In the late 1800s and early 1900s coal reigned supreme in what is now southeastern Oklahoma. As was the case in the northeastern United States, Italians and other immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were brought in as a form of inexpensive labor to work the mines. Italians had different customs, a different language, a unique appearance, and a lack of training in mining compared with the American, English, Irish, and Scottish miners that preceded them. This essay is an account of the discrimination experienced by Italians and people of Italian descent in the coal counties of southeastern Oklahoma from the late nineteenth century to the present day.