Артуро Джованнитти: Итальян-американдық профсоюз жетекшісі, социалист және ақын

Italian American union leader, socialist political activist and poet

Arturo M. Giovannitti (; 1884–1959) was an Italian American union leader, socialist political activist, and poet. He is best remembered as one of the principal organizers of the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and as a defendant in a celebrated trial caused by that event.

Arturo Giovannitti was born January 7, 1884, in Ripabottoni in what is now the Province of Campobasso, Italy, at the time part of the Abruzzi but now part of Molise. He immigrated to Canada in 1900 and, after working in a coal mine and railroad crew, began preaching in a Presbyterian mission. He soon came to the United States, where he studied at Union Theological Seminary. Although he did not graduate, he ran rescue missions for Italians in Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. He also began writing for the weekly newspaper of the Italian Socialist Federation. In 1911, he became the newspaper's editor.

In the wake of the trial, Giovannitti published his first book of poems, Arrows in the Gale, in 1914. In an introduction to the book, Helen Keller wrote: "Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt against the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance which too many of us accept." But Giovannitti, following ten months in prison, avoided involvement in volatile strikes. Instead, he devoted himself to poetry, editing radical journals and protesting World War I, which claimed two of his brothers. In 1916, he participated in Percy MacKaye's production of Caliban by the Yellow Sands, translating it into Italian. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, he appeared at various workers' rallies, charming crowds with his Vandyke beard and flowery Italian and English.

In 1950, Giovannitti was stricken by paralysis in both legs. He remained bedridden until his death in the Bronx, in 1959. Giovannitti's papers, including a typescript play called The Alpha and the Omega (In Memory of a very Rich Holy Man), are housed at the University of Minnesota.