Twelve years ago, I began researching a family murder that happened in Southern Italy in the 19th century. It took a decade to find the details of the crime, but the facts I uncovered about the daily life of my ancestors and the racism they faced — even from their own countrymen — were more shocking than the killing. In today’s climate of refugee bans and xenophobia, the facts have taken on a new urgency and are even more disturbing to me, as they should be to anyone whose family traces its roots to Southern Italy.

Women like my great-great grandmother Vita Gallitelli came to America for more than simply a better job. Subject to the whims of their padroni — the men who owned the feudal land upon which they toiled — Italian women were commonly the victims of institutionalized, systematic rape. There was a practice known as “prima notte” that allowed the landowner to sleep with the virgin bride of his worker, which extended into the 20th century.

The husbands couldn’t protest, since they would be barred from working the farm and their families left to starve. As it was, they were barely staying alive. In the 1800s, half the children born in Basilicata — the instep of Italy’s boot — died before age 5. It’s the reason Italian-American families hold big bashes for their 1-year-olds even today.

The itinerant workers were considered subhuman and made 40 cents a day if they were chosen by the overseer, doing backbreaking work on land that was not theirs, walking several hours back and forth to the farm each day. They were expected to offer the padrone a “tribute” to thank him for the work — crops, or if they had it, meat they butchered themselves. This was the basis for the shape-up on the American docks on which many of my relatives toiled when they came to this country and the kickbacks they were expected to give to the union bosses and even the mayor.