Reconsidering the Past, One Statue at a Time

The killing of Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis almost immediately re-energized that movement, as demonstrators chipped away at a 52-foot Confederate obelisk in Birmingham, Ala., and toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, in Richmond, Va. Cities across the country are now debating the merits of such monuments with renewed vigor.

The statues debate has once again focused attention on Columbus, the voyager who emerged as a symbol of Italians’ contribution to American history in the late 1800s, a time when discrimination against Italians was rampant. But many in recent days are also talking about how his arrival signaled the beginning of a violent European colonization that resulted in a cross-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide and displacement of many Indigenous peoples.

Columbus statues from Boston to Miami have been brought down or defaced by protesters. A large Columbus statue was defaced with red graffiti in Kenosha, Wis., and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York defended a towering monument to the explorer at Columbus Circle in Manhattan.

“I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support,” the governor said this week. “But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian-American contribution to New York. So for that reason, I support it.”

In Philadelphia, supporters went to court to try to block the removal of a Columbus statue without a public hearing after another statue, of Frank L. Rizzo, a former mayor who was known for racist and discriminatory policies, was removed by the city this month in the middle of the night. “You just can’t let the mob rule,” said George Bochetto, a lawyer who filed the petition for an emergency injunction.

Tensions over the Oñate monument came to a boil Monday night in Albuquerque, when dozens of protesters engaged in shouting matches, some seeing the brutal Spanish governor as a symbol of massacre and repression, while others saw him as a positive symbol of a time before Anglos came to dominate the Southwest. Then a group of white militia members, on a self-appointed mission to protect the statue, showed up with guns.

In the mayhem that ensued, a man was seen assaulting female protesters by violently shoving them to the ground. At one point the same man used pepper spray on protesters. As protesters pursued the assailant to drive him out of the crowd, the man pulled out a weapon and shot one of the protesters, prompting police officers in riot gear to rush in.