Joanne Mendes
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Okay. Well, my name is Joanne Mendes and I am a native of the South Coast. I was born in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and today I would like to speak about my Italian side, which was my mother's side of the family.
So I'd like to talk about my maternal grandparents and the Italians that immigrated here in the city, in the early 1900s. Not a lot gets discussed about them in the diversity that we have as New Bedford as this wonderful cultural rich city. We always talk about the Portuguese, the Izhorians, the Cape Verdeans. They talk about the mill workers being French, Polish, Irish. The Italians seemed to get lost. I think partly because there were only about 1% of them in the whole city but in my world it seemed like they were all over the place.
