(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . How Should We Remember Columbus? [1] ['Alan Singer', 'Angmar Barrow', 'Greg Dworkin', 'Keith Frohreich', 'Crimson Quillfeather', 'Thom Hartmann'] Date: 2026-10-07 A 1847 painting by John Vanderlyn that was commissioned by Congress. We have no contemporary images of Columbus so we don’t actually know what he looked like (Source: Capitol Rotunda). In 1892 President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation designating October 21 as a national holiday celebrating the 400th anniversary of the “discovery of America by Columbus.” Harrison declared “Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment.” The President did not mention either Italy or Spain in the proclamation, but he may have been responding to growing nativist sentiment in the United States and mass arrest followed by the lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans in March 1891. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated October 12 as an annual national holiday celebrating the arrival of Columbus in the Americas. In a 1966 Presidential Proclamation, Lyndon Johnson specifically tied Columbus Day with recognition of the contributions of Italian Americans. Johnson declared “Columbus’s vision and daring, and that of the courageous men who followed him, brought European civilization to the New World. His conquest of the Atlantic—the ‘outer space’ of the fifteenth century — is as meaningful to Americans of the space age as it was to our forefathers who pushed across the vast expanses of this continent. Thus we honor Columbus not only as a voyager but also as a symbol of the long tradition of Italian enlightenment. From Galileo to Enrico Fermi, Italians have been in the vanguard of those dedicated to expanding man’s knowledge of his universe. Millions of Americans are bound to Italy by ties of blood, and all Americans are the spiritual heirs of the Italian genius which has enriched the quality of our national life. As we honor the first Italian-American, we honor all the others who came after.” Since 1971, Columbus Day is observed on the second Monday of October creating a fall season three-day weekend for many families. Last year, Donald Trump issued a proclamation on the day “our Nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus — the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth. This Columbus Day, we honor his life with reverence and gratitude, and we pledge to reclaim his extraordinary legacy of faith, courage, perseverance, and virtue from the left-wing arsonists who have sought to destroy his name and dishonor his memory.” This proclamation is part of Trump’s effort to redefine American history and Western civilization, museum displays, and school curriculum to remove blemishes like slavery, Native American genocide, nativism, gender bias, and imperialism. The Columbian Exchange of people, products, and diseases transformed the world, but Columbus was at best an accidental participant. He thought he was sailing west to Asia, miscalculated the circumference of the Earth, and never believed he had arrived on a new continent or visited what would become the United States. It was other European explorers who recognized the magnitude of the discovery. Even if Columbus had never sailed or survived the voyage, European explorers arrived in the Americas independently in 1500 when Pedro Cabral, sailing for Portugal along the coast of Africa was blown off course by an Atlantic storm and arrived in present day Brazil. Elevating Columbus as the “original American hero” and a “giant of Western civilization” is just a convenient myth. A number of states and localities now pair Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day starting with South Dakota in 1990. Delaware dropped Columbus Day as a state holiday in 2009. In Oklahoma the second Monday in October is Oklahoma Native American Day. New York State still recognizes Columbus Day but in New York City since 2021 the holiday is officially Italian Heritage Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day. In the city there have been periodic protests against the Columbus statue at Columbus Circle on the southwestern type of Central Park in Manhattan. As a social studies teacher I always focus on the “Columbian Exchange,” rather than the individual. Tobacco, potatoes, and maize are sent to Europe, Africa, and Asia from the Americas. Grains like wheat, oats, rice, and barley, cotton, horses and cattle are brought to the Americas. Easten hemisphere sugar cane grown in the Caribbean and Brazil provide the profit that finances the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Small pox arrives in the Americas with European sailors and syphilis probably originated there and was brought to Europe through sexual transmission by Columbus and his compatriots. The Columbian Exchange led to the catastrophic decimation of the indigenous population of the Americas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and massive European migration to the New World. An article on History.com by its editors goes into depth on the role of Christopher Columbus in history. Sadly Columbus’ treatment of the indigenous people of the Americas that he encountered set the stage for their exploitation and for some groups their extermination. On the arrival of his three ships on the island he renamed San Salvador, Holy Savior, Columbus ordered that six natives be captured because he believed they would make good servants. Native people were forced to labor for the Spanish who hoped to find gold and were maimed and tortured if they were unsuccessful. In his journal he wrote “with fifty men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.” Thousands of Taino from the island of Hispaniola were shipped to Spain to be sold as slaves. By 1550, there were fewer than 250,000 Taino surviving in the West Indies. When there was a native rebellion on the island of Hispaniola, Columbus ordered that the bodies of executed rebels be dismembered and paraded through towns and villages as warnings to others. Eventually the Spanish crown sent Francisco de Bobadilla, a member of an order of religious knights, to investigate. Columbus and his brothers were arrested and returned to Spain in chains. Promotion of Columbus as an “American hero” may actually have the opposite effect of what Trump hoped to accomplish. The more we learn about Columbus, the more we learn about the roots of the darkest moments in United States history. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/7/800109063/community/how-should-we-remember-columbus/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/