Why Immigrants Should Love Columbus Day|5-Minute Videos
As Columbus Day dies a slow, woke death, it might be a great idea to think about how this legal holiday came about in the first place. The answer will shock you.
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Script:
As Columbus Day passes away a sluggish, woke death, it might be a good concept to consider how this legal holiday happened in the first location.
The response may shock you.
All set for it?
The purpose of Columbus Day was to encourage Americans to be more accepting of immigrants– specifically Italian immigrants.
The Italian explorer, when widely considered as a terrific 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 shown by among 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 versus the Italian newbies had been brewing for many years and was openly encouraged by the leading papers of the day. In 1882 the New York Times ran an editorial under the headline “Our Future Citizens” in which the Times’ stated, “There has actually never been because New York was established oblivious and so low a class amongst the immigrants … as the Southern Italians …”.
In 1887, the very same New York Times composed approvingly about the lynching in Mississippi of a man they described as “Dago Joe,” “dago” being an ethnic slur for Italians.
Anti-immigrant belief was especially intense in New Orleans where Italians were settling in large numbers. Local papers accused them of working for below-market earnings, engaging in all manner of criminal activities, and being more loyal to the Pope than the President.
These seething bitterness 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 actually shot him. In action, authorities rounded up numerous Italians, ultimately charging nine of them with complicity in Hennessy’s murder.
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