Comprehensive Timeline

Early Italian American Success

1904

Bank of Italy founded by A.P. Giannini in San Francisco's Jackson Square eighborhood

1906

Giannini was the first to reopen his bank after the San Francisco earthquake

1909

Giannini begins to buy other banks in California and turn them into branches of Bank of Italy

1920s 

Benito Mussolini gains popularity with Italian Americans and becomes Il Duce, the leader, of Italy.

1921 - Giannini opens a bank for women staffed entirely by women “Giannini’s Women’s Bank” (Entire floor in Bank of Americas HQ exclusive to women)

1922 - October 28th

Mussolini seizes power of Italy and becomes the leader, installing his Fascist ideals. The world takes notice and begins to see Italy is a world power.

1923 - January 6th

A.P. Giannini, the founder of Bank of Italy, endorses Mussolini in The San Francisco Chronicle.

1928 - Bank of Italy and Bank of America (Los Angeles)merge, Giannini named chairman

1930s

1930

The Bank of Italy was renamed the Bank of America, and would soon become the largest banking institution in the world

1931

Republican Angelo Rossi appointed to serve as Mayor of San Francisco, Later elected for a full term at the end of 1931, known for his strong anti-communist stance

1935 

Mussolini invades Ethopia 

1936 

Mussolini forms an alliance with Nazi Germany

1938 

Mussolini decrees racial law against Jews in Italy.

1940s

1941 - December 11th

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Mussolini declares war on America.

1942 - February 19th

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes military intervention in relocating Japanese Americans on the West Coast through executive order 9066. Italians and Germans are also included in this as a part of previous proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527.

1942 - October 12

Attorney General Francis Biddle declares that Italian Americans are no longer enemies of the state. FDR needed the support of Italian Americans.