Arts Today vol. 5.6

Page 22

Columbus

Exposed How will you observe Columbus Day? Will you be one of the millions that will go shopping downtown or at a mall, taking advantage of the many holiday sales? Will you attend a parade or participate in any of the scores of celebrations around the nation? Or will you join the thousands of Native Americans to protest the holiday?

The statue of Christopher Columbus at the entrance to Tower Grove Park in the center of St. Louis has stood there for more than 130 years. There has been discussion recently about removing the statue after the removal of a Confederate monument in nearby Forest Park. Tower Grove Park announced a commission to study the statue of explorer Christopher Columbus statue commission term recommendations to the commissioners.

that it will form presence of a Columbus. The will issue longpark’s board of

Martin Gardner once wrote, ‘biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of ridiculous kings and queens, compulsive voyagers, and ignorant generals. The men, who radically altered history, are seldom mentioned, if at all’.

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Cities have been named Columbus or Columbia in Connecticut, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, etc. We have a federal holiday informing us when we’re to celebrate Christopher Columbus’ birthday.” There are statues of Christopher Columbus all over America. His portrait has been on postage stamps. There is a huge figure of Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain towering above the ground floor rotunda of the California Statehouse in Sacramento. Our history books tell us that ‘In 1492, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue’. Actually, Columbus never saw or set foot on the mainland of the New World until his third voyage 6 years later on August 5, 1498. Historians note that Columbus landed on the island of

Hispaniola, site of present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and the native people maintain that he was responsible for the systematic murder of nearly nine million indigenous people over the course of 40 years after his arrival there in the

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