![]() The 500th anniversary of Columbus’ landfall brought new attention to the memorial in 1992, and the association added a plaque to the plinth. The Columbus Memorial sat quietly for decades, and the association that created it continued to meet. In 1949 they erected a monument to the Norseman on the opposite side of the capitol grounds. Some people of Scandinavian heritage opposed the memorial, citing Leif Erickson as the first white discoverer of America. Afterward, the memorial became a symbol of genocide and erasure for many Native people. The existence of Native Americans went virtually unmentioned. The main messages of the program were that Columbus had discovered America and Italians would be accepted as white. Italian Americans from the Midwest, local Minnesotans, and political officials from across the nation came to St. The unveiling of the Columbus Memorial was a grand affair, with over 24,000 people in attendance. The statue was designed by Carlo (Charles) Brioschi and the plinth by State Architect Clarence H. Ultimately, the state legislature approved the Columbus Day bill on April 14, 1931, and accepted the Columbus Memorial as a gift to the state. At the same time, leaders of the Italian American community petitioned their legislators to establish Columbus Day as a state holiday. The association wanted the state government to accept the monument as a gift and legitimize the effort. Italian Americans formed a Columbus Memorial Association and raised $50,000 by public subscription from the Italians of Minnesota. Paul and Minneapolis, and to communities with small Italian American populations across Minnesota. The effort to erect a monument to Columbus spread to cities across the Iron Range, to St. But it also tried to establish Italians as white American citizens. The unanimously adopted resolution made it clear that the monument was about Italian pride and unity. After members of the Italian Progressive Club of Duluth proposed the idea at a 1927 meeting, it was endorsed by the Minnesota Federation of Italian-American Clubs, and a resolution to create a monument was drafted at the Columbus Day Banquet held in Hibbing that year. In the next few years, Italian Americans throughout the US erected Columbus memorials, and the Minnesota effort followed in that tradition. The act severely limited immigration, particularly from Italy. Italian Americans were seen as “in between” white and non-white, enduring what some historians have called “soft racism.” In a nativist response, the US government passed the Johnson Reed Act in 1924. When they arrived, they faced a racial ideology of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Nordic superiority. Few came to Minnesota, and the state’s Italian-born population peaked in 1910 at 9,688. Native Americans and their allies protested the memorial’s existence for decades, and in 2020, a group that included self-identified members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) tore it down.īetween 18, over 4 million Italian immigrants entered the United States. ![]() It made no comment on the atrocities committed by Columbus against Native people. Though they intended to celebrate the achievement of a fellow Italian during a time of anti-Italian bigotry, the memorial they installed promoted white supremacist myths of discovery and erased Native Americans from history. ![]() Italian Americans erected a Christopher Columbus memorial on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in 1931 to mark Columbus as the first white man to set foot in the Americas.
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