Why He Got Credit

Columbus became a symbol long after his death. Italian immigrants in the late 1800s, facing intense discrimination and even mob violence, embraced him as proof that Italians helped build America. Their decades of advocacy paid off in 1934, when he was named to a U.S. federal holiday under President Franklin Roosevelt.

Cities have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day. The pendulum is swinging, not to erase Columbus but to tell the full story of a man who was lost, wrong, and brutal toward the people he encountered.