November is Native American Heritage Month and a good time to recognize the rich history of Native Americans including not only those who trace their origins to the continental United States but to the Caribbean as well. This seems useful to keep in mind as Italian Americans living in the Baltimore area, including Little Italy, continue to ponder what to do with the octagonal pedestal that sits, now fenced off to the public, in a small plaza across from Pier 6. That pedestal once supported a statue of Christopher Columbus. It was torn down and dumped in the Inner Harbor by protesters at the height of the George Floyd unrest in the summer of 2020.

A lot of Americans, not just those with Italian heritage, grew up honoring Columbus. But in more recent years, the 15th-century explorer’s legacy has been more closely scrutinized and found wanting — particularly his involvement in the slaughter of innocent Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. Baltimore’s protest was hardly unique. Other communities, Boston included, have seen Columbus statues similarly vandalized. And so Columbus has lost stature, tied not only to his own atrocities but more broadly (if indirectly) to the violent mistreatment of minorities by law enforcement in more recent years. This new perspective has been a discomfiting change to many.

Still, it’s disappointing to hear that some in Little Italy continue to advocate for a return of Columbus to his 50-year-old waterfront pedestal after his four-year absence or even to keep the base as-is to remember the loss of the statue. The good news, as recently reported by Ed Gunts in the online Baltimore Fishbowl, is that one possibility is to create a new sculpture of an “anonymous Italian immigrant” and the area would no longer be called Columbus Plaza but perhaps “Little Italy Piazza” or the equivalent. Honoring former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or her father, former Baltimore Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., has also been discussed but they are somewhat less likely possibilities.

Given the hard feelings that many in the community felt after the statue’s end — and efforts in the immediate aftermath to install an identical monument — we think the plan to honor Italian heritage in some manner is an excellent one. And given the link between Columbus and genocide and the slave trade, we strongly suspect future generations in Little Italy and beyond will be grateful for this New World course correction.