Solving The Columbus Day Problem
Driving a friend across town for errands this weekend, she pointed at the heightened police presence on the sidewalks with curiosity — was something happening or about to happen? I quipped: Perhaps they’re already on high alert for Columbus Day?!
After all, I’ve seen and photographed NYPD officers staked out in front of our neighborhood Columbus statue before (below in the summer 2020), and above is a shot from five years ago, when activists tagged the statue with paint reading “DON’T HONOR GENOCIDE” and “TAKE IT DOWN.” The activism had its perhaps desired effect and affect upon me, prompting me to ask questions, and not just the one of why Astoria even has a Christopher Columbus statue in the first place? I’ll get to that in a moment.
Today (Monday) is a federal holiday. In recent years, an alternative counterpoint to Columbus Day has emerged called Indigenous Peoples Day. President Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to proclaim it a holiday last year.
I wonder, though. Instead of asking us to choose sides, pitting Italian immigrants against Native Americans in a battle over history itself, perhaps we’d all be better off choosing something or someone we all can celebrate together. For me, the journey began by asking two simple questions:
Why did we start celebrating Columbus Day as a federal holiday in the United States?
And why Columbus specifically?
In the late 1800s after the Civil War, Italians began immigrating to the United States, and many wound up in the South, replacing slave labor. By 1890, two Italian families were sparring over business on the New Orleans waterfront, and the city’s police chief, David Hennessy, had begun rounding up and arresting criminals involved in this burgeoning “Mafia” war. When Hennessy was killed in a shootout, 19 Italian immigrants were indicted for his murder. After several acquittals and mistrials, a mob formed, and on March 14, 1891, the mob chased down and lynched 11 of the accused men. Italy recalled their U.S. ambassador in protest, and diplomatic relations between the two nations broke down. To ease war rumors and tensions, then-President Benjamin Harrison declared the first Columbus Day holiday in 1892, honoring the 400th anniversary of Columbus arriving with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria in “the Americas.” Harrison also paid reparations to the families of the 11 men lynched in New Orleans. That first Columbus Day holiday also saw the introduction of the Pledge of Allegiance that since became a daily ritual in schools across America.
But Columbus Day didn’t become an annual federal holiday until 1971!
What happened in between?
Columbus became the de facto icon for Italian-Americans. That statue in Queens came about from neighborhood immigrants raising money and lobbying the New York City’s WPA during the 1920s. The statue and park in Astoria were dedicated in 1941, but then World War II found the United States at war against Italy, and so the whole thing was hidden for a while.
Cut to 2022. Why do we even celebrate Columbus now?
I mean, we all know Columbus didn’t “discover” America in 1492, never set foot in the United States, and wasn’t an immigrant. The myth of Columbus Day was celebrated at first to comfort white settlers from Europe, later to appease Italians specifically. But part of that calculus in 1892 was pretty simple, really: Italian-American immigrants didn’t have a lot of options for symbolic heroes.
In 2022, they not only have options, but so do we.
And for all the posturing, partying and parading we do in America on similar half-truths for the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day or the Mexicans on Cinco de Mayo, we don’t actually have federal holidays for them. Which just makes it weirder to have a holiday just for the Italians. We did make a holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1986, although that faced more hostile opposition from conservatives than anyone put up against Columbus Day.
But if we’re going to stick with a holiday on the second Monday of October, we can do better now. So let’s do better!
What criteria should we use? Would you want to see statues of them all over the country? How’d you feel seeing their name on the calendar and in department store sales? How problematic are they? Are they already honored, recognized or celebrated appropriately in our nation somehow, somewhere? If they Americanized their Italian name, does that count as a strike against them? Are they too tied to a specific business or team, such that some parts of America might not ever want to celebrate them?
Here are some suggestions…
Martin Scorsese
We cannot name it for a living Italian American, because, just no. Sorry but you’ll just have to wait a bit longer for Scorsese Day.
Amerigo Vespucci
If you’re gonna keep it patriotic, then why not go with the guy for whom they renamed this place in the first place? Vespucci, born in Florence in March 9, 1451, joined an expedition in 1499 that left Spain and made it to what’s now Venezuela. A second trip from Portugal landed Vespucci in Brazil, resulting in the naming of Rio de Janiero on Jan. 1, 1502. Five years later, a German cartographer put Vespucci’s name on maps of this “New World,” which is how Amerigo begat America, and a generation later, everyone in Europe began calling the whole area the Americas.
Verdict? While Amerigo Day or America Day certainly fits our nationalistic traditions, I’m not entirely sure it’s less problematic than Columbus for all of the reasons.
Sacco and Vanzetti
Whereas the New Orleans lynchings of 1891 prompted the first holiday for Italian-Americans, nobody remembers the names of those victims. Most everyone learns in school at some point about Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Executed in 1927 for their purported crimes of murder during a bank robbery, Sacco and Vanzetti’s case attracted attention and protests around the world.
Verdict? As a way to remember the due process rights for immigrants, or even the need to recognize that justice sometimes falls short, this actually makes too much historical sense for our politicians to sensibly take it up.
Enrico Fermi
Fermi, born in Rome on Sept. 29, 1901, is a Nobel Prize winner with awards and elements named after him. He’s also considered the “architect of the atomic bomb.”
Verdict? So he’s got that going for him, and against him.
Harry Warren
Born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna in Brooklyn on Dec. 24, 1893, as one of 11 kids to Italian immigrants, his family changed their surname to Warren when he was still a kid. The first American songwriter to compose mostly for the movies, he won three Oscars out of 11 Academy Award nominations (“Lullably of Broadway,” “You’ll Never Know” and “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe”) and wrote the music for 42nd Street. Among his many hits: “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money),” “That's Amore,” “There Will Never Be Another You,” “The More I See You,” “At Last” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo.”
Verdict? A precursor for anyone who might’ve voted for Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Prima or Arturo Toscanini. Changing his name may have helped his career, but Happy Harry Warren Day just doesn’t have the ring to it that any of his legendary songs have.
Charles Atlas
Born Angelo Siciliano in Southern Italy on Oct. 30, 1892, the man, the myth and the legend of Charles Atlas always began with a story about a bully kicking sand in his face on the beach in Brooklyn. He legally changed his name in 1932 when a friend told him that his new muscleman physique made him resemble the Atlas statue atop a Coney Island hotel. His life story, and the marketing of it, gave birth to modern physical fitness regimens in America.
Verdict? Sounds very American macho, which again, serves as a vote for and against it.
Yogi Berra
Born Lorenzo Pietro Berra in the Italian section of St. Louis on May 12, 1945, Yogi was a war hero before he ever played a game for the New York Yankees — he earned a Purple Heart serving with the U.S. Navy in World War II, including participating in the D-Day landings at Normandy. He debuted with the Yanks in 1946, and won 10 World Series rings, three AL MVP awards, and became perhaps equally famous for giving quotes such as “It ain’t over til it’s over” “It's déjà vu all over again” and “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
Verdict? He already has a wonderful Hanna-Barbera cartoon character named for him in Yogi Bear. But hey, boo boos, wouldn’t you love celebrating Happy Yogi Berra Day in October along with the end of the baseball season? Maybe not if you hate the Yankees. But maybe so, anyhow?!
Rocky
Whether you’re talking about real-life undefeated boxing champion Rocky Marciano or the fictional film champ conjured up by Sylvester Stallone, everyone loves Rocky, right? The movie statue created for Rocky III remains a tourist attraction in Philadelphia, even though it’s not at the top of the steps, but down below the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Verdict? You don’t need to have any Italian heritage to want to run up those steps and jump up with your hands in the air, victorious like the Italian Stallion. Do I see the United States commemorating a movie character into a holiday? Stranger things have happened. But no. Not even if they somehow incorporated “The Rock” into it.
Caesar Salad Day
Born Cesare Cardini in Italy on Feb. 24, 1896, he ran restaurants in California and Mexico before creating the salad in his name in 1924 when a rush of customers over the Fourth of July holiday forced the chef/owner to make do with what he still had in the kitchen in Tijuana. What an American success story, right?
Verdict? National Pizza Day makes more sense, doesn’t it? But that’s in February, and anyhow, if we start celebrating Pizza as a holiday, that’s a dangerous precedent for all of the other culinary delights and cuisines, to be certain.
Zamboni
Frank Zamboni (1901-1988) is the child of Italian immigrants who’s the most iconic innovator this side of Italian ice! Along with a brother and a cousin, the Zambonis opened an ice rink in Southern California in 1940 that they could maintain thanks to Frank’s inventions that kept the ice clean. His biggest resurfacing machine debuted in 1949, and quickly became a hit across the National Hockey League. We all know and love Zambonis enough to stay in our seats during intermission even now.
Verdict? I love this, also because of the timing. October signifies not only the changing of seasonal weather, but also specifically ties to the start of the NHL season! But do enough people love hockey?
Mother Cabrini
Born Maria Francesca Cabrini in Lombardy on July 15, 1850, the youngest of 13 children to farmers, she became a nun, and wound up in America based on the pope’s urging in 1887. Cabrini thought she was needed in China. The Pope said otherwise: “Not to the East, but to the West.” She landed in New York, and eventually founded 67 missionary institutions helping the sick and poor across America, long before the federal government got into the business of helping our neediest citizens. Cabrini became a U.S. citizen herself in 1909, and died in 1917. She became the first American canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 1946.
Verdict? Though I’m not a Catholic (surprise?), honoring Cabrini feels like perhaps the best choice of all, because doing so not only would recognize and celebrate selflessness and charity, but also give us a federal holiday with a woman front and center. It’s about time.
What do you think, though? Would you want to lobby Congress or your local government to recognize any of these great Italian contributors to American society and world culture, in place of ol’ Columbus? Or do you have someone even better in mind? Either way, let’s get the conversation started!
