As an Italian American in Chicago, I’ve loved celebrating my heritage in so many ways — going to D’Amatos to get cannolis for Sunday family dinner; gathering with fellow paisans at the Taylor Street Little Italy Festa; playing tombola (Italian bingo) at the Maria SS Lauretana Society on the Northwest Side. And yes, even mourning the death of stalwart spots like Sabatino’s and Anna Maria Pasteria, RIP.
But one Italian American celebration I cannot get behind is the ongoing adoration of Christopher Columbus.
For years, we’ve been told the controversial explorer was some kind of hero to rest our green-white-and-red laurels on, that he was the prime example of Genoan stock who sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America, giving us Italians a sense of ownership in the country’s very origins. But that lie is as much a fraud as the man himself.
Columbus actually never stepped foot on the North American mainland (Oct. 12 is when he arrived at the Bahamas), and somehow over time we’ve just accepted the blatant omission that Indigenous peoples were already living on American soil and creating real communities that would have an ongoing influence on the country (lest we forget where the words Chicago and Milwaukee come from). That’s just the soft truth, though. The other is the dark web of oppression Columbus and his cronies inflicted on the Taino people in the island territories he commanded, enslaving them and inflicting enforced labor, brutal violence and mutilation and the introduction of infectious diseases that threatened to wipe out the population.
Is this who Italian Americans really want as a representative?
I’d be the first to stand on the hill of needing strong examples of Italian pride in this country — after the decades of ridicule and racist taunts lodged at early Italian immigrants. Rewriting that history and edifying Italian contributions to art, culture, business and overall society is sorely needed. We still live in a time that two-dimensional characters of Italian culture are kept alive by mob bosses and families like the Corleones and Sopranos. I shake my head every time I see a new bottle of whiskey laid at the grave of Al Capone, who’s buried near my great-grandmother Mary at Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Hillside. But continuing to elevate Columbus as some kind of antithesis to “The Godfather” stereotype is a big bunch of gabagool. Knowing his reign of terror, wasn’t Columbus the biggest mob boss of all?
I’m proud to celebrate Italian American Heritage and Culture Month every October and see new developments like the Italian Cultural Institute in Chicago, which just moved to a larger space at 150 N. Michigan Ave., or the opening of the Florence Scala Italian American Museum in Little Italy, just blocks away from where my own grandparents were married at the former St. Callistus Roman Catholic Church. But my excitement changed when I heard museum owners and leaders with the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans claim “victory” with the reclamation of the oft-vandalized Columbus statue that was removed from Arrigo Park during the pandemic. With plans to display it in the museum, they’ve said in recent statements that it represents an “icon of faith and hope for our ethnic group.”
But they don’t speak for all of us.
Replace Columbus
When Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation for Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2021, it felt like real progress to honor those who are our true American pioneers. As a little girl, I was taught to have a great amount of respect for Native Americans. My Evanston grandparents uprooted to Los Alamos, New Mexico, in the 1940s to work on the Manhattan Project where they befriended members of the native Pueblo community and taught their children and grandchildren to honor America’s first citizens. If an American president can change course on what we celebrate every second Monday of October, why can’t we in Chicago, a city where Native contributions are embedded into the very fabric of our streets? If you’ve wondered who came up with the genius idea to create diagonal pathways like Archer and Milwaukee avenues to get across the city quicker, well you can thank Native Americans for that — those are their old trails.
So, yes, let’s keep the parade and October as our pride month, but it’s time for Italian Americans to get a new hero behind them. It’s not like there aren’t plenty to choose from — Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo and Maria Montessori come to mind.
In Chicago we even have an incredibly worthy option with Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini, who will soon have her own statue erected in the spot Columbus vacated in Arrigo Park. Cabrini is recognized as a saint and was the first U.S. citizen to be canonized by the Catholic Church for her work, largely helping, well, immigrants. She was behind the establishment of schools, hospitals and orphanages from the time she arrived in New York to her final years in Chicago, where she opened the Near North Side Assumption School and the former (sigh) Columbus Hospital in Lake View. On Oct. 12, I’d encourage my fellow Italian Americans to pass on saluting Columbus and instead pay a visit to Lake View’s National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini and honor one our own who actually did great things for this country and this city.
Selena Fragassi is a Chicago area music journalist who often writes for the Sun-Times.