Remembering Columbus, Forgetting Ethnicity: Memory, White Supremacy, and Italian American Identity in the American South

Abstract

Following news of the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, protesters around the world organized to highlight police brutality against Black and Brown people. Alongside a list of demands including the defunding of police departments, protesters also called for the removal of public symbols of white supremacy. Although protesters took aim primarily at statues memorializing Confederate leaders, sites commemorating Christopher Columbus drew similar criticism. In Richmond, Virginia, demonstrators not only toppled the statue to Columbus; they lit it on fire and dumped it in nearby Fountain Lake. While the decision to submerge the Columbus statue in water might be interpreted as a convenient performative ploy, this article suggests that the action is one suffused with meaning. Forging a narrative linkage between Columbus and Confederate leaders, protesters cast the monuments commemorating these historic actors as analogue artifacts of racial intimidation. This article argues, however, that this narrative washed away—in both literal and figurative terms—a complex history of Italian immigration to the city, assimilation, and the process of “becoming white.”