Growing in their racial and cultural understanding of one another, City Council has consulted Akron’s Italian and Black communities as it again debates whether to right a historic wrong by removing Columbus Day from the local calendar.
The legacy of Italian explorer and statesman Christopher Columbus, whose 1492 landing in the Americas was declared a national holiday by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1934, fell below reproach to many by the summer of 2017. So did City Council’s behavior when it entertained and rejected a proposal to rename the holiday in favor of honoring Native Americans.
