Thank you Donny, Genevieve and Grace for your most interesting replies.
I'm always amazed how "out of the loop" I was growing up in Brownsville.
I was not aware of any unwelcoming attitudes towards the Italian community on the part of the Presentation parishioners. We had no problems of the sort when we moved to the Bushwick section and attended Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. They had Italian, Irish, German, Polish and a few Blacks attending Mass and School. Maybe I was just naive, but we all got along quite well. By that time I was in High School. As teenagers, almost all of us got along very well. The only point of contention that I remember was our allegiance to the Dodgers, Giants or Yankees. We had a mixed bunch in that respect.
Thanks again everyone.
Joe Di Mento, OLL, Jan. 46
I lived on Powell St on the block of the old church but I didn't know the original one was on Wyona and Liberty. When I met my husband his grandmother told me that she was married in OLL but I wondered if this was possible. They came here in the late 1800's from Sicily and married at he age of 15 and 16. They lived on Jerome and Glenmore and I wondered how they could have gotten married at OLL which without cars was quite some distance back then. There had to be a closer church. I thought I hadn't heard correctly with the language difference but now Wyona and Liberty explains a lot. Thanks