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Killing Christopher Columbus: New York joins nationwide reckoning with monuments
Serphin Maltese, a former state senator in New York, leaned into the microphone. All this talk of removing monuments was like book burning by totalitarian regimes, he said, his voice rising with anger. "Our present mayor," he concluded, "will go down in history as the one who killed Christopher Columbus."
What should happen to Columbus – or more precisely, the monuments devoted to him – has become part of an unusual public debate. New York is the latest American city to join a nationwide reckoning over memory and history. And New Yorkers, not known for being shy about their opinions, have thoughts to share.
Three months ago, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged a review of all "symbols of hate" on city property. The announcement came days after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Va., following a rally by white supremacists in support of a statue of Confederate military leader Robert E. Lee.
Now a mayoral panel will deliver non-binding recommendations on the future of monuments and markers "seen as oppressive and inconsistent with the values of New York." The first of five public meetings took place Friday in Queens.
Unlike in the American South, the knotty question here is not what to do with Confederate symbols, but how to handle the numerous tributes to Columbus – in particular, the triumphal statue of him atop a pedestal in the middle of Columbus Circle, a major plaza at the southwest corner of Central Park.
(Columbus isn't the only figure of controversy. At the hearing, some New Yorkers voiced a desire to get rid of a statue of J. Marion Sims that sits on Fifth Avenue. Sometimes called the "father of gynecology," Dr. Sims performed repeated surgeries on enslaved women without anesthesia.)
The first wave of tributes linked to Columbus – an explorer from Genoa who never set foot in North America – dates back to the years after the American Revolution. The young nation embraced patriotic symbols distinct from the British crown. For instance, New York's Columbia University was originally called King's College, but changed its name in 1784.
Then, in the latter half of the 19th century, Columbus was adopted as a symbol of pride by Italian-American immigrants who faced prejudice and sometimes violence in their new land. In the 1930s, Italian-American groups successfully lobbied for the creation of Columbus Day, a federal holiday that takes place the second Monday in October.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/new...h-monuments/article37028406/?click=sf_globefb
