Over the last several years, issues surrounding Columbus Day have continued to stir debate. You have those who feel it should be replaced with a different Italian figure, such as Mother Cabrini. Others feel it should be completely abolished and replaced with Indigenous People’s Day. Still others say there’s no reason to have any celebration at all; that it is passe. However, when I ask people why it was celebrated in the first place, I am usually met with a blank stare.
The holiday that is so quickly disregarded is because of what happened on March 14, 1891 in New Orleans.
1891 New Orleans Lynchings
On the evening of October 15, New Orleans police chief David Hennessy was shot by several gunmen as he walked home. Before he died, Captain William O’Connor claimed the chief responded, “the dagos did it.”
Now, Southern Italians and Sicilians had been settling in New Orleans for quite some time and the locals were not fans of their new neighbors. They were taking on low-wage and sharecropper-type jobs after the Civil War was over and plantations were in need of cheap labor. They were not welcome in society and were often recipients of discrimination and abuse. New Orleans Mayor Joseph Shakspeare declared them “the worst classes of Europe: Southern Italians and Sicilians … the most idle, vicious and worthless people among us … filthy in their persons and homes … without courage, honor, truth, pride, religion, or any quality that goes to make a good citizen.”
Local papers such as the Times-Democrat and the Daily Picayune freely blamed “Dagoes” for the murder. According to a news article, Mayor Joseph A. Shakspeare told the police to “scour the whole neighborhood. Arrest every Italian you come across.” Within 24 hours, 45 people had been arrested. Most were eventually released for lack of evidence…