Will city’s Columbus Day Parade become a Heritage Day Parade?

Pittsburgh’s Columbus Day Parade is as popular as it has ever been, drawing more than 10,000 people along its route in Bloomfield on good-weather days.

But Saturday could be the last parade of its kind in the city.

Guy Costa, chairman of the parade’s organizing committee for most of the last two decades, on Friday said the committee will discuss moving it back Downtown — where it was held for 15 years until moving to Bloomfield in 2001 — and moving the date away from the Columbus Day holiday weekend to attract more musical and cultural groups.

Perhaps more important in an era of tension over the cultural touchstones of various groups in the United States, Mr. Costa said the parade committee may also change its name from the Columbus Day Parade to something like “Heritage Day Parade” and celebrate all of the city’s ethnic groups, not just Italians.

Though it may be timely, given the fractures in American culture over parades, monuments and statues of Christopher Columbus, Mr. Costa said the protests — including red paint thrown onto Pittsburgh’s Columbus statue two weeks ago and a protest expected along Saturday’s parade route — are not the

reason for the move.

“We’ve become more of a multicultural parade anyway, where we invited others groups to participate, because other groups in Western Pennsylvania don’t have an opportunity to celebrate their culture like we do on Columbus Day,” said Mr. Costa, who is the city of Pittsburgh’s chief operations officer.

If that happens, it would answer the call from a small group of advocates who have been protesting at the Columbus Day Parade for the past six years, hoping to get the parade to change its name, as multiple cities, including Los Angeles and Phoenix, have done.

“I think our group would support [the name change] for sure. I think the parade is already reflective of diverse groups in Pittsburgh,” said Carlin Christy, an organizer with the advocacy group WWHAT’S UP?! Pittsburgh.

The group plans to have about 20 people at Saturday’s parade encouraging parade-goers to think about Columbus’ heritage in the Americas, and calling on the parade to change its name.

“We want to help people to think about the role of Columbus,” said Ms. Christy, whose maternal grandparents are Italian. “He was a violent person who doesn’t reflect Italian pride or Italian heritage.”

Another, unidentified group has also taken out a permit for a small “peaceful” protest from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Monday, Columbus Day, at the city’s Columbus statue in Schenley Park. A representative could not be reached for that group.

Cathy Costa Fusca, Mr. Costa’s cousin and the artistic director of the parade for the past 29 years, said the committee has been discussing changing the parade for three years, and it has been inviting other, non-Italian cultural groups to be part of the parade since 2011. There will be more than a dozen other cultures represented Saturday.

But she and Mr. Costa said they and other committee members were particularly struck by the turnout of different cultural groups for the city’s Bicentennial Day Parade — in celebration of the city’s 200th birthday — last year.

“There were a lot of ethnic groups that came forward that we did not know about who wanted to display their culture,” Mr. Costa said.

Jennifer Whitmer Taylor, assistant professor of public history at Duquesne University, said the committee’s debate about what to do is good to see.

“I think what’s important here is that there’s a conversation going on,” she said, though she expects that not everyone will be happy by any change to a 32-year-old tradition, let alone debating the merits of Columbus’ impact or importance to history.

“If you challenge that, there are always going to be people who oppose that change in the narrative,” she said. “And we’re hearing that more loudly now than we have in the past.”

Ms. Christy said that beyond renaming the parade, her group would like to see the city’s Columbus statue taken down.

“I don’t think it represents the values we want to espouse in Pittsburgh,” she said.

There has not been a broad discussion of that, as there has been with another contentious statue, of songwriter Stephen Foster in Oakland, not far from the Columbus statue.

But Mr. Costa said he wants people to remember thatthe Columbus statue was “funded in the 1950s by Italian immigrants and an Italian organization, the Sons of Columbus, who were trying to celebrate their heritage.”

“Italian-Americans have always looked up to Columbus because he led the way,” said Mr. Costa, whose grandparents were Italian immigrants to the United States.

Changing the parade will be tough enough, he said.

“A lot of the older organizations would probably question it,” he said. “But — how can I say this — a lot of the older organizations aren’t as vibrant as they once were, and we’ve got to respond to the newer generation.” His cousin agrees. “Things always change,” she said.

And with people protesting the parade, “It would be a win-win.”

“We want to help people to think about the role of Columbus. He was a violent person who doesn’t reflect Italian pride or Italian heritage.” — Carlin Christy, an organizer with the advocacy group WWHAT’S UP?! Pittsburgh