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Bringing Religion into Working-Class History

Parish, Public, and Politics in Providence, 1890-1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Evelyn Savidge Sterne
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Extract

In August 1927, the Virgin Mary made a surprise appearance in Providence, Rhode Island. Her image mysteriously hovered on the wall of a building on Federal Hill, the city’s central Italian American neighborhood. Streets were filled and businesses disrupted as crowds assembled to regard the phenomenon. When the Narragansett Electric Company removed the bulb from a nearby street lamp, the image disappeared, but thousands of believers continued to assemble nonetheless.The Providence Journal finally sent a reporter to Federal Hill to get to the bottom of the mystery. Several onlookers told the reporter that Mary had appeared in Providence because God was unhappy about the impending execution of Italian radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (Providence Journal [PJ] 10 August 1927).

Type
Special Issue: The Working Classes and Urban Public Space
Information
Social Science History , Volume 24 , Issue 1: Special Issue: The Working Classes and Urban Public Space , spring 2000 , pp. 149 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2000 

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