Discovering that Christopher Columbus is persona non grata

In September 1928, the leaders of a burgeoning immigrant community in eastern Pennsylvania met in their usual gathering place, the Italian Home on South Fifth Street, to talk about raising money for a gift for their new city.

They decided to canvass the Italian neighborhoods of Easton for small “subscriptions” to fund a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. “Judging from the reports of interest and support expressed thus far, the monument will do honor to the donors and be a credit to the city,” the Easton Express reported.

Within months, the Columbus committee would commission a well-known Philadelphia sculptor to cast a 9-foot likeness of the Genoese explorer.

But the plans would soon unravel under attacks from the Ku Klux Klan and other groups who labeled Columbus an “alien” and insisted that a statue of him “should not be placed on an American school ground.”

The sculptor, Giuseppe Donato, would become a leading voice against such “ridiculous criticism.” Easton’s Italian newcomers would persevere, both against the prejudice aimed at them and the financial strain of raising $13,000 — about $180,000 in modern dollars — from a poor community struggling through the Depression.

Their gift still stands, considered to be one of the Columbus statues in the country worth seeing, though it’s tucked away in a spot that’s not the one intended by many families who gave their nickels and dimes for their present to Easton.

Fewer than 400 Italians lived in Northampton County before 1900, but by 1930 the number had increased to 4,500, and most of the immigrants chose Easton, about 60 miles north of Philadelphia, as their home. Most were farmers from Sicily, but in Easton they found jobs in the rail yards and quarries and as masons and factory laborers.

The Italians encountered the same suspicion and prejudice that greeted the wave of German immigrants who had arrived in the city the previous century. A flare-up of anti-Italian feeling occurred in late September 1917 — a cross burning, the city’s first. It supposedly was sparked by the fatal stabbing of Joseph Fritzo, an Easton grocer who had gotten into a fight with three off-duty soldiers, the Express reported.

Still, the Italian community wanted to celebrate its heritage and honor its new country, and it chose Columbus as the symbol to link its native land with its new one. On April 22, 1929, seven months after the initial meeting at the Italian Home, the Columbus committee got approval from the Easton school board to place a statue in front of the high school.

But opposition arose, and the school board then started deliberating whether the statue would be a good fit for the school. Six weeks later, Donato visited Easton for a public meeting to discuss the location of the statue. “It is believed that the question will be settled to the mutual satisfaction of both groups,” the Express reported on Sept. 21, 1929.

But, according to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, Donato said the KKK was pressuring the school board to backtrack on the statue, and he quoted a letter from Klan No. 265:

“At a recent meeting, Easton Klan, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, went on record as opposed to the action of the members of the Easton School Board … and [will] use any honorable method to prevent the placing of a monument or statue of any alien, especially one who never set foot on the soil of this country of ours, and never did anything for the benefit of the country or any public school.”

At a meeting on Nov. 13, 1929, the school board reversed itself and withdrew its approval for a statue because of “sharp and widespread division of sentiment” in the community.

The Columbus committee continued its quest and eventually found allies on the City Council. On Aug. 5, 1930, the council granted permission to put a statue in Riverside Park, overlooking the shores of the Delaware River.

This month, Mayor Sal Panto Jr. and a small group celebrated Columbus Day by raising American and Italian flags in the town square, then proceeded to the statue in the park for a short ceremony honoring the explorer and the Italian immigrants who sacrificed to create the monument to him.

“They all donated, literally pennies and nickels,” said Panto, whose four sets of great-grandparents all came from Sicily to Easton. “I remember them talking about it as a source of pride.”

But his family never talked about the controversy over the statue. Antonia Grifo’s family also never mentioned the opposition to erecting the statue at the high school, or the compromise that put it along the Delaware.

But for Grifo, the spot by the river is perfect for a Columbus statue.

“It’s a natural,” she said. “It’s next to water.”

wscheihing@mcall.com