fgazette.com Community news site for Union Parish Louisiana
Did you celebrate Columbus Day last week? ( Ooops, it’s now Indigenous Peoples Day.) That’s right. We changed the name, and now celebrate those Indian tribes Columbus encountered on his discovery of the Americas, a number of which were cannibals. So let’s give a one hand clap for all those indigenous groups that ate, raped and massacred numerous explorers coming to the new world.
OK, OK, Columbus was a brutal voyager. But all sides were pretty much so back in that day. Actually, Columbus himself was a fairly unimportant character as to why there is a national day named for him to begin with. And would you believe that like so many other major events that affected the development of America, the idea of Columbus Day all began in Louisiana.
Columbus Day becoming a national holiday was essentially an accident. Here’s what actually happened. After the Civil War (that by the way was kicked off at Fort Sumter by Louisiana Brig. Gen. P.G.T Beauregard’ and his Confederate forces), there was widespread immigration into the United States. Large numbers of Italians flocked to New Orleans, the cosmopolitan city of the south. These new immigrants worked for low wages and kept to themselves along with maintaining the Italian language, strong family ties, and a resilient Catholic faith. They were resented by many New Orleanians already living there.
With all these new immigrants from a number of countries, crime took a strong increase. We’ve all seen “The Godfather.” (If you haven’t, you probably ought to quit reading this as you won’t understand.). The “Mafioso” culture of the Italians grew dramatically for their own protection. This didn’t sit well with all the other locals.
In his recent book “Vendetta,” Richard Gambino describes the situation this way.
“Hatred for Italian immigrants practically became official city policy as the mayor said on the record to reporters, “Italians in New Orleans lacked honor, truth, pride, religion, or any other quality that goes to make a good citizen.” These immigrants from Italy took the blunt of widespread killings as Italians were lynched in the streets and hung on lamp posts.
Tragically, half of the country shared this sentiment coming out of the Crescent City. The Washington Post described the lynching as “the peoples justice, swift and sure, visited upon those whom juries in New Orleans had neglected to punish.” Tensions grew between the U.S and Italy. Some in Washington even talked of war between the two countries.
Thank goodness for President Benjamin Harrison, who most of us have never even heard of. He was outraged as to what was happening in New Orleans and put together a federal fund for those families of Italian victims who were lynched. His efforts were not popular in Congress and there was even an attempt to censure President Harrison over what he had done.
Harrison then noticed that the 400th anniversary of the Columbus landing in the New World would take place on October 21, 1892. So he argued this would be a good beginning point for healing. He issued a proclamation that declared this date “A general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people, so far is possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.”
So it was New Orleans, not Columbus that was the emphasis to have this national holiday. A way to honor Italians after the terrible violence that took place to so many of its citizens in the Crescent city. The name of Columbus was almost a fluke. It could have been any significant Italian. (Humm! Let’s see. Leonardo De Vinci, Michael Angelo, Frank Sinatra, Pavarotti How about even Tony Bennett day?)
There are more than 6000 locations named for Columbus throughout the U.S., including Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, Georgia, Columbus, Illinois, and Columbus, Arkansas to name a few. We also have the District of Columbia as our nation’s capital, the Columbia river, British Columbia and Columbus Circle in Manhattan. So do we now change all these thousands of names?
We have torn down monuments, wiped clean certain history books and now we are ignoring historical events by suppression. And before we consider more the wiping of our history clean, it might be a good idea to see just what the real story is behind the historical event.
Oh, and by the way, my personal choice is Sophia Loren Day.
Peace and Justice
Jim Brown
