Fate of city's Christopher Columbus statue remains unclear despite heartfelt debate
About 40 people gathered Tuesday evening in a fourth-floor banquet room at Columbus State Community College, breaking into small groups at round tables and prompted to talk about topics like family, feelings, respect, authority vs. responsibility.
But the real reason everyone was there — though it seemed to come up only in passing from time to time during the two-hour meeting — was to address the question: What is the city of Columbus to do with its massive statue of Christopher Columbus, the city's namesake, and a 7,000-pound bronze gift from the residents of Genoa, Italy?
The statue used to sit prominently in front of City Hall for 65 years, but was suddenly stored away out of the public eye on July 1, 2020, after racial justice protesters and some rioters who clashed with Columbus police over the death of George Floyd Jr. just over a month earlier began targeting the statue as a symbol of racism, slavery and genocide.
The city has been ever-so-slowly and carefully crafting a plan that might eventually return the statue to a less-prominent public or private space, surrounded with contextual information that would lay bare all of the reasons that Columbus, while an early European explorer and major historical figure, shouldn't be considered a role model.
"What I hope will happen is that the city will take into account that the impact of whatever they do in either direction is much deeper than just aesthetics," said Kimberly Brazwell, who led the meeting on behalf of Reimagining Columbus, a project funded by the city and the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project.
The project is committed to creating new public art and commemorative spaces that reflect the city’s collective history, values, aspirations. "And to reckon with our city’s namesake, Christopher Columbus," Brazwell said.
What is Christopher Columbus really known for?
City officials need to "realize that there are generations of stories that are tied in any direction as to whether it (the Columbus statue) should be up or not," she said.
For some people, the statue represents a "pain point," making it complex to create context around it if it should be brought back on display someplace, Brazwell said. The context has to incorporate people's stories, and their perspectives, "their context for how they're processing history."
The program dialogue used by Reimagining Columbus didn't seek to simply ask the participants: How do you feel about bringing back the city's statue?
To get the discussions going, provocative topics were thrown out, like how might you describe the essence of your culture at its worst and at its best? Or how might colonization have impacted the way you understand or experience your cultural 'roots'?
Columbus State's Columbus statue never came up
Although the gathering was held at Columbus State, it never came up that community college is hiding a Columbus statue, too. Its 20-ton statue was removed just ahead of the city's statue in 2020, but for identical reasons.
But there was a table at the back of the meeting room for participants to leave written thoughts on whether the city's Columbus statue should be brought out of storage, including what would be an appropriate space to display it if it were.
"The decision has to ultimately go back to the city on what are you going to do," Brazwell said.
City's Italian-Americans fear they're being erased
To members of the city's Italian community, the gift from the residents of Genoa, Italy, Columbus' sister city, was more than just a statue of the city's namesake. It was a coming of age.
Landa Masdea Brunetto's father and grandfather hurriedly worked through the night in the family's machine shop to fabricate specialty bolts and washers unexpectedly needed by the next day to erect the newly arrived statue of Christopher Columbus outside Columbus City Hall.
Masdea Brunetto has been attending all the meeting held on the matter, and is hopeful that the statue can come out of exile.
Masdea Brunetto noted that Columbus was chosen for Italian Americans as their cultural symbol by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892, following the 1891 New Orleans lynchings of 11 Italian-Americans and immigrants by a mob, the largest mass lynching in U.S. history.
"If it was Marconi, no one would be saying anything. The statue would still be here," Masdea Brunetto said. " ... The Italians are being erased, and no one is standing up for us."
The immediate plan for now is to continue with the public meetings, where the stories and experiences are gifts to be exchanged, helping to define and refine what a statue is supposed to mean.
"Partly what's happening is whose family story is going to win," Brazwell said.
Tension leads some to decline publicly identifying themselves
"Statue yes or no? To me that's a waste of time," said one woman hanging out at a table as the two-hour meeting was breaking up for the night. She declined to give her name, but said she participated in the protests that led to Mayor Andrew J. Ginther to announce that the statue would be removed as "one more barrier to meaningful and lasting change to end systemic racism.”
"If, now, if they're saying we're going to put it back up, what that says to me is that was all bull----," the woman added of Ginther's announcement.
That prompted a middle-aged man at the table, who had previously disclosed that he's an Italian-American, to jump in on behalf of Columbus. "He's a man. He had a heartbeat. He got in a thing the size of a trailer home and went across the ocean. It is intellectually dishonest to judge people from another generation."
Or in this case, from 1451.
Even if the city is named after him (which at least one man at the event indicated also may need to change), why have a statue of him?
Because Columbus "had a lot of guts," responded the middle-aged man, who also declined to give his name, saying anti-statue protesters had visited his house after he wrote a letter to the editor on the subject.
Such is the tension caused by a statue of an almost 600-year-old figure that people on both sides at a public meeting thought twice about giving out their identities when speaking publicly, for fear of repercussions.
@ReporterBush
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Fate of city's Christopher Columbus statue's still unclear
