Rethinking Columbus: Truth, Memory, and What We Choose to Celebrate

Today isn’t about canceling history — it’s about finally telling it honestly.

By Dr. John Petrone

The Story We Were Taught

As someone who holds a degree in Political Science and History and who taught U.S. and high school World History, Government, and Economics for years before becoming a high school principal (later a university professor of education), I’ve seen firsthand how national myths are built — and how hard it is to dismantle them.
For generations, schoolchildren recited the same verse: “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
It sounded noble. Heroic. A man with courage and vision who proved the world was round and discovered a “New World.”
But almost none of that is true. Columbus didn’t prove the Earth was round — educated Europeans already knew that. He didn’t discover America, it was already home to tens of millions of Indigenous people, organized into vast nations and civilizations that had thrived for thousands of years. And he never set foot on what is now the United States. His voyages landed in the Caribbean — in the Bahamas, Hispaniola, and Cuba — where he claimed lands that were already inhabited, imposing Spanish rule on sovereign peoples.

What Really Happened

Columbus’s journey did change the world but not in the way the textbooks once implied. His 1492 voyage began a centuries-long collision of continents that would devastate the Americas.
He enslaved Indigenous people. He forced them to mine for gold and punished those who failed to meet quotas by cutting off hands or worse. The diseases that arrived with his ships smallpox, measles, influenza wiped out up to 90 percent of the Indigenous population within a century. Whether or not he understood the biology, he fully understood the brutality.
Even in his own time, Columbus was not universally celebrated. He was arrested and removed from his post as governor of Hispaniola for tyranny and corruption. The romanticized version of him as a saintly explorer came later crafted by European empires hungry for heroes and by Americans seeking national myths that sanitized conquest.

Why the Myth Endured

The story of Columbus became the story of progress and like many national myths, it left out those who paid the price. By turning him into a symbol of discovery and destiny, we justified colonization, expansion, and erasure.
For Italian Americans, Columbus Day took on another meaning pride and belonging in a country that had once despised them. That story deserves compassion, too. But pride built on myth can only hold so long before truth demands its place. The truth is that we can honor the contributions of Italian Americans without glorifying the man whose actions marked the beginning of enslavement and genocide in the Western Hemisphere.

To My Italian American Friends

I understand why Columbus became a symbol of pride for so many Italian Americans. When immigrants from Italy arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were met with prejudice, violence, and exclusion. One of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history targeted Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891. In that atmosphere, Columbus seemed like a beacon an Italian hero connected to one of the world’s great turning points.
But the truth is that Columbus doesn’t represent the best of Italian heritage he represents the worst of European imperial ambition. The real pride of Italy isn’t found in conquest or colonization; it’s in art, science, faith, family, and creativity. The Renaissance gave us Da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, and Caravaggio, people who expanded humanity’s vision through brilliance, not brutality. Those are the Italians whose legacy truly honors the heart of Italy.
Columbus’s story, when stripped of myth, is not one of discovery but of cruelty — enslavement, forced labor, and mass suffering. To cling to that as a symbol of pride is to confuse heritage with hero worship. Italian Americans deserve better icons. And they have them.
They can celebrate Mother Cabrini, the first American saint, who dedicated her life to immigrants and the poor.
They can celebrate Enrico Fermi, who changed physics forever.
And here in America, Italian Americans have given this nation far more meaningful heroes than Columbus ever was. They can celebrate Frank Sinatra, whose voice and charisma defined a generation and made Italian American culture mainstream.
They can celebrate Joe DiMaggio, who embodied grace, humility, and excellence in the national pastime.
They can celebrate Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett, artists whose talent transcended generations.
They can celebrate Ella Grasso, the first woman elected governor in her own right, and Geraldine Ferraro, who broke barriers for women everywhere.
They can celebrate Martin Scorsese, whose films became timeless reflections of conscience, loyalty, and identity.
They can celebrate Lady Gaga, who has used her global platform for art, empathy, and equality.
These are the names that define Italian American greatness creators, innovators, and humanitarians who rose above prejudice and helped shape the moral and cultural fabric of this country through talent and courage, not conquest.
To honor your heritage is not to deny history. You don’t have to defend Columbus to defend your culture. True pride comes from honesty from the courage to face the past and rise above it. When someone says, “Columbus is our hero,” my answer is simple: He’s not your hero. He’s your history lesson. And history lessons aren’t meant to flatter us they’re meant to teach us who we are and who we must never become again.

What We Should Be Celebrating

The growing shift toward Indigenous Peoples’ Day is not about erasing history it’s about reclaiming it. It’s about telling the full story: that the Americas were not “discovered” but invaded; that Indigenous nations have survived centuries of colonization; and that their languages, cultures, and sovereignty persist.
It’s about acknowledging that history is not a static tale written by the victors, it’s a living memory carried by those who refused to vanish. Across the continent, Indigenous communities are teaching their own histories, restoring traditional lands, revitalizing languages, and fighting for representation. That is something worth celebrating.

What We Can Do Today

We can start by learning the truth and teaching it to our children.
We can stop repeating myths that glorify conquest.
We can listen to Indigenous voices, support Native authors, artists, and educators, and acknowledge whose land we live on.
We can remember that history isn’t sacre honesty is.
Today isn’t a day to mourn or to erase. It’s a day to wake up. To see the difference between discovery and destruction, between myth and memory, between pride and truth.
Columbus changed the world but not for the better. What we do with that knowledge now will determine whether we’ve learned anything at all.

P.S. Release the Epstein Files.