Why Immigrants Should Love Columbus Day

As Columbus Day dies a slow, woke death, it might be a good idea to consider how this national holiday came about in the first place. The answer will surprise you.

Script:

As Columbus Day dies a slow, woke death, it might be a good idea to consider how this national holiday came about in the first place.

The answer might surprise you.

Ready for it?

The purpose of Columbus Day was to encourage Americans to be more accepting of immigrants—specifically Italian immigrants.

The Italian explorer, once universally regarded as a great hero, was the symbol of the holiday, not the focus of it.

Here’s the historical context.

Following a mass migration from southern Italy beginning in the 1880s, the status of Italian Americans was at an all-time low. How low was clearly illustrated by one of the single worst episodes of racial violence in American history: the mass murder and lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891.

Hatred against the Italian newcomers had been brewing for years and was openly encouraged by the leading newspapers of the day. For example, in 1882 the New York Times ran an editorial under the headline “Our Future Citizens” in which the Times’ stated, “There has never been since New York was founded so low and ignorant a class among the immigrants…as the Southern Italians…”

In 1887, the same New York Times wrote approvingly about the lynching in Mississippi of a man they referred to as “Dago Joe,” “dago” being an ethnic slur for Italians.

Anti-immigrant sentiment was especially intense in New Orleans where Italians were settling in large numbers. Local papers accused them of working for below-market wages, engaging in all manner of crimes, and being more loyal to the Pope than the President.

These seething resentments broke to the surface when the city’s police chief, David Hennessey, was assassinated in the fall of 1890.

As the chief lay dying in the street, a witness claimed to have heard him say that “dagoes” had shot him. In response, authorities rounded up hundreds of Italians, eventually charging nine of them with complicity in Hennessy’s murder.

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