catspaw, mmario, and all other Italians reading this thread, my dad said that when he came to this country (around 1921, I think), he and the other Neapolitan boys would address each other as "O guappo," pronounced "Oh WOP-oh". It's a Neapolitan expression meaning neat, cool, you're looking good. It's still used to some extent. It was a common greeting, "Eh, guappo!" that they would call to each other. But the American kids picked up on it and called them wops so they stopped doing it.

I'm convinced this is a likely origin for the expression "wop." (If you have information to the contrary, please don't try to confuse me with facts. :-)) I would imagine the same scenario taking place in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and other heavy centers of italian immigration.

My mom (from Georgia) said when she married my dad, one of her mother's friends stopped speaking to her because she had married an Italian. I later met a man who said his sister was cut by many of her friends when she married an Italian. It was considered an interracial marriage by many people in those days.

My dad was twelve when he came here, mmario, and he spoke no English so they put him in kindergarten, where he was "surrounded by a bunch of little five year old kids who were so dumb they couldn't even speak Italian."