Between 1880 and 1920, over 4 million Italian immigrants entered america. Few got here to Minnesota, and the state’s Italian-born population peaked in 1910 at 9,688. After they arrived, they faced a racial ideology of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Nordic superiority. 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. The act severely limited immigration, particularly from Italy.
In the following few years, Italian Americans throughout the US erected Columbus memorials, and the Minnesota effort followed in that tradition. After members of the Italian Progressive Club of Duluth proposed the concept at a 1927 meeting, it was endorsed by the Minnesota Federation of Italian-American Clubs, and a resolution to create a monument was drafted on the Columbus Day Banquet held in Hibbing that yr. The unanimously adopted resolution made it clear that the monument was about Italian pride and unity. Nevertheless it also tried to determine Italians as white Americans.
The trouble to erect a monument to Columbus spread to cities across the Iron Range, to St. Paul and Minneapolis, and to communities with small Italian American populations across Minnesota. Italian Americans formed a Columbus Memorial Association and raised $50,000 by public subscription from the Italians of Minnesota. The association wanted the state government to just accept the monument as a present and legitimize the trouble. At the identical time, leaders of the Italian American community petitioned their legislators to determine Columbus Day as a state holiday. Ultimately, the state legislature approved the Columbus Day bill on April 14, 1931, and accepted the Columbus Memorial as a present to the state. The statue was designed by Carlo (Charles) Brioschi and the plinth by State Architect Clarence H. Johnston.
The revealing of the Columbus Memorial was a grand affair, with over 24,000 people in attendance. Italian Americans from the Midwest, local Minnesotans, and political officials from across the nation got here to St. Paul. The principal messages of this system were that Columbus had discovered America and Italians could be accepted as white. The existence of Native Americans went virtually unmentioned. Afterward, the memorial became an emblem of genocide and erasure for a lot of Native people.
Some people of Scandinavian heritage opposed the memorial, citing Leif Erickson as the primary white discoverer of America. In 1949 they erected a monument to the Norseman on the alternative side of the capitol grounds. The Columbus Memorial sat quietly for many years, and the association that created it continued to satisfy. The five hundredth anniversary of Columbus’ landfall brought recent attention to the memorial in 1992, and the association added a plaque to the plinth. Native Americans in St. Paul and across the country denounced celebrations of Columbus; in June the memorial was splashed with red paint.
In 2015, the controversy over Columbus reignited as monuments to white supremacy, mainly Confederate ones, were vandalized, torn down, and removed. Protests were held on the St. Paul memorial and hundreds of individuals signed online petitions aimed toward removing it or replacing it. St. Paul, Minneapolis, and the State of Minnesota proclaimed Indigenous Peoples Day in ensuing years, however the memorial survived.
On June 10, 2020, within the wake of the murder of George Floyd in South Minneapolis, a gaggle including individuals who identified as a part of AIM tore down the Columbus statue. Though they didn’t condone the destruction of public property, Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan acknowledged that the memorial’s presence pained many voters. Flanagan said she was not sad to see the statue go. Other elected officials and members of the general public, meanwhile, pushed for the statue to be restored and reinterpreted. As of July 2, the Minnesota Historical Society and the Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board (CAAPB) were discussing next steps.
For more information on this topic, take a look at the unique entry on MNopedia.