I love that Indigenous People’s Day is taking over, but as someone of some Italian American heritage (Sicilian American, it turns out), it would be nice to have a day of recognition. Just not Columbus, please, who enslaved a peaceful people, and by his own admission:
“[The Indians] do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… . They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
But there are other Italian Americans that might fit the bill. Because I’m generally horrified that all people know about Italian Americans is the mob and pizza, here are my choices:
My top choice is Mario Cuomo. He died just as Indigenous People’s Day was getting some recognition, so the timing seems right.
Joe Petrosino, a Sicilian American, who was the first detective to really go after the Mafia & the Black Hand in particular; he was assassinated while in Italy (supposedly undercover) in 1909, and they’ve only just “solved” his murder.
Then there’s Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who was surely innocent of the crimes he was killed for but who wrote some beautiful, peaceful letters while in prison. His trial, along with Nicola Sacco’s, caused the first real anti death penalty push in the US & continues to inspire. Their judges called them racial slurs – proving they didn’t get a fair trial, whether they were guilty or not – and connects to a lot of the racialized injustice happening even today around the death penalty in particular.
Alternately, we could just have a day for eating, because Italian food.
& Honestly, living here in Wisconsin, a Lombardi Day seems like a shoo-in, and the famous coach was anti-homophobic and anti-racist in ways that the NFL could still take a lesson from. His daughter explained: “My father was way ahead of his time,” Susan Lombardi said. “He was discriminated against as a dark-skinned Italian American when he was younger, when he felt he was passed up for coaching jobs that he deserved. He felt the pain of discrimination, and so he raised his family to accept everybody, no matter what color they were or whatever their sexual orientation was.”
I’ve never minded making today about something “Just Not Columbus.”
I grew up in easy walking distance of “Little Italy in the Bronx” (Arthur Ave.), the church I attended was built by Italian immigrants in 1898 and named after an Italian saint, I went to high school on the grounds where Vince Lombardi played his college football, been from Mulberry Street to Balducci’s on 6th Ave. in the day to Columbus Circle and everywhere in between, and over the Verrazano Bridge too many times to count. A day to honor and remember, without controversy, the contributions Italian-Americans have made to America (hello, Amerigo Vespucci) would be nice. FWIW, though I’m Irish/German heritage, most of my best friends back when were Sicilian. They deserve it. Happy days. 🙂
I am half Scot, a quarter Irish and a quarter Ligurian (think Genoa).
The Chinese may have landed in ‘America’ in 1421 CE under the command of Zheng He. (That can’t be as the Asians weren’t christians!)
The Norse explorers colonized northeast North America in >1000 CE (That can’t be as the Norse weren’t christians!).
Columbus likely saw land 1492 as an island in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador.
He was a horrific founder then governor killing the ‘savages’ is his quest for a passage to Asia and the need to bring christianity. His ‘day’ is not universally celebrated in the U.S. and many Italian-Americans celebrate the day as an observance of their heritage.
I wonder if the Lakota and Cheyenne celebrate June 25 and 26, 1876 as the time they got back at the U.S. Army. We, as Europeans, could always rename it the ‘Massacre at Little Bighorn’.
Italian Americans built New York City, for one, along with the Irish.
A.P. Giannini founded the Bank of Italy in the young town of San Francisco, and was only guy with enough brains to “smuggle” cash out of the city under a load of vegetables. He set up shop just outside the city and his loans rebuilt that city we all love. He renamed it “Bank Of America”, btw. He also was the first bank to loan money to a group of feisty Jewish immigrants in Hollywood to make films and expand their studios.
Then there’s Caruso. Durante. DiMaggio. DiNiro. Coppola. and white pizza from NYC.
I’m half Italian (Dad’s family was from Vitulazio, which is outside Naples), the rest English, Irish, German, Danish, French and possibly Native American on my mom’s side. Ethnically I consider myself Italian and then English, at least that’s what’s stuck. Anyway, there’s a lot to celebrate with Italians, American or otherwise. They’ve made huge contributions to science, literature and music. As far as Italian American’s go, my favorite is Leo Buscaglia. He wrote a book called Love and it’s great reading. as far as who got here first, there’s evidence that prehistoric peoples from Europe came to the east coast as well, but like their other European descendants, they never took hold until much, much later. In the end, does it matter? Humans have been migrating and changing the ethnic landscape for millennia and it will continue. It’s not so much who did what first, but what did they contribute and what’s their story. Someone once said that “You Can’t Hate Someone Whose Story You Know”. I agree.