Posted 10/1/2026
A statue of Christopher Columbus was erected outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House in March 2026. It is a 13-foot replica, created from pieces of a monument toppled in Baltimore on July 4, 2020. People in Baltimore had thrown the statue into the Inner Harbor while protesting against racial injustice and the legacy of colonialism, seeing the figure as being associated with the genocide and exploitation of Indigenous peoples. Protests were sparked by the murder of George Floyd earlier that year.
A statue of Christopher Columbus, in Columbus, Ohio, was removed in July of 2020 as well, as the mayor at the time, Andrew Ginther, said it represents "oppression and divisiveness." Statues of Columbus were also removed in Chicago; Port of Spain, Trinidad, where it stood for over a century; and another was toppled in St. Paul, Minnesota. We may have left out a few places, but hopefully, you get the idea. Italian Americans have filed lawsuits to keep statues in place or have them reinstalled, citing their cultural heritage and calling their removal discriminatory.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer that sailed under the flag of Spain on a quest to establish a profitable trade route and was in search of gold and spices. He set sail with three ships—the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—on a voyage that lasted 5 to 6 weeks. He first made landfall in what is now called the Bahamas, which was known to the indigenous Taino, whose ancestors were the Arawak people, as Guanahani. Columbus is largely credited with the discovery of the Americas, even though people were already here. Columbus began to immediately enslave the people. There were an estimated 1,000,000 Taino individuals at the time of his arrival on October 12, 1492. By 1514, the population had dwindled to roughly 32,000 people: by 1565, only 200 remained... Click Here.
The Tainos were victims of slavery, torture, maiming, rape, murder (by hanging, shooting, beheading, being burned alive, etc.), starvation, and most forms of brutality conceivable. Some committed mass suicide to avoid life with the Spanish invaders. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 marked the beginning of a catastrophic decline for the Taino, driven by European diseases, forced labor, and violent suppression. 85% of the Taino people were wiped out in under three decades. This was the beginning of the "Great Dying" in the Caribbean following Columbus' arrival, where the indigenous population dropped from roughly 60 million to 6 million within a century.
Some hail Christopher Columbus as the father of a genocide in which entire civilizations became extinct. Columbus was arrested by Francisco de Bobadilla in August 1500 and returned to Spain in chains for some of his crimes. Despite this, Columbus is praised for his significant contributions to European culture, spreading colonialism throughout the known world. This ushered in a new age for European settlers and eventually led to the founding of the United States of America. Various sites are named for Columbus, with over 6,000 places bearing his name, to include the District of Columbia, our nation's capital. Christopher Columbus has even been honored with a federal holiday that falls on the second Monday of October—Columbus Day. Columbus Day coincides with Indigenous People's Day.
