DE SANCTIS JOINS THE OSIA TEAM
by Bill Dal Cerro

The Order Sons of Italy in America, one of the nation’s oldest and largest 
Italian-American organizations, has hired its first-ever deputy executive 
director in the person of Dona De Sanctis. 

OSIA couldn’t have picked a better candidate for the position than De 
Sanctis, who bid farewell to the National Italian American Foundation in 
January 2002 to join the OSIA team. 

A fourth-generation Italian American, Dona (DOH-nah) grew up in Brooklyn, 
N.Y., the daughter of parents born and raised on Mulberry Street in New 
York’s famed Little Italy. She is also the granddaughter of nonni who 
immigrated to the United States as teenagers in 1880. Dona was always aware 
of her Italian roots, she says, but knew little about Italy until she studied 
the language in high school. 

“My interest in the language shaped the course of my studies and my life,” 
says De Sanctis. “I guess you could say that Italy became my magnificent 
obsession. I moved there and lived in Rome for eight years, and became as 
Italian as a girl from Brooklyn could possibly be.” 

After getting her M.A. in Italian at the University of Wisconsin, De Sanctis 
won a Fulbright Scholarship to Italy. When her scholarship ended, she stayed 
in Rome, working as a Vatican radio newscaster, and teaching English to the 
Italians and Italian to the Americans at the U.S. embassy. 

She returned to the United States in 1974, and took up the life of an 
Italophile in America, even teaching the language at Brooklyn College while 
earning a Ph.D. in comparative literature. 

After getting her doctorate, she moved to Washington, D.C., and worked as a 
reporter until she was hired at the NIAF in 1992. She revamped the NIAF News, 
taking it from an eight-page newsletter to a 24-page full-color publication. 
She also was the editor of Ambassador magazine and handled the NIAF’s 
anti-defamation campaigns, and major research projects.

De Sanctis is particularly proud of the work she put into “Italian Americans 
in U.S. History and Culture,” a collection of 20 fact sheets on 
Italian-American achievements in a number of fields that took more than three 
years to research and write.

“I was astounded at the depth and breadth of our contributions in so many 
fields: politics, labor, business, science, sports, education. Did you know 
that the first female commercial airline pilot was an Italian American?” she 
enthuses. “I urge everyone to download a copy from the NIAF Web site 
(www.niaf.org, under “Research and Reports) and memorize them!”

According to De Sanctis, education is both the problem and the solution to 
our current dilemma.

“There’s really nothing about Italian Americans in U.S. history or social 
studies books other than Al Capone or Lucky Luciano. For example, I never 
learned in school that people of Italian heritage signed the Declaration of 
Independence, fought in the Civil War, and founded industrial empires, or 
that they were lynched in the South, were often paid far less than white and 
black workers in the North, and were even interned during World War II. The 
injustice really got to me, so I joined with other Italian-American activists 
to get the word out.”

Being bicultural, De Sanctis is careful to differentiate between “Italian” 
and “Italian American,” though she says that both groups suffer from 
misrepresentation by the major media.

“The American news media often limit themselves to reporting on Italian 
government upheavals or Mafia trials,” she points out. “Rarely do you hear 
about Italy’s scientific and technological work, or the role it plays as a 
staunch U.S. military ally in the Mediterranean.

“The situation with Italian Americans is far worse,” she continues. “Italian 
Americans have seen their culture, religion and traditions hijacked by the 
entertainment and advertising industries. The solution to this problem is 
knowledge. We Italian Americans must learn our history as a people in this 
country. It isn’t just enough to complain. Every letter we write, every 
article we publish, every argument we enter into must be supported by cold, 
hard, indisputable facts based on historical evidence. We have to become 
ambassadors for our own culture.”

De Sanctis’ initial plans at OSIA are to work on Italian America magazine, 
which is the most widely read publication for people of Italian descent in 
the country. She also will direct the Sons of Italy’s Commission for Social 
Justice anti-defamation campaigns and its positive image program, which 
informs the media and the general public about Italian Americans and their 
contributions to the United States.

Long-range plans include working closely with other Italian-American 
organizations, scholars and activists to get more of our history in U.S. 
textbooks, and to promote more accurate portrayals of Italian Americans in 
movies, television shows and documentaries.

As one of a growing number of women involved in the anti-defamation movement, 
De Sanctis also sees a difference in how the genders approach the subject of 
media bias.

“Many of our male activists get very angry, and rightly so,” she says. 
“However, their indignation often leads to confrontation rather than 
negotiation. We don’t have a major influence in the press, Hollywood, Madison 
Avenue or the airwaves, so insulting those who do have influence is 
counterproductive. We have to convince them that our cause is just. I think 
women have something to offer here because we tend to be better at asking for 
help than most men. Think about it. Who stops to ask for directions?”

To learn more about OSIA and its programs, visit www.osia.org.

CORRECTION: In my recent profile of activist and author Richard Capozzola, I 
stated that Joe Columbo’s Civil Rights League of the early 1970s protested 
the filming of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather.” In fact, they only 
threatened the filmmakers with a boycott, which is what forced the film’s 
producers to the negotiating table. Although the league did get a major 
concession (the script dropped the use of the word “Mafia”), they also 
demanded, and got, minor roles in the film for many of the organization’s 
members! This sell-out enraged Capozzola, and is something that, alas, still 
goes on today.
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