Students in Portsmouth were on a quest to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day. It was reported in Seacoast Online that they were successful, but unfortunately, the students provided ill-informed reasons for making this change.
The Portsmouth City Council, first voted to include Indigenous Peoples Day, but that has changed due to pressure by the high school students in Portsmouth.
Indigenous Peoples Day is in and Columbus Day is out:
The students cited reasons that paint Christopher Columbus in a negative light, but shouldn’t they look to historical experts to determine if any of this is accurate?
Carol Delaney is a professor emerita at Stanford University, and has written articles and books shedding light on the real Christopher Columbus. While she has no problem supporting Indigenous Peoples Day, she argues against removing Columbus Day for good reasons.
In her book, “Columbus and the quest for Jerusalem,” she talks about how many people do not know that much about Columbus. Through her research, she explains how Columbus had a favorable impression for many of the Native Americans he met. He also instructed his commanders not to abuse, but to trade with them. She reports that at one point, Columbus hung his own men who committed crimes against the Native Americans. She researched Christopher Columbus by reading from his writings, and documents from those who knew him.
Critics of Columbus tend to reference Francisco Bobadilla, his chief political rival. But Columbus spent many years defending, and refuting, Bobadilla’s accounts.
Another defender of the indigenous people, Bartolome de Las Casas, admired Columbus, and expressed this in his “History of the Indies.”
The Dartmouth Review came to this conclusion:
It is a mistake to conflate Columbus with the atrocities of colonialism that succeeded his voyages. Columbus Day should neither be a moment of absolute praise or condemnation, but an opportunity to appreciate mutual discoveries between European and Indians, learn from mistakes that were made, and celebrate moments of coexistence.
Too much of Social Studies today is focused on activism. Students are not educated on many of the subjects they cover because the focus is now on on activism and community organizing. High school children are not scholars of history, but instead are faithfully carrying out today’s approach to civics education: keep students illiterate and use them as political mules instead.
Nearly a century ago, the Ku Klux Klan targeted Catholics, including Italian-Americans. One of the Klan’s tactics was the denigration of Christopher Columbus and suppressing the holiday. I am afraid the politics of hate are behind the continued attempts to attack and defame Columbus today.
The Klan sought to oppose Columbus from coast to coast, including the following attacks:
*In the 1920s, the Klan attempted to remove Columbus Day as a state holiday in Oregon.
*In 1924, the Klan burned a cross to disturb a Columbus Day celebration in Pennsylvania.
*A Klan publication, “The American Standard,” ran an article titled “Columbus Day, A Papal Fraud” in 1924.
*In 1927, the Klan successfully opposed the erection of a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Va., only to see the decision to reject the statue reversed.
Are these high school students revising history, and community organizing the same way the KKK does when it comes to Christopher Columbus? Is this promoting their own prejudices and perspective of history, rather than presenting actual facts reflected in primary and original sources? This now has many residents questioning the kind of education the students are receiving at Portsmouth High School. These children are not scholars of history, but appear to be following in the footsteps of the KKK.
Is it that Columbus was a man of faith in God? Samuel Eliot Ellison, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer said this about Columbus:
This conviction that God destined him to be an instrument for spreading the faith was far more potent than the desire to win glory, wealth and worldly honors, to which he was certainly far from indifferent.”
Was it Columbus’s desire to spread Christianity among the natives he encountered a problem for the Portsmouth students as it was for the Ku Klux Klan?
Harsh critics like Howard Zinn, another debunked critic of Columbus, consider Christians as oppressors of the weak.
In the National Catholic Register, there is a report on a book written by Mary Grabar, a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. Grabar….”makes a noble attempt to combat Zinn with her new book Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing a Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America (Regnery History, Washington DC, 2019).”
Grabar set out to refute Zinn’s claims that portrays Christians and capitalists as oppressors, beginning with the Native Americans. Zinn spurred the movement to abolish Columbus Day, replacing it with Indigenous People’s Day.
You can see that Christian bigots like the KKK and Howard Zinn have pushed false narratives in their attempts to abolish Columbus Day. They did not seek to do this while providing accurate accounts of historical events, but used propaganda instead.
Where does that leave the rest of us as we witness high school students in Portsmouth engaging in a similar agenda?
PORTSMOUTH — Acknowledging the history of city land, Portsmouth officials have pivoted to permanently recognize Indigenous Peoples Day and remove Columbus Day from the city calendar.
A two-plus-year push from past and present Portsmouth High School students in We Speak, a club focused on social justice, achieved its goal Monday night. The Portsmouth City Council approved the club’s request to remove Columbus Day from the city’s October calendar and solely recognize Indigenous Peoples Day.
A vote by the previous City Council in 2021 recognized Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples Day jointly on the calendar. But that wasn’t good enough, the social justice warriors at Portsmouth High School sought to remove Columbus Day from the calendar.
Charles Griffin wrote as a guest columnist for Seacoast Online opposed the removal of Columbus Day for good reasons: We can and should celebrate both Columbus and Indigenous Peoples Day:
1. When the request to rename the second Monday in October Indigenous Peoples Day was before the prior Council, the city attorney stated that since Columbus Day is a state holiday as set forth in NH RSA 288:1, the council could not change the name of that holiday without enabling legislation, which did not exist. As far as I am aware, nothing has changed in that regard.
2. When each of the current city councilors took his/her oath in January, he or she swore to faithfully discharge all of the duties incumbent upon him or her in part agreeably to the laws of the state of New Hampshire. Any councilor voting to rename the holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day would be violating his/her oath of office.
Those who have researched Columbus using unbiased historical documents and information do not bring a bias viewpoint to this important debate. Those who have some sort political bias grounded in Christian bigotry have a different outcome that they would like to force upon schools and communities.
In this Portsmouth journey, one has to wonder, if the students failed to conduct the proper research, if they have some sort of religious bigotry driving their mission, or both?
Either way, we can be sure that the Ku Klux Klan will be celebrating the efforts by the Portsmouth students and City Council members. That’s the unfortunate part that illiterate social justice warriors who are ignorant of historical facts and information. The Portsmouth students just did what the KKK wouldn’t have been able to do in Portsmouth, had they shown up with their torches and hoods.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES (I bet the students never read)
The Smithsonian Magazine:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-very-first-americans-may-have-had-european-roots-5517714/?no-ist
The Very First Americans May Have Had European Roots
Some early Americans came not from Asia, it seems, but by way of Europe
The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/radical-theory-of-first-americans-places-stone-age-europeans-in-delmarva-20000-years-ago/2012/02/28/gIQA4mriiR_story.html
Radical theory of first Americans places Stone Age Europeans in Delmarva 20,000 years ago
The National Geographic:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0903_030903_bajaskull.html
Controversy erupted after skeletal remains were found in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996. This skeleton, estimated to be 9,000 years old, had a long cranium and narrow face—features typical of people from Europe, the Near East or India—rather than the wide cheekbones and rounder skull of an American Indian.
http://sciencenordic.com/dna-links-native-americans-europeans
Ancient DNA reveals that the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans had European roots. The discovery sheds new light on European prehistory and also solves old mysteries concerning the colonisation of America.
