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Giovanni Ermenegildo Schiavo (1898-1983), scholar

The father of Italian American Studies. Giovanni Ermenegildo Schiavo (1898-1983) was an Italian American writer and researcher. Schiavo mostly focused his studies on Italian American organized crime and the mafia.

Giovanni Ermenegildo Schiavo was born in Castellamare Del Golfo, Trapani, Italy, May 28, 1898. In 1915 Giuseppina Schiavo decided to join her husband Salvatore, who was living in Baltimore, Maryland. Together with her son Giovanni and her daughter Domenica, they left Palermo and arrived at Baltimore on January 6, 1916. Another son Gaspare, had to remain in Italy to serve in the military during the First World War. After the war he also came to the United States.

Schiavo was educated at Regio Liceo Vittorio Emanuele, Palermo; Johns Hopkins, New York and Columbia Universities. In 1932 he completed his studies for the degree in International Relations and Law, Columbia University. In the same year he married Anne Mahon and they had two daughters: Giovanna and Eleanor Schiavo.

He served as a contributor to Encyclopedia Britannica, on the editorial staff of the the Baltimore Sun and the New York Herald Tribune, and as editor of Atlantic Magazine. Schiavo, however, is best known for his inchoation and pioneer research studies related to the early history of Italian Americans. With the founding of the Vigo Press (named after Francis Joseph Vigo, who explored the Northwest Territory) in New York City in 1934, Schiavo published the Italians in America Before the Civil War. Other titles include Italians In Chicago; Italian American History (two volumes); What Crime Statistics Show About the Italians; The Scientific Achievements of Leonardo Da Vinci, presented by the New York Museum of Science and Industry; Four Centuries of Italian American History; Phillip Mazzei, One of America's Founding Fathers; Antonio Meucci, Inventor of the Telephone; The Truth About the Mafia and Organized Crime in America; and The Italian American Who's Who, published annually from 1935-1967. Published in 1965, The Truth About the Mafia and Organized Crime in America, Schiavo demonstrated that crime was the domain of all ethnic groups. Moreover, during the last years of his life, he researched the mafia, but the book was never completed. Giovanni E. Schiavo died on March 4, 1983.