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"You Wanna Play Rough?": The Unlikely Partnership Of The Italian Mafia And Butch Lesbians In Greenwich Village, 1945-1968, Alison Jean Helget

Master's Theses

During economic and political upheaval in Europe beginning in the late-1910s and dramatically progressing throughout the 1920s, young Italian men emigrated to the United States to earn decent salaries to bring back to their families across the ocean. However, some single men embraced the opportunities of New York City and its diversified neighborhoods. Since xenophobic sanctions forced disenfranchised minorities into confined spaces and immigrants tended to find comfort settling in neighborhoods with well-established ethnic enclaves, this pushed Italian immigrants into the same space as butch lesbians in a counterculture place referred to as Greenwich Village on the west side of …