Italian American Trivia

The Real Story of Columbus Day

It began with the murder of David Hennessy, a police chief in New Orleans who was shot while walking home from work. As he lay dying, a witness asked him who did it. Hennessy reportedly whispered a slur for Italians.

At the time, New Orleans was home to more Italian immigrants than any other Southern state. Nearly 300,000 Italian immigrants, mostly Sicilian, moved to New Orleans, earning the French Quarter the nickname “Little Palermo.”

Police rounded up hundreds of Italians. Nine men were arrested on suspicion of a connection to the murder. When news spread that the trial had resulted in six not-guilty convictions and three mistrials, the city went wild. A group of armed men stormed the prison and grabbed the eleven men. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, lynched and hanged.

No one was ultimately charged in Hennessey’s murder and the lynch mob went unpunished.

The act of vigilante justice was decried by the Italian government, which demanded the lynch mob be punished.  To placate Italian Americans, ease diplomatic tensions and mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage  President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 declared Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration.

On Columbus Day 1942, Franklin Roosevelt announced the removal of the designation of Italian Americans as “enemy aliens”

But it wasn’t until 1966 when Mariano A. Luccao, and founder of the National Columbus Day Committee lobbied to make Columbus Day a federal holiday. The legislation was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on June 28, 1968, to be effective beginning in 1971