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 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. 

When their trial resulted in six not-guilty verdicts and three mistrials, the public was outraged. Further inflamed by the local press, some decided to take “justice” into their own hands.  

According to journalist Erin Blakemore, here’s what happened: 

“[T]housands of angry residents gathered near the jail. Impassioned speakers whipped the mob into a frenzy, painting Italian immigrants as criminals who needed to be driven out of the city…

A…group of [vigilantes] stormed the prison, grabbing not just the men who had been acquitted or given a mistrial, but several who had not been tried or even accused in the crimes. Shots rang out... [When the shooting stopped] eleven…bodies were riddled with bullets and torn apart by the crowd.

Outside the jail, the…mob cheered as the mutilated bodies were displayed. Some corpses were hung…others were…plundered for souvenirs.”

The next day, the New York Times celebrated the crime with a headline that read, “Chief Hennessy Avenged: Eleven of his Italian Assassins Lynched by a Mob.”

“These…descendants of bandits and assassins…are to us a pest without mitigations,” the Times editors wrote.

In protest, the Italian government broke off diplomatic relations with the United States. Tensions receded only after the U.S. government paid an indemnity to the Italians. Despite the New York Times’ incendiary rhetoric, much of the country was outraged by the massacre. In his 1891 State of the Union address, Republican President Benjamin Harrison pledged to protect foreign nationals from mob violence.

Then, in July 1892, Harrison issued a proclamation celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World. It was a timely pretext to a greater purpose: to raise the status of a badly shaken Italian-American community.

Harrison’s proclamation did more. Italian Americans now had a way to include themselves in the American story. And not surprisingly, New York City figured prominently in that narrative.

In the late nineteenth century, one could say that Italian immigrants essentially built the city’s infrastructure. According to the Library of Congress, they “went to work on the growing city’s municipal works projects, digging canals, laying…gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in New York’s Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants.”

But, of course, Italian Americans have made countless—and enormous—contributions to every area of American life over the nation’s two hundred and fifty-year history. At least one signer of the Declaration of Independence was Italian American. Many cabinet members and Supreme Court justices have been of Italian descent, not to mention legendary athletes like Joe DiMaggio, Nobel Prize-winning scientists like Enrico Fermi, and many prominent artists, actors, and actresses, including the most beloved singer in American history, Frank Sinatra.

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day an official U.S. holiday.

But if a new mob has its way, it may not be one for long. 

I’m Alana Mastrangelo, reporter for Breitbart News, for Prager University.