Why Should Delaware Care?
In 2020, officials across the United States removed dozens of statues of historical figures from public property following protests over racial injustice. In Wilmington, those included the statues of Caesar Rodney and Christopher Columbus. Recent advocacy from Italian American residents for the famed explorer has since revived the debate, leading the Wilmington City Council to consider its stance on the statue’s potential return.
Six years after Wilmington took down a statue of Christopher Columbus, the sculpture is again exposing tensions in the city over who gets to determine which symbols to publicly embrace.
During a city council meeting last week, members of Wilmington’s large Italian-American community stated that the Columbus statue should return to public display – either at the city’s Father Tucker Park or at its previous location along Pennsylvania Avenue. They argued that Columbus was a historical figure who, while flawed, sparked pride within their community.
But, in response, a mixture of older Black residents, younger white residents and Black city council members stated that Columbus should not be publicly celebrated, citing his role in slavery and in the colonization of the Americas.
During the meeting, Albert Greto – an attorney who is leading a broader Italian-American community coalition – said he wants Wilmington to turn over the statue to his coalition. Then, if the city determines the statue will not be placed at a public site, he said his group will restore it to private property.
During his public comment, Greto also acknowledged that Columbus had enslaved people.
“I think there’s no dispute in that,” he said. “Be that as it may, there’s good and bad in everyone.”
After nearly an hour of public comments and council debate, the Wilmington City Council voted down 6-3 a resolution that would have formally opposed the statue being placed on public land, including city parks.
The resolution had been introduced by City Councilwoman Shané Darby.
The council members opposed to the resolution, such as Councilwoman Christian Willauer, said they wanted to allow different communities to be able to celebrate their cultural symbols.
“I believe our communities are better when we give each other space to express ourselves according to our own traditions, as long as those traditions are not about taking something away from someone else or putting someone else down,” Willauer said.
For months, multiple Italian American community groups have been organizing to push the city to return and re-erect the Columbus statue, which once stood on a strip of land at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Franklin and 13th streets.
Many have said that Father Tucker Park, which sits across the street from the St. Anthony’s Lodge No. 3012 in the Little Italy neighborhood, would be an ideal location.
The recent advocacy comes amid an ongoing national conversation about the kind of monuments that should be displayed in public. On the other side of the ideological spectrum from Darby, the Trump administration last month removed over two dozen panels at the President’s House site in Philadelphia that exhibited stories of people enslaved by President George Washington.
The city and others sued the Trump administration, and last week a federal judge ordered the exhibits to be temporarily restored until the pending case is resolved.
The removal of the panels were part of broader efforts by the Trump administration to examine monuments and other historical markers to ensure they are not displaying content that “inappropriately disparage[s] Americans past or living.”
The conversation
The Christopher Columbus statue was originally erected on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1957.
The Christopher Columbus Monument Committee, a group composed of Italian Americans in the community, had raised $40,000 to commission the statue. Committee members also maintained it over the subsequent decades.
Then, in 2020, the administration of then-Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki contacted Mike Panfile, the head of the Columbus Monument Committee, asking for permission to take down the statue amid protests against racial injustice that occurred following the police murder of George Floyd.
The committee agreed and the city then took down the statue. At the same time, Purzycki also had taken down a statue in the city central square of Delaware Founding Father Caesar Rodney.
Following the removals, Purzycki said he wanted to hold more discussions with the community about the public display of historical figures and events.
“We cannot erase history, as painful as it may be, but we can certainly discuss history with each other and determine together what we value and what we feel is appropriate to memorialize,” Purzycki said in a public statement in 2020.
More than five years later, Darby introduced her resolution, opposing the effort to restore the statue to a public place. She said she supports the statue being returned to private property, but believes that the statue shouldn’t be placed on land that taxpayers are funding.
“Globally, he just represents something so terrible and bad. In a predominantly Black and brown city, we shouldn’t have to pay to maintain him at a city park,” she told Spotlight Delaware.
The council heard about 40 minutes of public comments before discussing the measure.
More than a dozen residents, many of them older, came in opposition to the resolution. Several referenced the discrimination that Italian Americans faced after immigrating to the United States. Some described Columbus as a “sign of hope” for their community. Others characterized him as someone who “connected two great continents and paved the way for others to follow.”
“Ask yourself, how would you feel if a council member presented false toxic narratives designed to malign MLK’s character and campaigned against the legacy,” city resident Rob Savarese said to the 13-member city council, which is made up of nine Black members.
Like Savarese, most of the city residents who spoke during the public comment period opposed Darby’s resolutions.
Those who supported it emphasized Columbus’ role in colonization and slavery. Some even urged their Italian-American neighbors to choose another historical figure to honor.
“Every kind of disgusting thing that could happen happened on his watch,” city resident Baba Hamine said. “Christopher Columbus did that to my ancestors.”
Wilmington’s Columbus statue is currently being stored in a facility that “specializes in high-dollar art and sculptures,” according to Daniel Walker, deputy chief of staff for Mayor John Carney.
Walker declined to disclose the exact location, but he emphasized that the mayor’s office has made multiple offers for the community to see and pick up the statue.
Carney’s office had not been involved in conversations involving the statue, according to Walker. Asked whether Carney was in support of re-erecting the statue, Walker said the community needs to have that discussion with the City Council.
In a more recent interview after the city council vote, Walker said that Carney’s office will be in discussions with the city council and members of the community to find a path forward.
Walker noted that placing the Columbus statue in a public park would not require City Council approval through an ordinance. Still, he said ordinances have been used in the past to take similar actions.
The resolution voted down by the City Council last week was only a declaration emphasizing the position of the public body.
Councilmembers Willauer, Chris Johnson, Alex Hackett, James Spadola, Nathan Field, and Zanthia Oliver voted against it.
Councilmembers Darby, Coby Owens, and Council President Trippi Congo voted for it.
Councilmembers Michelle Harlee and Latisha Bracy voted present.
Later, Johnson, who represents Little Italy and stood as the main opponent to Darby’s ordinance, told Spotlight Delaware that if an ordinance were required to put the statue back up, he would be willing to propose it.
He said it could also include a broader monument to highlight the history and achievements of indigenous communities.
A saint? A sinner?
Amid protests by organizations like Black Lives Matter amid the George Floyd killing in 2020, Wilmington’s Columbus statue was one of at least 33 statues around the nation that were taken down, as well as other confederate monuments, as reported by CBS News.
Individuals throughout Delaware and other states have spoken out about Columbus’s efforts to colonize land occupied by Indigenous people, which some say led to his role in a “genocide” of the native population.
The first contact between Europeans and the indigenous civilizations that occupied the Americas occurred after Columbus arrived in 1492 on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, which is currently Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
A report from the College of Charleston’s Lowcountry Digital History Initiative asserts that Columbus directly captured about 500 Taino slaves to be sold in Spain. About 200 of them did not survive the voyage, according to the report.
By the year 1600, the arrival of Europeans led to the deaths of roughly 55 million indigenous people, according to a 2019 study published by the Quaternary Science Reviews Journal.
During a community meeting at the St. Anthony’s Lodge No. 3012 in Little Italy last week, residents pushed back against criticism of Columbus, with some saying claims of genocide were myths.
Greto’s coalition gave a presentation discussing the history of Columbus, the oppression faced by Italian Americans, and how the celebration of Columbus Day, which was made a national holiday in 1937, gave his community hope and pride.
About 70 residents were present, including Johnson, the councilmember who represents the area. Darby did not attend the meeting.
During the presentation, Peter Frattarelli, cultural director of Societa da Vinci, argued that Columbus’s actions did not fit the definition of genocide.
Frattarelli also argued that most scholars agree the decline of the Taino people was primarily due to European diseases, not systematic extermination. He also framed Columbus’s violence as retaliatory warfare.
Finally, Frattarelli also strongly pushed back against claims that Columbus was a sex trafficker of young girls.
“Was he a saint? Was he a sinner? I’m going to tell you he was closer to a saint than a sinner,” he said.
