Giovanni Meloni, l’amico di Gramsci, sarto di Einstein a New York

Abstract

The essay reconstructs the activities of anti-fasci st Giovanni Meloni (born 1898), a tailor from the mining town of Guspini, through the study of his letters sent to his nephew Italo Pisano in Sardinia. When he was not yet sixteen he was appointed secretary of the local Young Socialists' club, then he joined the Communist Party and met Antonio Gramsci. In the twenties he emigrated to the USA, where he opened a tailor shop in New York that soon became a meeting point for actors and politicians such as Franklin Roosevelt Jr. and Fiorello La Guardia, mayor of the Big Apple. Among his most renowned customers were Enrico Fermi, Arturo Toscanini, and the scientist Albert Einstein, for whom the artisan of Guspini tailored his funeral suit. In the 'sixties, Meloni moved to the city of Saint Petersburg, Florida, where he became a local administrator holding the position of senior assessor and deputy mayor