COLUMBUS DAY

A Sicilian-American Day Of Remembrance.

Nothing Less. Nothing More.

MIKE CARAVELLA

October 12, 2026

Tip Here Please and Thank You!

Did that story entertain you? Then please tip this former Bartender.

Want Updates? Join our Mailing List:

Share Share That's Fair:

The greatest mass lynching in American history is of… wait for it… Sicilian-Americans, in New Orleans, on March 14, 1891. Columbus Day was the name, and political band-aid, given to this day of remembrance by then President Harrison and the American government, from fear of war with the Kingdom Of Italy. A government that then tried its best, and succeeded, to bury the real shameful roots of this holiday for over 100 years. They are more than happy to watch it get supplanted by modern mis- and disinformation, looking righteous for another group of people they terrorized, while continuing to shit on mine instead of taking real ownership.

Then-U.S. Civil Service Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt gloated about the slaughter in a letter to his sister, stating, “Monday we dined at the Camerons; various dago diplomats were present, all much wrought up by the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. Personally I think it rather a good thing, and said so.” The political establishment didn't just tolerate the slaughter of my people. They celebrated it. But Sicilians, “Dagoes” as we were called then, are more like Rocky Balboa than they are Christopher Columbus. We take the shot, go down, and then get up, dust ourselves off, and continue to press forward with pure grit and determination.

On March 13, 1891, the day of the acquittals, the local elite took matters into their own hands. But this wasn’t just about blind racist hatred. It was the age old story of an inside job to seize money, control, and power. A group of prominent businessmen and politicians calling themselves the "Committee of Fifty" were desperate to take control of the rapidly expanding New Orleans waterfront, eyeing the lucrative shipping lanes and premium dock space owned by wealthy Sicilian importer Joseph P. Macheca. Using the acquittals as a front to eliminate their commercial competition, they took out front-page advertisements in the local newspapers, calling on the public to assemble the next morning at the foot of the Henry Clay Statue on Canal Street to "remedy the failure of justice." On March 14, a mob of thousands—led by these same corporate executives, lawyers, and politicians—marched directly to the Parish Prison. They didn't break in quietly. With the full compliance of the local government, they “forced” the prison gates open, and the slaughter began.

So when I was standing there a few months ago with my family on that hallowed ground in Tremé in what is now part of Louis Armstrong Park, looking at the plaques that finally exist after 130 years of silence, I felt the weight of it. Not just anger. Not just sadness. Something deeper. Pride. I understand the Native people’s plight completely. And they deserve their own day of remembrance. Just not this one. The same grit that got those eleven men through whatever hell they had lived before that morning is the same grit that got my people through every other shot this country has taken at us, and still does. And like Rocky Balboa, we keep getting back up. Columbus Day was never about the ships, or Columbus himself. Fuck him. It was always about us. And we’re still here.

"I don't care how many dago guinea wop greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!" - John Marley “Jack Wolz” - THE GODFATHER

My family and I were just down in New Orleans, which I love, for work, but also made time for play, as you always should when in The Big Easy. All around, you see the jazz, the jambalaya, the bourbon, and the beignets. But what you won’t see is the ghost of the old Parish Prison on the edge of Tremé. But we went looking for it. Standing on the pavement where that mob of thousands tore through the gates, I looked at the new commemorative plaques finally put up by the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy. It took over 130 years for a piece of metal to officially speak the truth on that ground. 130 years to acknowledge the eleven men who were acquitted by an American jury, only to be butchered by an American mob while the police stood by and watched.

The fuse was lit on the night of October 15, 1890, when New Orleans Police Chief David Hennessy was ambushed and shot down while walking home. As he was dying, he supposedly whispered "Dagoes". That was all that was needed to unleash a xenophobic, anti-Sicilian dragnet. They rounded up hundreds of innocent Sicilian immigrants overnight just for existing. By the time they brought nineteen men to trial in early 1891, the state’s "evidence" was such an absolute joke that the jury returned outright acquittals and mistrials. But the New Orleans elites didn't care about the law. They wanted blood.

And that is where the U.S. government dropped the ultimate double whammy on my people. When President Harrison scrambled to quiet the Kingdom of Italy, he didn't name a day to honor the eleven innocent men slaughtered in New Orleans. Or even mention the event. Instead, he went with Christopher Columbus, a polarizing, to say the least, Northern Italian explorer who shared zero cultural or historical reality with the dirt poor, southern Sicilian immigrants running for their lives in the streets of Louisiana. They used a historical symbol of a holiday to sanitize a slaughter. Ensuring that for the next century, school kids would learn a fairy tale about three ships instead of the truth about an American butcher shop. And then the Christopher Columbus history shook out to where it is today, and they are trying to erase us again. We got fucked twice.

I’m a proud Sicilian-American. Something that did not come easy for me. I grew up in the shadows of the Mafia in my family, so I understand some of the misconceptions of my heritage better than most. I‘ve always hated being associated with that, so I ran from my heritage for a large portion of my life. Largely because it was wrongly celebrated by the bulk of my family, friends, neighbors and community in New York City. People who watched the movies a few too many times, needed to draw attention to themselves, and were more than willing to put on the clown suit that society, to this day, is all too ready to costume us in.

That shifted for me when I became a parent, and needed to teach my children to be proud of who they were. That had to start with some introspection. So instead of focusing on the bad in our culture, I focused on the good. And there is a lot.

Inside the walls, it was an absolute execution. The prisoners were hunted like animals through the dark corridors and open courtyards. Some were shot point-blank as they begged. Others were beaten with clubs and rifle butts until they stopped moving. Two were dragged outside, already half-dead, and strung up from lampposts while the crowd cheered and spat. Eleven men—husbands, fathers, brothers—left broken and bleeding on the ground or swinging in the air. For more than a century, this event on the edge of Tremé was deliberately left out of the history books. An event the system tried to erase.