Essential
businesses now include the statue removal contractors. Few people
understand that the Columbus Day holiday was begun as a response to
anti-Italian bigotry in America. Surprising, huh? Didn’t teach that in
school!
“These anti-Italian sentiments occasionally led to brutal violence. One of the largest mass lynchings in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1891, when 11 Sicilian immigrants were lynched after the city's police commissioner was killed and suspicion had been placed on the Italian community. (The 11 men had been found not guilty before the lynching. A New York Times editorial had this reaction: "Yet while every good citizen will readily assent to the proposition that this affair is to be deplored, it would be difficult to find any one individual who would confess that privately he deplores it very much.")
“The first official commemoration of Columbus' journey occurred in 1892, just a year after the New Orleans lynchings. That's when President Benjamin Harrison became the first president to call for a national observance of Columbus Day, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival. “
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/
“These anti-Italian sentiments occasionally led to brutal violence. One of the largest mass lynchings in the United States occurred in New Orleans in 1891, when 11 Sicilian immigrants were lynched after the city's police commissioner was killed and suspicion had been placed on the Italian community. (The 11 men had been found not guilty before the lynching. A New York Times editorial had this reaction: "Yet while every good citizen will readily assent to the proposition that this affair is to be deplored, it would be difficult to find any one individual who would confess that privately he deplores it very much.")
“The first official commemoration of Columbus' journey occurred in 1892, just a year after the New Orleans lynchings. That's when President Benjamin Harrison became the first president to call for a national observance of Columbus Day, in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival. “
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/
No comments:
Post a Comment