. Horses and plows were bought on credit; land was cleared and vegetable gardens, grape vineyards, apple and peach orchards and fields of strawberries were planted. Descendants of these families still live today in the Northwest Arkansas community of Tontitown.
Our film will begin at the annual Tontitown Grape Festival, held every August. We will go back in time to tell the story, including a trip to film in Italy, where Professor Larry Foley will complete research and start film production. The director will serve as research fellow for University of Arkansas, August-November 2022, to work on this documentary. Field production began in August 2022 with scenes from the annual Tontitown Grape Festival. The director, currently in Rome, will conduct key interviews with historians, along with filming scenes while in Italy. The target audience is general, with goal of national distribution.
Growing and picking cotton at the Sunnyside Plantation in the Mississippi River Delta was hot, backbreaking, unhealthy work, nothing like they were accustomed to in the hills of northern Italy. Farm Laborers fell sick with “yellow fever” and dysentery. About 125 of the original Italian immigrants died of malaria, contaminated water, and poor sanitation. A federal investigation was launched, but squelched when a Mississippi Senator convinced President Theodore Roosevelt there was “nothing to see” down there in the Arkansas Delta.
By early 1898, about 40 families chose to follow Father Pietro Bandini, the plantation’s resident priest, to the Arkansas Ozarks, where the climate, terrain and small-scale agriculture were similar to northern and central Italy, where they had originated. Horses and plows were bought on credit; land was cleared and vegetable gardens, grape vineyards, apple and peach orchards and fields of strawberries were planted. Descendants of these families still live today in the Northwest Arkansas community of Tontitown.
Our film will begin at the annual Tontitown Grape Festival, held every August. We will go back in time to tell the story, including a trip to film in Italy, where Professor Larry Foley will complete research and start film production. The director will serve as research fellow for University of Arkansas, August-November 2022, to work on this documentary. Field production began in August 2022 with scenes from the annual Tontitown Grape Festival. The director, currently in Rome, will conduct key interviews with historians, along with filming scenes while in Italy. The target audience is general, with goal of national distribution.