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A Picture of Book of Christopher Columbus by David A. Adler in HD

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Columbus Day - Learning about Christopher Columbus

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HelloKids # Great Man 25 # Christopher Columbus # 크리스토퍼 콜럼버스 # 이탈리아 제노바 출신의 탐험가이자 항해가 크리스토퍼 콜럼버스 # Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa (Italy). Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents.

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Newsela | PRO/CON: Should we celebrate Christopher Columbus?

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Newsela | Primary Sources: Columbus' Letter to the King and Queen of Spain

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Columbus Day, the second Monday in October, is a nationally recognized holiday.

But it's not recognized in Los Angeles, where I live. The City Council recently voted to get rid of Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day, commemorating "indigenous, aboriginal and native people."

This movement sees Columbus as a symbol of destruction, and thus not to be celebrated.

This new day was first adopted in Berkeley, California in 1992. Since then, it's spread across the nation with increasing speed, as more than 60 cities from Maine to Washington have supported the idea.

While there is plenty to criticize about Columbus, and what followed his arrival, I think this movement is missing the point.

History, in fact, is the story of conquest. We may not like it, but it's our shared heritage. Not just Europeans, but everyone. The point is not to excuse the worst that happened, but to understand it.

It is true that the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, which starts with Columbus, was very ugly, and involved a lot of violence. But that, for better or worse, is how history worked pretty much everywhere for thousands of years. (Though it should be noted a large portion of the deaths of Native Americans was due to disease, not violence--an inevitable consequence of Old World illness in New World soil. Europe, Asia and Africa, of course, suffered through numerous plagues of their own.).

History, in fact, is the story of conquest. We may not like it, but it's our shared heritage. Not just Europeans, but everyone. While there is only limited knowledge of what pre-Columbus America was like, it did feature war, slavery, torture and plenty of brutality.

The point is not to excuse the worst that happened, but to understand it. And to see that it is not the essence of Columbus, but rather part of the times. With all that, there are reasons to celebrate Columbus Day.

-- Celebrate Italians (though there is some question as to whether Columbus would have considered himself an Italian -- he was long thought to have been born in Genoa, then an independent city-state in what is now Italy, though everyone from Greece to Portugal to Poland have claimed him as their own). Nevertheless, Italians claim him today and Columbus Day is a good chance to recognize what Italians have contributed to America, and the world.

-- Celebrate the spirit of exploration. It took tremendous bravery to sail off into the unknown. One of the best parts of our humanity is that sense of discovery.

-- Celebrate the spread of Western civilization. Lately a lot of people have been putting down Western civilization, but its spread is one of the greatest things that's ever happened to humanity.

The West has its good and bad points, but its best ideas-equal rights, freedom of religion, free speech, due process, open scientific inquiry, property rights and so on-have helped all people who adopt them. (Not that the West solely had these ideas, but it put them in a package that wasn't generally available elsewhere.)

Indeed, the promise of the West has delivered freedom and bounty such as humanity has never known.

And, while we celebrate Columbus Day, we can learn from history and also take time to honor Native Americans. They were the original immigrants to the New World, and deserve their remembrance.

Once we do this, Columbus Day can be a truly inclusive holiday. It needn't be a battleground, but a chance to celebrate the best within us.

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Why celebrate Columbus Day? Here are a few reasons

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Columbus Day, the second Monday in October, is a nationally recognized holiday. But it's not recognized in Los Angeles, where I live. The City Council recently voted to get rid of Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day, commemorating "indigenous, aboriginal and native people."

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In this 2014 piece, " Columbus Day, or 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'?," Jake Flanagin writes:

It's a controversial day with a turbulent history. "This historically problematic holiday - Columbus never actually set foot on the continental U.S. - has made an increasing number of people wince, given the enslavement and genocide of Native American people that followed in the wake of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria," writes Yvonne Zipp for The Christian Science Monitor. "The neighborhood wasn't exactly empty when he arrived in 1492."

Back in 1992 - 500 years after Columbus's fateful landing in the Caribbean - Berkeley, Calif., was the first American city to repurpose his day in honor of Native America. "Talk of an alternative Columbus Day dates back to the 1970s," writes Nolan Feeney for Time, "but the idea came to Berkeley after the First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in Quito, Ecuador, in 1990. That led to another conference among Northern Californian Native American groups." Attendees brought the idea in front of the Berkeley City Council, after which they "appointed a task force to investigate the ideas and Columbus' historical legacy." Two years later, council members officially instated Indigenous Peoples' Day in lieu of Columbus by a unanimous vote.

The California state senator Lori Hancock, then the mayor of Berkeley, remembers encountering Italian-American pushback similar to that in Seattle. "We just had to keep reiterating that that was not the purpose," she told Mr. Feeney. "The purpose was to really affirm the incredible legacy of the indigenous people who were in the North American continent long before Columbus."

And it's worth noting that not all Italian-Americans tote Christopher Columbus as a symbol of cultural pride. "Those supposed leaders in the Italian-American community who oppose Indigenous Peoples' Day on the same day as Columbus Day do not speak for all of us of Italian descent," writes Margaret Viggiani of Seattle in a letter to The Seattle Times. "They certainly don't speak for me. I, and many others, agree wholeheartedly with the long-overdue change and applaud the Seattle City Council for doing it."

"Why should anyone take pride in honoring the life of a man who brought misery and degradation of the native peoples of this hemisphere?" she asks. "It's time to give due to the important and overlooked accomplishments of the many indigenous people who inhabited this hemisphere long before it was named the Americas."

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

- Why does the United States celebrate Columbus Day? In your opinion, is the holiday problematic?

- What do you think of the argument for changing the name and focus of the holiday from Columbus to "indigenous peoples"? Does it dishonor the heritage of Italian-Americans, a group that has also faced discrimination? Or does it serve to recognize and affirm the overlooked history and contributions of Native Americans?

- Do you think changing the name of the holiday can change the way indigenous peoples are treated and remembered in United States history? Or is this move largely symbolic?

- Do you think the United States should continue to recognize Columbus Day as an official holiday? If so, why? If not, should we celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day instead - or something else?

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Should the United States Celebrate Columbus Day?

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In this 2014 piece, " Columbus Day, or 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'?," Jake Flanagin writes: It's a controversial day with a turbulent history. "This historically problematic holiday - Columbus never actually set foot on the continental U.S.

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I'm spending my Columbus holiday this year in New York, participating in the parade sponsored by Italian-Americans who proudly celebrate the courage and skill of the Genoese explorer who transformed the world.

The fact that it was an Italian who introduced the Americas to the rest of the world (and vice versa) meant a lot to Italian immigrants who made their own treacherous journeys here some four centuries later, and that included my family. I think about my mother's grandparents making their way down the hills of Sicily, to a port they'd never seen, through strange waters, to arrive days later in a foreign country for which no technology could prepare them. Columbus Day for me recalls my childhood with my dad and his family, from the region of Campania, Italy, who struggled so that we might all achieve the American Dream.

That dream would not have been possible without the man born Cristoforo Columbo, who while worthy of celebration by all Americans, is uniquely so for Italian-Americans because he represents our ancestry. Celebrating Columbus Day was, and continues to be, a way of saying "We're proud to be Americans, and equally proud of our Italian heritage and ancestry."

Like many other immigrant groups, we Italians weren't always welcomed with open arms at first. We fought stereotypes then and now. But the potential for equality for all, in a nation that fights hard to achieve it every day, drives us forward. That, and the principle of freedom, beckoned to my dad when he first encountered the Statue of Liberty. It was thrilling, but his family knew its promise was conditional: It was up to us to become a part of American society and show that we were prepared to make our own unique contributions to its vitality.

Today, Columbus Day is unjustly under assault in some quarters. City councils in some cities have voted to replace it with "Indigenous Peoples Day," or something similar, and many students are taught nothing of his contributions. Thankfully, it remains a federal holiday and a state holiday as well in much of the country.

A recent Marist Poll shows why: Those campaigning against Columbus Day are in the minority. Marist shows that even with all of the attacks on Columbus, 57 percent of Americans believe it's a good idea to have a holiday named for him. Only 29 percent believe it's a bad idea. The reason is clear: three-quarters (76 percent) believe that Columbus and other historical figures should be judged by the standards of conduct during the time they lived in rather than by the standards of today. It's important to understand why we must fight back on attempts to erase his just place in history.

Even by today's standards, and despite what you might hear, Columbus was a man whose approach to the native people he met during his first voyage was exemplary, taking delight in their friendliness and happy demeanor. He was firm in his orders to his men not to abuse them in any way, and severely disciplined those who disobeyed. He was less pleased with those from other tribes he encountered later, such as the warlike Caribs, who practiced canabalism. Had he lived long enough to witness the large scale human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs, he would doubtless have been even less pleased.

It turned out that while millions of people had developed distinct civilizations before Columbus dared to cross the Atlantic Ocean barrier that separated them, human nature was much the same in each place. Slavery was a well-established practice in the Americas long before Columbus arrived. The Spanish monarchs, on the other hand, forbade slavery of the indigenous people of the Americas, granting them same rights of citizenship enjoyed by the people of Spain.

Today's largely secular society often has trouble understanding that among the most important motivations of both Columbus and the Spanish monarchs was a desire to evangelize those they encountered elsewhere in the world to Christianity. Deeply-felt religious beliefs and aspirations appear again and again in Columbus's diaries and other journals and documents. Columbus had lived for a time in a Dominican monastery, and his Catholic faith was deep and heartfelt. The author of Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem, Stanford emerita professor of anthropology Carol Delaney, cites abundant evidence that Columbus hoped and believed that his voyages of discovery would produce wealth that could finance a follow-up of the Spanish Reconquista (the fall of Grenada had occurred early in 1492) in the Holy Land.

Extremists on both the left and right have been attacking Columbus since the mid-19th Century, when Friedrich Engels (coauthor with Karl Marx of The Communist Manifesto) condemned him as an early capitalist. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan attacked Columbus because they had broadened their hatreds to include Catholics, and were in the forefront of immigration laws passed in 1921 and 1924 that effectively cut off immigration entirely. Italians, of course, were both Catholic and made up a large portion of recent immigrants. But Columbus remained popular in middle America, and celebrating his explorations became common ground where Italians came into their own in American society.

Presidents have lauded Columbus for well over a century. President William Howard Taft personally reviewed a huge parade at the unveiling the Columbus Memorial in front of Washington's Union Station in 1912. President Ronald Reagan declared him: "a brilliant navigator, a fearless man of action, a visionary who opened the eyes of an older world to an entirely new one. Above all, he personifies a view of the world that many see as quintessentially American: not merely optimistic, but scornful of the very notion of despair."

And on Columbus Day last year, President Barack Obama said, "More than five centuries ago, one journey changed the trajectory of our world - and today we recognize the spirit that Christopher Columbus's legacy inspired."

That's the real Columbus, the man we celebrate today. And this man who practically defines our understanding of the spirit of discovery is himself worth rediscovering, and worth teaching, with both truth and objectivity.
Jeanne Allen (@JeanneAllen) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform. If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.

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I'm spending my Columbus holiday this year in New York, participating in the parade sponsored by Italian-Americans who proudly celebrate the courage and skill of the Genoese explorer who transformed the world.

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Provide your input about Christopher Columbus's impact on America and whether or not we should celebrate the holiday.