The origins of Columbus Day — commemorating Italian explorer Christopher Columbus — stem from efforts to combat racism against Italian immigrants, who endured everything from racial epithets to lynch mobs when they first arrived to the United States. Today, in the era of wokeness, Italian Americans face a new type of mob, one that seeks to ban the federal holiday celebrating Italian heritage.
Although the first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the United States was in 1792, the holiday came to national prominence over a century later, when President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation on October 12, 1892, encouraging Americans to mark the day in honor of the Italian explorer.
Although Harrison’s proclamation was made on the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to the New World, his aim in recognizing the holiday in 1892 had less to do with honoring the Italian explorer and more to do with encouraging Americans to be more accepting of Italian immigrants. That’s because the 1892 proclamation was made in the wake of one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history — the mass lynching of Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891 that claimed the lives of eleven Italian immigrants.
The violence in New Orleans was years in the making. Hatred against the Italian newcomers was openly espoused by the newspapers of the day. For example, in 1882 the New York Times ran an editorial with the headline, “Our Future Citizens,” in which the Times’ editorial board stated, “There has never been since New York was founded so low and ignorant a class among the immigrants who poured in here as the Southern Italians who have been crowding our docks during the past year.”
The Times editors went on to express their disgust that “utterly unfit — ragged, filthy, and verminous” Italian immigrant children would “be placed in the public primary schools among the decent children of American mechanics.”
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