Akron could abolish Columbus Day
Akron could soon abolish Columbus Day — what some in a deeply divided America equate to yet another celebration of slavery and white oppression.
City Councilman Russ Neal is proposing that the Oct. 12 holiday honoring Christopher Columbus’ fateful and first American landing in 1492 be changed to Indigenous People’s Day to celebrate Native American culture while confronting the atrocities committed by European explorers who came for gold and returned with ships full of slaves.
“What it’s doing,” Neal said of his plan to introduce a resolution next month, “is it’s correcting the wrongs of the genocide that took place.”
From their school days, most connect Columbus to the discovery of the Americas, though he never actually stepped foot on what is now the United States. Neal, however, wants current and future generations to know that Columbus also kicked off the eradication and subjugation of what he found to be a trusting and generous people.
City offices close on Columbus Day, a federal holiday. Beyond that, there’s little impact to daily life.
But Neal’s proposal could alter the way teachers deliver instruction around the second week of October by focusing more on the Native American perspective.
Five states — Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, South Dakota and Vermont — do not celebrate Columbus Day, some replacing it with the more innocuous “Discoverers’ Day.” Other states celebrate Columbus by name but have added holidays in September like American Indian Day, first signed into law in California in 1968 by then Gov. Ronald Reagan.
If Neal’s law is approved, Akron would be the second Ohio city to shun Columbus after leaders in Oberlin voted Monday to abolish Columbus Day, spurring protest and support from locals there.
The re-examining of Columbus Day is the latest example of locally elected officials trying to right the wrongs of American history. But deciding how to remember sordid and celebrated legacies has the potential to divide, as well as heal.
“I think it’s the last thing we need to be doing these days,” said Councilman Brice Kilby, a retired Akron schoolteacher. “In my opinion, it’s bad public policy, because it really doesn’t accomplish anything but make a few people happy and a few people angry.”
In the days and weeks after a white supremacy demonstration turned deadly in Charlottesville, Va., a crescendo of voices has demanded the removal of anything linked to the advocacy of slavery.
But some see Confederate statues as markers of Southern heritage, just as local Italians view Columbus Day as a celebration of theirs.
“To me, [Columbus Day] means the formation of an Italian founding of America,” said Harry Ciccolini, the president of the Council of Italian American Societies of Summit County, an organization formed in 1947 “for the purpose of celebrating Columbus Day.”
The group’s mission has shifted from honoring Columbus to broadly appreciating Italian culture. But on Oct. 12, as they have for decades, they’ll gather at Akron-Fulton International Airport to lay a wreath below a bust of Columbus, then hold mass at St. Anthony’s Church before dancing and feasting in celebration. “That’s a very big tradition,” Ciccolini said.
“I guess the main concern is that, yes, we want to celebrate Columbus, and we are not in favor of any wrongdoing he did,” Ciccolini said. “But it’s more about celebrating our Italian heritage and what it means for us Italians growing up in America.”