Christopher Columbus is in trouble. Pressure to remove Columbus monuments most recently dates from 1992 during the preparations for the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage. This movement to remove monuments dedicated to the explorer accelerated in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
According to many contemporary historians and writers, Columbus was the first of many to exploit and destroy civilizations that already existed and flourished in the Western Hemisphere. In current times, as of 2020 and before, a general consensus felt that Columbus was guilty of kidnapping, enslavement,
and brutality directed at the indigenous peoples of the New World.
In contrast, there are defenders of Columbus who also point to his positive qualities – his
seamanship, courage, perseverance, and diplomatic skills that enabled him to conceive and lead his first epochal voyage of discovery. These positive qualities are what have been memorialized in hundreds of monuments, place names and art works.
State and local governments, courts have decided, have the right to decide what civic monuments they want to display on public land. They can add or remove a monument as a function of their constitutional right to free speech. Any limitations on governmental speech are political. The government answers only to the voters when it decides whether it likes or doesn’t like a public monument installed on public land by a prior government.
The biased political power of those living during these times today have made their stories and values heard to all who will listen. The struggle to cancel and erase important moments in history prevail. Contemporary power is now determining what is or continues to be memorialized in public monuments in the United States of America. The murder of George Floyd successfully energized the anti-Columbus monument movement and resulted in political decisions to remove monuments. It will take equally energized political movements to decide what replaces the missing Columbus monuments and what values we wish to those monuments to symbolize. Christopher Columbus, remember him? Or will you?