What is Columbus Day?
It's interesting watching people talk about Columbus Day.
Where I came from, Columbus Day really had very little to do with "discovering America". It has to do with Italian American ethnic pride.
The first time we had a national Columbus Day was in 1892. It wasn't the 400th anniversary that did made it a thing. A dozen Italian immigrants had been lynched in the deep south. The 14 March 1891 New Orleans lynchings.
It became a regular national observance after the lobbying of the Knights of Columbus. The primary lobbyist was Generoso Pope, a successful business who ran major Italian language newspapers in America. Congress passed a statute requesting the president to acknowledge 12 October as Columbus day. Part of the Congressional statute includes an invitation for everyone to invite everyone to celebrate the discovery of America. Clearly its discovery by an Italian. FDR made it so.
When I was a kid, in 1966, an Italian American, Mariano Lucca, lead the National Columbus Day Committee which lobbied to make it a federal holiday, not just a national observance. And so LBJ made it so.
Of course at the local organic level, Columbus and the discovery of the new world was celebrated as a matter of Italian pride since the 18th century in the Americas. San Francisco has the longest continuous Italian-American community and they have been celebrating with a parade and other festivities since 1886.
Makes me miss home.
I have yet to see one post about Italians or Italian Americans. They did this thing and made the holiday possible.
Where I came from, Columbus Day really had very little to do with "discovering America". It has to do with Italian American ethnic pride.
The first time we had a national Columbus Day was in 1892. It wasn't the 400th anniversary that did made it a thing. A dozen Italian immigrants had been lynched in the deep south. The 14 March 1891 New Orleans lynchings.
It became a regular national observance after the lobbying of the Knights of Columbus. The primary lobbyist was Generoso Pope, a successful business who ran major Italian language newspapers in America. Congress passed a statute requesting the president to acknowledge 12 October as Columbus day. Part of the Congressional statute includes an invitation for everyone to invite everyone to celebrate the discovery of America. Clearly its discovery by an Italian. FDR made it so.
When I was a kid, in 1966, an Italian American, Mariano Lucca, lead the National Columbus Day Committee which lobbied to make it a federal holiday, not just a national observance. And so LBJ made it so.
Of course at the local organic level, Columbus and the discovery of the new world was celebrated as a matter of Italian pride since the 18th century in the Americas. San Francisco has the longest continuous Italian-American community and they have been celebrating with a parade and other festivities since 1886.
Makes me miss home.
I have yet to see one post about Italians or Italian Americans. They did this thing and made the holiday possible.
