Biography
Filippo Perrone was born 1881 in Agrigento (Sicily), Italy. Worked as a laborer. Immigrated to the United States in 1901.
Lived in Tampa, New York, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Closely associated with Luigi Galleani’s newspaper Cronaca Sovversiva, he joined a group of Italian anarchists who in 1911 participated with the Partido Liberal Mexicano in Tijuana during the opening phase of the Mexican Revolution, but he soon became disillusioned and returned to the United States, where he openly criticized both the PLM and the revolution. On September 25, 1911 he was arrested in San Francisco after he “spoke disparagingly about the American flag, condemned law and order, denounced all forms of government and ended with a tirade against the Pope”; the case sparked a successful free speech fight supported by anarchists and IWW members, and charges were dropped. Around 1922 he was arrested again in Seattle and deported on August 8, 1922.
In 1923 he was arrested in Ventimiglia while attempting clandestine emigration. The following year he illegally emigrated to France and then to the United States under the alias Vincenzo Lentini, and remained active in the Italian-American anarchist movement. After World War II he was deported again and died shortly thereafter in Sicily.
Adapted from Kenyon Zimmer, Red Scare Deportees (kenyonzimmer.com), compiled from INS deportation case files.
