The Forgotten Origins of Columbus Day

Contemporary controversy over Columbus Day tends to focus on Christopher Columbus himself, and in particular on the treatment of Native Americans that followed European colonization. Somewhat lost in the controversy is why Columbus Day became an important American holiday in the first place: in significant part, it was a response to the severe discrimination faced by Italian immigrants.

The relevant history begins with large-scale immigration of Italians to the United States in the late nineteenth century. Italians, especially Sicilians and other southern Italians, were widely viewed as culturally and otherwise inferior, prone to criminality, and incapable of assimilating into American society.

The most infamous manifestation of anti-Italian hostility occurred in New Orleans in 1891. After Police Chief David Hennessy was murdered, a group of Italians was prosecuted for the crime. The trial failed to produce the expected convictions. On March 14, 1891, a mob broke into the jail and killed eleven of the Italian defendants and prisoners. Some had been acquitted and others had not yet been tried. The Italian consul described them at the time as “defenseless Italian prisoners.”

The lynching caused a major diplomatic crisis. Italy withdrew its minister from Washington, and in April 1892 the Harrison administration paid 125,000 francs to Italy for distribution to the victims’ families. Secretary of State James Blaine expressed the hope that this would end the dispute and restore friendly relations between the two countries.

Six months later, on the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed a nationwide Columbus Day observance.

Harrison did not invent the idea of celebrating Columbus. Americans had commemorated Columbus long before the 1890s, and the four-hundredth anniversary would have been a major event regardless of the controversy over Italian immigration. So it would be too strong to say that the New Orleans lynching caused Columbus Day.

But the connection between the rise of Columbus Day and the status of Italian Americans is nevertheless important. Columbus provided Italian immigrants with a particularly useful American hero. At a time when Italians were commonly portrayed as undesirable foreigners who could never become real Americans, Italian Americans could point out that an Italian stood at the traditional beginning of the American story.

Italian-American organizations accordingly made Columbus celebrations a major vehicle for ethnic pride and assimilation. In New York, Italian Americans raised the money for the Columbus monument at Columbus Circle, dedicated in October 1892. Columbus Day parades combined Italian ethnic pride with conspicuous displays of American patriotism.

Anti-Italian prejudice, meanwhile, continued well beyond the 1890s. Immigration restrictionists commonly portrayed southern Italians as inferior and inherently prone to criminality, and the immigration restrictions enacted in the 1920s drastically reduced Italian immigration.

Columbus Day gradually became institutionalized. Franklin Roosevelt established an annual federal Columbus Day observance in the 1930s. Italian-American organizations then spent years lobbying to make it a federal holiday. Congress finally did so in 1968 as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. The National Archives’ history of the legislation specifically notes that making Columbus Day a federal holiday had been “a goal sought for years by Italian-American groups.”

None of this tells us what to think of Columbus himself. There is much greater awareness today, appropriately, of the terrible treatment of Native Americans following European colonization. But that increased awareness has tended to obscure a very different part of the history of Columbus Day.

For Italian immigrants and their descendants, Columbus Day was not simply a celebration of European conquest. It was also part of an effort to gain acceptance for an immigrant group that faced widespread prejudice and, sometimes, horrific violence. Whatever one thinks of Columbus, that history is worth remembering.