Without Photo Exhibits/Collections and Written, Audio & Video Reminisces such as these, REAL Italian American History, will be overwhelmed by REEL history.
NIAF contributed to this Exhibit.

If only each Italian American community had a Pietrina Di Piazza!

Alameda Times Star
By Olvia Angulo
Staff Writer
Thursday, August 26, 2004

PIETRINA Di Piazza, 75, says she still remembers her parents' working in the East Bay -- her mother as a seamstress and her father as a bakery owner in Oakland.

That's why she helped organize "Con Le Nostre Mani (With Our Hands): Italian Americans at Work in the Bay Area," a show that documents East Bay workers with historical photographs. The exhibit is at the Hayward Area Historical Society Museum through Sept. 11.

"Very few people are aware that Italian immigrants settled in the East Bay and don't realize how hard Italian Americans work," says Di Piazza of Hayward. "We wanted to catalog their work with photographs of their labor from the 1860s to the 1960s."

Piazza says she contacted friends and family to collect photos labeled with descriptions of their experience as working immigrants.

"We feel there's still a big gap in compiling this history because years ago, people didn't take photographs," she says. "We tend to forget how hard our fathers worked, and we're very proud (of them)."

Jim DeMersman, executive director of the Hayward Area Historical Society Museum, says he's proud to host the exhibit. "We tell the stories of people that helped make the Bay Area what it is," he says.

The exhibit was produced by the Italian American Heritage Committee and sponsored through a grant from the National Italian American Foundation, the Italian American Federation of the East Bay and many individual donors, according to a statement released by the Historical Society.

"Con Le Nostre Mani" is on view from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at the museum, 22701 Main St., Hayward. It closes Sept. 11. Admission is $1 for adults and 50 cents for children. For more information, call (510) 581-0223 or go to www.haywardareahistory.org

Alameda Times-Star Online - Bay Area Living
http://www.timesstar.com/Stories/
0,1413,125~1549~2360064,00.html