Columbus Day SCOOP: A Forgotten Story

SmartHERNews

Jenna Lee

News, Education

4.9 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A new look at a 100+ year-old holiday.

0:00: Taking a closer look at Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples' Day.

3:40: When did we start celebrating Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples' Day?

6:25: The line that sparked today's Special Report: " In fact, Columbus Day was created by President Harrison in 1892 in response to the anti-Italian motivated lynching of 11 Italian Americans in New Orleans in 1891" (President Biden's Proclamation on Columbus Day, 2022).

8:27: Broadly speaking, what was going on in America during this time?

12:01: Zooming in on New Orleans, the lynching of 11 Italian Americans in 1891 and what followed.

21:00: In 2019, the first female Mayor in New Orleans apologizes on behalf of the city to the families impacted by this lynching.

24:00: Sharing a personal story, reflecting on the press, acknowledging different stories at the same time and why it matters.

28:12: Conclusion: "So I stand here with you today, and I issue this formal apology for ugliness that is 128 years old and I ask you to continue to stand with me against anti-immigrant violence, against division, and to stand up for what I've coined, a city of 'Yes,' and for the idea that we have a responsibility to be inclusive, to be intentional and to be the kind of people that our children are not apologizing for 128 years from now. That's what this is about." – New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, April 12, 2019.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to a special, special report for Scoop. I'm so glad to see you today. We are going to be back to our regularly scheduled programming as we normally do, which is to take a look at the news for the week ahead and really pull out the things that you should know and why they matter. And we'd certainly have a lot
0:21.2	of developing stories and a lot of different topics. We have our eyes on all of that. But for many of you,
0:25.9	this is actually a holiday. And it may look different depending on where you live or what you choose to
0:30.9	celebrate. And I stumbled upon something last year related to this particular holiday, which I will name and get to in a
0:38.6	moment, that came too late. It was part of a presidential proclamation, one sentence that completely
0:45.9	changed what I thought about this holiday and introduced me to a whole new story. And so finally,
0:52.3	I had to wait a year. I had to wait a year for the holiday
0:55.3	to come back around again. But it gives us an opportunity to dig in and look at something
1:00.2	potentially new to you as well. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a little
1:03.8	breath, take a little step back from the news, but maybe learn something together. So today in
1:08.5	the United States, for many, there is a celebration of Columbus Day.
1:12.8	Columbus Day is an official federal holiday. Depending on your state or where you live, you may
1:17.5	celebrate Columbus Day, but you may also celebrate Indigenous People's Day. Sometimes states
1:23.3	actually recognize both days, but the official federal holiday remains Columbus Day.
1:28.1	And in order to be a federal holiday, it actually has to go through an act of Congress
1:32.9	that the president then signs into making it an official federal holiday.
1:38.6	But there also can be proclamations that presidents can make.
1:41.9	They can make those presidential proclamations on regular federal holidays, but they can also make proclamations about holidays in general.
1:49.8	And President Biden actually became the first president in American history in 2021 to make
1:55.2	an official proclamation on what is typically celebrated as the federal holiday for Columbus Day, where he proclaimed it as well
2:03.4	Indigenous People's Day. So we have these two different identities, if you will, for this particular
2:10.2	day in America. And I'm sure it goes without saying that over the years, there has been
	...

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