1492
The Complex History of Columbus Day in the U.S.
By Stephanie Pierotti
On the evening of October 15th 1890, David Hennessy, an Irish Catholic Police Chief in New Orleans, was shot on his way home. Hennessy survived until the following day, but before he died he reportedly claimed he had been shot by Italian immigrants. Predictably mass arrests of Italians followed, and while many were ultimately released for lack of evidence, nineteen men were held and charged with murder or as accessories. There had been an ongoing feud between the Provenzano and Mantranga families which had previously resulted in arrests. Opinions differed on which of the two families were responsible for Hennessy’s murder - the consensus was Italians were responsible regardless of the lack of evidence. The only evidence beyond Hennessey’s initial claim, was the use of a type of sawed-off shotgun that was popular among Italian criminals. Mayor Joseph Shakespeare gave a speech a few days later claiming that Hennessey had been “the victim of Sicilian vengeance” and pushed locals to investigate and inform on the Italian community. Both the local government and newspapers were pushing locals to take matters into their own hands. On the 17th of October, Thomas Duffy, a newspaper salesman, walked into the prison where the suspects were held and shot Antonio Scaffidi in the neck, which he survived.
A Trial for nine of the men held in custody started in the middle of February the following year, but with a lack of witnesses or evidence it resulted in six not guilty verdicts and three mistrials. Despite the outcome, all nine men were returned to jail, where the additional ten men were still being held. The jurors faced a public backlash, and by that evening a crowd of thousands had gathered at the prison led by attorney William Parkerson, who demanded the crowd “set aside the verdict of that infamous jury.” Eleven of the men held were lynched, while the remaining eight survived by hiding after the prison warden released them from their cells. Emmanuele Polizzi and Antonio Bagnetto were hanged in the street and shot repeatedly, and Scaffidi, who survived his previous assassination attempt, was also killed. The response in the media was largely in support of the mob, and ultimately there were no indictments for their actions. The eight survivors had their charges dismissed. Following this event, there were at least eight more notable lynching of Italians in Louisiana in the 1890s.
Mob justice was not at all unusual at this time, and the event may have simply faded away into the morass of hate crimes in the South, but three of the men were not U.S. citizens and therefore could still be considered Italian subjects. Italian consul Pasquale Corte had been in New Orleans and had asked both the Governor and the Mayor to take action to prevent the violence, only to be ignored. In May of 1891, the Italian government demanded that President Benjamin Harrison pay restitution to the dead men’s families and ensure that the mob be brought to justice. When no action was taken against the mob, Italy recalled their Ambassador Saverio Fava, which the US did in kind. The diplomatic impasse escalated to talk of war, and demands for justice went unanswered. The following year President Harrison would agree to pay benefits to the victim’s families to ease tensions with Italy, although congress would intervene and allow for only a small portion of the funds to be paid out. More notably, President Harrison declared Columbus Day to be a nationwide celebration in 1892, which commemorated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the “New World” as an olive branch to the Italian American community.
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Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer working for the kingdom of Spain. In 1492 he made his first of four voyages to the Americas. This was the beginning of the systematic European colonization of the New World that would last into the twentieth century. The colonies of Columbus in the Caribbean were brutal, and those that followed in Central and South America would ultimately lead to extreme suffering and countless deaths across two continents. Columbus himself was imprisoned by the Spanish government for his colonial practices, although this was mostly due to his treatment of Spanish citizens and assets of the crown. Across his four voyages, Columbus never set foot in the continental United States, and only briefly visited South America, but his arrival was the first salvo in the subjugation of the “new world”.
Columbus’ colony, La Isabela was an abject failure, unable to secure the precious metals Spain sought or maintain crops to sustain the endeavor. He almost immediately was in conflict with the Island Natives, which he referred to as Indians, as he was never entirely dissuaded of the notion that he had in fact reached the far east. The center of his colonial empire was the island of Hispaniola, first in what is now Haiti, and then later on, the other side of the island which is now the Dominican Republic. Batholomew Columbus, Christopher’s younger brother, founded Ciudad Colonial, the first permanent European settlement in the Americas which is still part of the Dominican capital Santo Domingo. It was here that Catholicism first took root in the Americas, a deliberate process by the Catholic church aimed to expand their power through accumulation of wealth and sheer numbers of converts during a period of intense religious conquest across the globe. Construction of the first Catholic monastery and the first cathedral began within a few years after the founding of Ciudad Colonial. The Spanish crown would go on to conquer most of what is now known as Central and South America, and in the process spread the Catholic faith across their empire. To this day Catholicism is the dominant religion across this region. Columbus himself cited the conversion of non-believers as a central tenant of his exploits, and this part of his mythology, the first Catholic in the new world, has shaped much of the narrative around his life. Today Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, South America has more Catholics than any other continent, and the Americas combined account for almost half of Catholics worldwide.
Across the Americas there are hundreds of monuments, mostly statues, that commemorate Columbus and his arrival to the new world in 1492. In addition, there are countless institutions, cities and states that all bear his name. When New Granada declared independence from Spain, it became Colombia. Despite the brutal colonial history of Hispaniola, a massive mausoleum called the Columbus Lighthouse was built in 1992 for the 500th anniversary of his first voyage to the new world, while across the island in Haiti, the Columbus Statue in Port-au-Prince was removed five years earlier. In North America the mythology of Columbus was initially a convenient way to establish a historical narrative that was distinctly not English. John Cabot is credited for discovering continental North America for the British crown, even though he was actually an Italian whose real name was Giovanni Caboto. The Americas themselves are named for another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci.
After the lynching in 1890, Columbus became a greater part of the Italian American narrative, and nearly all of the monuments in the United States were erected after this. In 1968, Italian American politicians, with support from the Catholic Church and Catholic organizations like the Knights of Columbus, successfully campaigned to enshrine Columbus Day as an official national holiday and became a symbol of Italian prominence in American culture.
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Immigration is also tied into the mythology around Columbus. His arrival in the Americas triggered an avalanche of immigration. Starting with Spaniards and spreading to almost all Europeans, and eventually including the forced immigration of Africans as slave labor, and later still pacific immigration from Asia. In the 1890’s immigration was as much of a hot button issue as it is today, with an estimated 600,000 Italians immigrants already in the United States, in addition to others from across Europe. Sicilians were especially targeted with anti-immigration prejudice - ten of the eleven men lynched in 1891 were Sicilians, the eleventh being a New Orleans native of Sicilian descent. The murder of Hennessy became a rallying call for anti-immigration politicians, with various immigration measures proposed and favorable treatment for ‘whiter’ immigrants from more desirable locales. The term ‘mafia’ entered the lexicon in the United States, and established the long lasting associations between Sicilians and crime.
It was at this time that President Harrison introduced the Pledge of Allegiance. The original pledge was written by Francis Bellamy, and was introduced to schools as part of the Columbus Day celebration in 1892. In the following years the ‘melting pot’ narrative that focused on Americanization and assimilation of immigrants emerged. Immigration has been essential to the development of the United States, and yet throughout that history there has always been aggressive pushback against those who arrive from foreign shores, while simultaneously appropriating parts of those cultures. Sicilians are still associated with the mafia, and as the political narrative around organized crime moved on to other targets, the mafia shifted from threat to entertainment, and became a staple of pop culture. The television series ‘ The Sopranos’, airing in the late 1990s, followed the lives of a mafia family in New Jersey. The season four episode ‘Christopher’ directly addresses different viewpoints on Columbus in american culture. An account of the Lynchings in 1891 became a successful book written by Richard Gambino, which was the basis for the movie ‘Vendetta’ released in 1990.
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In the wake of the Murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, questions around celebrations, memorials and statues have come into acute focus. Most of the statues or memorials for Columbus were erected around centennial anniversaries of his first voyage in 1492. Many of these have been removed over the years mostly for political reasons, sometimes replaced by native or local heros. Columbus Day celebrations have been muted with a growing movement to replace the holiday with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In South America Dia de la Raza is the proxy for Columbus Day, and these celebrations have evolved away from Columbus and Spanish conquest to reflect national or native pride. This trend will most likely continue as long as it remains useful in the current social and political climate, but as times change different aspects of Columbus will be emphasized or dismantled as it is convenient for those causes. Furthermore, it’s doubtful that the abolition of Columbus Day or other similar celebrations will have much impact on any of the underlying issues throughout the Americas.
The appropriation, revision and weaponization of history is not unique to events surrounding the life of Christopher Columbus. History in and of itself is written with bias, if not outright agenda from the very outset. Columbus didn’t directly have anything to do with Sicillians being murdered in New Orleans, but for politically convenient purposes he was inexorably tied to it. In the present day we need to be cognisant that the centres of power across the political spectrum are continuing this legacy of weaponizing history to manipulate citizens. All media is propaganda, and this includes history. It is important to question who is providing the information and why they are doing it. Social media is the most glaring and prescient example of this, as it has been weaponized by corporations and governments to manipulate the populace. It is incumbent on the individual to push back - since humans started communicating, we’ve used information to control people. The Catholic Church controlled literacy for hundreds of years in western Europe, severely restricting the movement of ideas until the printing press started a revolution in communication.
Broadly speaking, most if not all of these monuments should come down. They were erected under false pretenses to service political agendas, and clearly ignore his systemic oppression of the Caribbean. We should be careful not to lose sight of the fact that tearing things down also serves political agendas, and we must be diligent to be aware of who is being served. Most importantly we must accept that removing the symbols of racism and tyranny alone will not change the entrenched systems of power that built them in the first place. The statues that have already come down, the products that have been renamed, and the celebrations that have been canceled have done little to change the conditions that continue to plague immigrants and minority groups in this country. The institutions of power are well practiced at rebranding themselves and their causes to fit whatever narrative will allow them to pursue their goals. Attempting to challenge the establishment in this way is an overwhelming proposition. Not only will the resistance be fierce, but success will require concerted and sustained pressure for years to come. A statue can be torn down in a day, but pulling down the system that built it will take a lifetime.