Columbus Day

On October 12, 1492, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus and his crew landed in the Bahamas aboard the now-legendary Niña, Pinta, and Santa María. Sailing under the sponsorship of Ferdinand II and Isabella I, the Catholic Monarchs of Aragon and Castile, Columbus was ostensibly searching for a route to Asia to gather treasures but was also seeking to spread Christianity and Spanish colonization. Columbus made three more voyages to the Americas (which he thought were part of Asia), and, centuries later, he’s celebrated with federal holidays in several countries. [1]

How did Columbus come to be celebrated in the United States?

Since 1971 Columbus Day has been celebrated on the second Monday in October in the United States. [1]

Christopher Columbus has been known as a sort of “honorary all-American hero and quasi-founding father,” says Columbus biographer Felipe Fernández-Armesto. However, many in the United States would struggle to say exactly why they celebrate an Italian explorer sailing for Spain who never set foot on the land that would become the United States. [2]

The What So Proudly We Hail e-curriculum summarizes:

In the late eighteenth century, Americans began to see Columbus as somewhat of a mythic founding figure; by the 1830s, he was seen as an archetype of the American ideal: bold, adventurous, innovative. Immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rallied around the immigrant Columbus. [3]

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Also embodied by the allegorical female figure Columbia (a Lady Liberty prototype), Columbus was first adopted by the young United States as a symbol of “liberty and progress,” according to the professor of American studies Thomas J. Schlereth. This mythologizing of a masculine, European (though crucially not British) version of Columbus supported burgeoning American ideals of Manifest Destiny (the idea that the United States was preordained to expand to the Pacific Ocean and beyond). [4] [5] [6] [7]

Historian Michael D. Hattem explains that “Columbus’s lack of connections to England made him a much more useful discoverer of America for those trying to express historical independence from Britain” and celebrations of Columbus led “to the creation of a deep national past by codifying an origins story for the new American republic.” [8] [29]

And thus an Italian explorer was integrated into the very fabric of the United States from the outset. King’s College (established by royal charter of King George II) was renamed Columbia College (later Columbia University) in 1784. A few years later the capital of South Carolina was christened Columbia. The song “Hail Columbia” was an unofficial anthem of the country until 1931, when “The Star-Spangled Banner” became the official anthem. In 1790 the seat of the federal government was named the Territory of Columbia (now the District of Columbia, within which the city of Washington was built). [9] [10]

Just a year later, on the 300th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in the Bahamas, the Society of St. Tammany (also called the Columbian Order) threw one of the first American celebrations of Columbus on October 12, with feasts, toasts to the “United Columbian States,” and a 14-foot- (4.3-meter-) tall wooden monument lighted from within that announced the fourth “Columbian Century.” According to Timothy Winkle, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the monument depicted Columbus as a “proto-American vanguard of liberty,” one who had been

crafted to fit American ambitions, a figure that bore little resemblance to historical reality. No exploitation was depicted here, no brutal birth of empire, no hint of a Catholic faith that the society, and most Americans, feared and abhorred. Here was a constructed Columbus who shared the Enlightenment era values of science and individualism, a leader beloved of Native Americans and Europeans alike, victimized by corrupt monarchs. A shining figure of liberty beamed directly at its audience. [11]

Notably, this Columbus was a product of an American ideal that elevated Anglo-American Protestant citizens. So the transformation of Columbus into a champion of immigrants in the 19th century was quite a shift. Nonetheless Columbus became a celebratory symbol of Italian American and Roman Catholic heritage. Art historian Johanna Spanke explains that “at that time, Italian immigrants were affected by intense discrimination. Most of them came from the south of Italy, were thus viewed as culturally backward, ridiculed in the media, and were deemed unfit for U.S.-American citizenship.” [7]

“These experiences led to a ‘symbolic linking’ of Columbus and Italian immigrants,” according to Spanke. This was fostered largely by organizations such as the Knights of Columbus—a Roman Catholic fraternal organization founded by an Irish American priest—that embraced Italian Catholic immigrants and lobbied Congress for a federal Columbus Day. [7] [8] [10]

Amy Kass and Leon R. Kass, both of the American Enterprise Institute, explain:

The first distinctly Italian-American celebration of Columbus Day occurred in New York City in 1866 at an annual sharpshooting contest at which a banquet and dance was [sic] held. By 1869, New York had taken to decorating ships in the harbor with Italian and American flags, in addition to hosting a carnival and parade. Italian-Americans in San Francisco conducted their first “Discovery Day” parade in 1869—an annual event that soon included a reenactment of Columbus first setting foot in the New World. By 1876, Columbus Day celebrations were being held annually in St. Louis, Boston, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. Italian-Americans even launched a campaign to have the explorer canonized. Though Rome was not convinced (Columbus had not, to anyone’s knowledge, performed any miracles), in 1892, Pope Leo XIII did issue a special encyclical calling on all clergy in the Americas and in Europe to hold a special Mass each Columbus Day. [10]

The event that prompted the creation of a national holiday was much darker. In 1891, 11 Italian immigrants were still jailed in New Orleans after being acquitted of the murder of a local police chief. A lynch mob, spurred by racist and nativist propaganda that labeled the jailed men “Mafia” (though it is not clear that any of the Italians were mafiosi), murdered all 11 men. The murders were largely viewed as a positive action, with even the Civil Service commissioner and future U.S. president Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt writing to his sister just seven days after the murders, “Various [slur for Italians] diplomats were present [at dinner], all much wrought up by the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. Personally I think it rather a good thing, and said so.” [7] [12] [13]

At the time, Pres. Benjamin Harrison was fighting a losing presidential election campaign and needed immigrant support if he were going to defeat Grover Cleveland. Harrison took steps to appease the Italian government for the murder of the country’s former citizens and proclaimed October 21, 1892, “Discovery Day.” The Italian government, in turn, gifted New York City a statue of Columbus to celebrate the quadricentennial (400th anniversary) of his landing that still stands in Columbus Circle (so named for the statue) near Central Park. [12] [14] [15]

Official annual celebrations of Columbus Day began to pick up speed throughout the United States, with Gov. Jesse F. McDonald declaring the first in Colorado in 1907. New York followed in 1909, and by 1910, 15 states were celebrating the Italian explorer every year. In 1934 Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a proclamation to celebrate Columbus Day annually (which did not make the day a federal holiday). Columbus Day was not made an official federal holiday until 1968, when Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which designated the second Monday in October for celebrations effective January 1, 1971. [10] [16] [17]

From Pres. Benjamin Harrison’s “Proclamation 335,” issued July 21, 1892

That the President of the United States be authorized and directed to issue a proclamation recommending to the people the observance in all their localities of the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, on the 21st of October, 1892, by public demonstrations and by suitable exercises in their schools and other places of assembly.

Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of the United States of America, in pursuance of the aforesaid joint resolution, do hereby appoint Friday, October 21, 1892, the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus, as a general holiday for the people of the United States. On that day let the people, so far as possible, cease from toil and devote themselves to such exercises as may best express honor to the discoverer and their appreciation of the great achievements of the four completed centuries of American life.

Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.

In the churches and in the other places of assembly of the people let there be expressions of gratitude to Divine Providence for the devout faith of the discoverer and for the divine care and guidance which has directed our history and so abundantly blessed our people. [15]

Discussion questions

1. Should Columbus Day be celebrated? Why or why not?
2. If Columbus Day should be celebrated? How should we do so?
3. If Columbus Day should not be celebrated? Should we replace the holiday with the celebration of an Italian-American or an Indigenous person? Explain your answer.
4. What questions do you have after reading the debate above? Where might you find answers?
5. What was the most interesting thing you learned from this debate?
6. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways in which your better understanding of the other side of the issue now helps you better argue your position.
7. Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. senators and representatives.