Other history months we need

Italians were far more than the Mafia. A Norwegian-American saved billions of people

February marks Black History Month in which the contributions of black people are honored.

The best example is Norbert Rillieux, a freeman born in New Orleans in 1806. In 1830, he went to study engineering in Paris. There he invented a process for refining sugar. Not only did he give us white sugar but he transformed the chemical industry.

Nick Weldon wrote in 2021, “Rillieux’s invention, the multiple-effect evaporator, streamlined what had been a slow and costly process for purifying cane juice by using a series of vacuum chambers that used heat more efficiently and reduced waste. The result: cheaper, better sugar. The method changed the sugar industry — and, later, all kinds of industrial processes — such that some historians compare it to what Eli Whitney’s gin did for cotton.”

He was not the first black man to get a U.S. patent. In fact, he was turned down for one patent because the patent office thought he was a slave and slaves had no rights. They were considered property and whatever inventions they made belonged to the massa.

The first black patent honor went to Thomas L. Jennings, a freeman and a tailor who patented the process for modern dry cleaning in 1821. The National Inventors Hall of Fame said on the bicentennial of his patent, “Not only did Jennings manage to acquire a patent in 1821, but he also dedicated much of his earnings to supporting the abolitionist and desegregation movements, helping others defend their rights and achieve their goals.”

He was civil rights before there were civil rights. Back of the bus? A century before Rosa Parks, his daughter sued to get on the bus. New York City banned blacks from riding in street cars. She won the case. Her lawyer was Chester Arthur, a future president.

Then there is Robert Smalls, a slave who commandeered a Confederate boat in the Civil War and made his way to freedom. He joined the Navy and eventually became a captain. After the war, he served 5 terms in Congress.

The point of Black History Month was to build the esteem and reputation of black people, who are one-eighth of the U.S. population. I am cool with that.

But what about the other seven-eighths of the population? We didn’t sit around eating bonbons while watching slaves pick cotton.

Consider Italians. Most of them arrived after slavery. They are associated with pizza and the Mafia but they were far more than that.

This summer, the movie Oppenheimer drew audiences to appreciate the work of the director of the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bombs that ended World War II once and for all. He was Jewish. Of course. Most physicists at the time were Jews.

Enrico Fermi wasn’t. He was an Italian physicist who fled Mussolini and became the father of the nuclear age. David N. Schwartz wrote in 2017, The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times of Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age. Fermi built the first nuclear reactor as part of that Manhattan Project in Chicago.

In an interview with Smithsonian magazine, Schwartz said:

When the news came from Germany in January 1939 that the uranium atom had been split, physicists began to worry that a bomb could be made out of this. Then, at the end of the summer of 1939, the German physicist Werner Heisenberg came to visit. Fermi tried to persuade him to defect to the United States because, he said, “If you go back to Germany, you’ll be required to work on a nuclear weapon for the Nazis and that would be terrible.” Heisenberg said, “I owe my patriotic duty to my country. I’m not going to defect to the United States.” That really shook Fermi up and he decided to move ahead, because if the Germans beat the Americans to this, it would be an absolute disaster.

America and the world owe a lot to Fermi.

In 2020, Tim Ott wrote, “10 Italian Americans Who Changed History.” While Italian entertainers dominated his list, he included Mother Cabrini.

He wrote, “Born outside Milan in 1850, Francis Xavier Cabrini heeded the request of Pope Leo XIII and moved to the U.S. in the late 1880s to serve the millions of Italian immigrants who were flocking to its shores. She founded her first American orphanage in upstate New York in 1890 but refused to stay put, fielding calls to help the abandoned, sick and destitute across the country and around the world. Naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1909, Mother Cabrini died in one of her own hospitals in Chicago eight years later, leaving behind a legacy of more than five dozen schools, orphanages and hospitals built. She became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized in 1946, fittingly finding her place in the firmament as the patron saint of immigrants.”

He included Lee Iacocca, who gave us the Mustang and saved Chrysler. If you can find a better carmaker, hire him.

As for Jews, I can go on all day about them. They gave the country physicists, Irving Berlin and a host of comedians. Jews invented Hollywood by founding Columbia, Fox, Paramount, Universal and MGM. Even the Warner Brothers were Jewish. Could we kindly stop the anti-Semitism already?

Poles helped free America in the Revolutionary War. Casimir Pulaski was the father of the U.S. Calvary. He once saved George Washington’s life.

Tadeusz Kościuszko was the father of engineering, He stopped a British advance by felling trees and defended West Point before it was a military academy. His was the first monument dedicated at the academy on July 4, 1828.

Norwegians gave us Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution. He changed agriculture and easily saved billions of people worldwide from starvation.

Another Norwegian, Conrad Hilton, laid the foundation of a hotel empire that his son, Barron, greatly expanded.

I grew up near Little Budapest in Cleveland, which once was the second-largest Hungarian speaking city in the world. They came to America as skilled craftsmen. They gave the nation Milton Friedman, who saved the nation from Keynesian economics under Reagan. They also gave us physicist Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb.

The Germans gave us President Trump. Oh and some other people too, but Donald Trump is a great enough contribution.

As we go through the various ethnicities and their contributions to this great land, let us not overlook the most important group — WASPs. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants founded what we now call the United States. They gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

They owned slaves? So what? Every king in Africa owned slaves — and the patriarchs of Ghana and Dohemy sold millions of African slaves to Europeans who sent most of them to the Americas.

From Ben Franklin harnessing electricity to John D. Rockefeller building the oil industry to Philo Farnsworth inventing televisions, WASPs built this country. Instead of tearing down their statues due to what William Shatner calls presentism, Americans should thank God for them and honor WASP history.

This is not to cast shade on Black History Month. This is just to remind people that a melting pot of races and ethnicities made America great.

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On a personal note, after a 3-year run, our grandson is no longer the cutest baby in the world. His sister was born early this morning. But he’s still in the Top 2.