Of Course, Chicago Should Put Columbus Statue Back On Display

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered crews to temporarily remove statues of Christopher Columbus as hundreds of protesters packed the street outside her Logan Square house.

They called the mayor's decision a victory. To others, it was capitulation.

One thing’s for sure. It’s not over.

Lightfoot had reasons for the pre-dawn removal of monuments that Italian American heritage groups covet with pride. For one, our city needs time to talk about how to better memorialize the shared civic heritage of a segregated city that, like America, has always been at war with itself.

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That public conversation would be about more than the 33-foot-7-inch Columbus statue in Grant Park, where protesters who tried to topple it violently clashed with police, or any other single monument.

But the future of that statue is a good place to start.

Some folks say they're going to hold Lightfoot to her promise that the removal was “temporary” without considering that mayor also said, “until further notice.”

And some activists involved in the bloody protest that included attempts to tear the statue down never want the city to have to look at it again.

So, the question lingers: What are we going to with the bronze Columbus that towered over Grant Park since Italy’s fascist leaders celebrated its unveiling at the 1933 World’s Fair?

The most truthful, lasting tribute to this moment in our city’s history would be to put it back on public display — lying on its side, scratched, scarred and spattered with spray paint — as a permanent reminder that during Chicago’s worst year, its people were forced to look with fresh eyes upon false idols that decorate our city.

Columbus is a false idol of a proud immigrant group that needed a hero. For a long time in American history, Italian immigrants were the targets of white supremacists. John Parker, the man who perpetuated the 1891 lynching of 11 Italian Americans accused of murdering a police officer, and who later became Louisiana’s governor, said Italian Americans were "just a little worse than [African Americans], being if anything filthier in [their] habits, lawless and treacherous."

Honoring the Italian-born explorer was a political peace offering in response to the mass lynchings in American history that nearly brought the U.S. to war with Italy.

Last year, there was an intriguing story in The New York Times about “How Italians Became White.” The story cited historian Danielle Battisti, who wrote that by honoring the myth that Columbus “discovered” an already inhabited North America, the U.S. government allowed Italian Americans to proudly claim to the title of America’s first immigrant — yet another myth about the explorer's connection to a nation that did not exist in 1492.

Columbus wasn't really an American hero. There's no reason to celebrate his mythology anymore.

That empty pedestal in Grant Park leaves a spot to honor someone whose true story better embodies the proud, hardworking heritage of Italian Americans who helped build Chicago.

And laying the bronze statue of Columbus in the dirt — where everyone can see — would mark a moment in history when our city was honest with itself.

Removing a bronze statue — like letting go of a false idol — is neither a victory nor a capitulation.

It's a sign of growth. And we should all have to look at it, a monument to how far we've come.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots.

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