Democrats love to pretend Columbus Day should be Indigenous Peoples Day because of “racism.” But actually, Columbus Day was instituted as a holiday to fight racial and ethnic prejudice!
The largest lynch mob on American soil was not targeting black Americans, as many moderns might expect. Instead, the New Orleans mob — which reportedly included future prominent politicians of the town and state — murdered eleven Italian-Americans.
In October 1890, New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was assassinated. There were quite a number of suspects, but the New Orleans City Council and the “Committee of Fifty” focused on trying to convict Italian-American suspects, since Hennessy — who had dealt with a Sicilian feud among many other crimes — supposedly whispered an Italian slur with his dying breaths. New Orleans, like New York, was a center for immigration to America (my own Irish ancestors came through that port), but the same Louisianans who had been racist against Africans were also racist against many non-Anglo Europeans.
Several of the Italian suspects in this case were tried and acquitted (Joseph Macheca, Antonio Bagnetto, Antonio Marchesi). Others had a mistrial (Pietro Monasterio, Emmanuele Polizzi, Antonio Scaffidi), while still others were never tried at all (Rocco Geraci, Charles Traina, Loreto Comitis, James Caruso, Frank Romero). Macheca was a (Democrat) politician, as was Romero. The others were laborers, peddlers, and craftsmen.
Thousands of New Orleans residents were infuriated that none of the Italian-Americans had been convicted. Assuming mafia influence or some other miscarriage of justice, the huge mob rushed to the jail, where one group broke in and seized the eleven men named above. History.com describes what happened:
Shots rang out—hundreds of them. Eleven men’s bodies were riddled with bullets and torn apart by the crowd.
Outside the jail, the larger mob cheered as the mutilated bodies were displayed. Some corpses were hanged; what remained of others were torn apart and plundered for souvenirs.
It triggered not just a local but a national and even an international crisis. Some Americans were horrified, but too many racists across the country applauded the lynch mob and conflated mafia criminals with all Italian immigrants. The Italian government, however, was so angry at the massacre and its aftermath that it broke off diplomatic relations with America and recalled its ambassador. There were rumors of war.
President Benjamin Harrison, a moderate Republican, was faced with a choice. He had to do something to quell ethnic prejudice, remind Americans that we are all descendants of immigrants, and calm relations with Italy. He hit upon a national holiday: Columbus Day.
The discovery that opened up the New World to colonization and ultimately led to the founding of America was, of course, the achievement of an Italian explorer. Christopher Columbus of Genoa convinced the Spanish monarchs to support his exploratory venture, which culminated in his landing in the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492. Irish monk St. Brendan and Christian Viking Leif Erikson might have landed in the Americas centuries earlier, but no permanent settlement left its mark on the Americas. That honor fell to Columbus. The Founders acknowledged their debt by sometimes referring to America as “Columbia” and naming our capital “Washington, District of Columbia.”
Related: Leif Erikson Day: Before Columbus, a Christian Viking
Harrison’s first Columbus Day in 1892 was marked with a huge parade in New York City and the unveiling of a Columbus statue. Unfortunately, however, the ethnic prejudice didn’t immediately die. So in 1934, after lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, Congress authorized the president to make Oct. 12 a permanent national holiday, Columbus Day. It was later altered to be always on a Monday.
There are many kinds of prejudice and hatred, and none of them are compatible with true American values. This Columbus Day, honor the visionary explorer and reject all artificial racial and ethnic divisions.
