![]() ![]() On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from the port of Palos, Spain with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. After several years of searching for adequate financing for his proposed voyage, in April 1492 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain signed an agreement with Columbus that officially sponsored his enterprise. Sometime in the early 1480s, after returning from a trip to a Portuguese trading fortress on the West African coast, Columbus began to seek support for his idea that Asia could be reached faster and easier by sailing straight across the Atlantic Ocean, instead of having to sail around the southern coast of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. In his early twenties, he worked as a mariner on merchant ships in the Mediterranean. As Ronald Reagan remarked in a 1988 speech, Columbus Day has become a day " to celebrate not only an intrepid searcher but the dreams and opportunities that brought so many here after him."Ĭhristopher Columbus (originally Cristoforo Colombo, 1451–1506) was born into a working-class family in Genoa, Italy. Immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries rallied around the immigrant Columbus. In the late 18th century, Americans began to see Columbus as somewhat of a mythic founding figure by the 1830s, he was seen as an archetype of the American ideal: bold, adventurous, innovative. Recently, it has taken effect as an official state holiday in various places.And yet, in the 500 years since Columbus's sighting, the day has become distinctly American. Since the early 70s, many states have petitioned to have the name changed to National Indigenous People’s Day to honor Native Americans and commemorate their stories and culture. ![]() He also was responsible for the enslavement, mutilation, and mass genocide of thousands of Native Americans and indigenous people.īecause of this fact, the celebration of Columbus Day has become less and less of a day of pride and more of a painful reminder to a dark past in American history. To many, Christopher Columbus is not a celebrated hero, but a violent tyrant who wasn’t very good at navigating, considering he thought he’d landed in India when reaching the Americas. Over the years, the celebration of Christopher Columbus Day has become more and more controversial due to the atrocities he committed against Native Americans. These efforts were successful and Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1968. Lucca, from Buffalo, NY, founded the National Columbus Day Committee, which lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday. Many Italian-Americans took this as an opportunity to celebrate their heritage. These rituals took themes such as citizenship boundaries and the importance of loyalty to the nation. ![]() During this celebration, politicians, poets, teachers, and preachers began to spin the web of patriotism under the veil of Columbus. This was part of a larger effort after the lynching incident to placate Italian Americans and ease diplomatic tensions with Italy. By the 400th anniversary, following a lynching in New Orleans where a mob had murdered 11 Italian immigrants, President Benjamin Harrison declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration. Though Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492, the earliest documentation of any unofficial celebration of Columbus Day wasn’t until 1792. ![]()
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