The man in the second photo doesn't look Caucasian, or at least not fully.

Rome has been a cosmopolitan city for ages so it's no surprises to find a wide variety of people living there.

Have you searched records for persons from your town (including non-relatives) to see if there are enclaves of particular races, ethnicities, religions, etc. which might explain darker skin pigment?

You can get back before 1820 using church records (before 1820) and civil allegati (after 1820).

Maybe the new dark-skinned man is a distant relative so you don't share enough DNA for race to show in you, or maybe his race is from his parent whose not related to you by blood?

Looks to me like the dark skin comes more from race than from the sun. Especially seen in the second photo. Like from the Horn of Africa. Italy's wars with Ethiopia date back to 1887. And, of course, there was Libya or Italian North Africa. There were mixed-race children born during/after WWII, perh...

I was reminded of Campy who had an Italian father and black mother. Here he is younger and older.
What do you think?

Is it the same man in all three photos? Have you tried the photo matching software? Have you tried colorizing the photos?

So, this isn't your father's side of the family?

Don't you already know your mother has Italian ancestry?

I'm not suggesting your ancestor was fair-skinned, I'm just wondering how his complexion was perceived in Italy.

It's all relative, what's "dark" complexion to an American clerk completing a passport application may appear "natural" to an Italian clerk completing a passport application. That's why I wanted the comparison. I don't doubt he had dark skin from our American perspective but it'd...

I meant his Italian passport.

You should check his passport for his "colorito", probably the most accurate. At least among Sicilians on passenger lists arriving in NY "white" wasn't a commonly recorded classification for "complexion". I'm sure the terms used varied widely by ship, trip, and who was ...

I've noted that it's rare to find skin complexion recorded as "olive" on old Italian passports and ship manifests, presumably completed by native Italians. I guess olive skin was so common among Italians that it was just considered natural. My grandfather is recorded as bruno on his passpo...

What about Signor Abbandando in GF Part II? The grocer who lets Vito go (the father, not the son). The son Genco appears more stereotype olivey to me. Could the father be considered more brownish than olive-skinned? One reason I ask is that his complexion reminds me of my grandfather's. The lightnin...

In my case, my father, being a second-and-a-half generation American, might have wanted to down-play his ethnicity a bit in order to melt into the pot. He and several 1st cousins married non-Italians including red-heads and Protestants. By contrast, I don't believe anyone in my grandfather's generat...