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Je Suis Charlie
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together." — Joseph Pulitzer

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Goodbye, Columbus: A mirror for America
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the Wednesday 10-16-2019 Sparks Tribune / Expansions in blue

The New York Times wrote about me and my family last Sunday.

It took me awhile to get up the courage to read editorial board member Brent Staples' tour de force "How Italians Became 'White.' "

Local Sons of Italy chapters are understandably in high dudgeon that Columbus Day has been renamed "Indigenous Peoples Day" in many venues, including Reno. It's been their community's annual occasion to be recognized and have some fun. That's OK, but not only did Christoforo Columbo not discover America, "Columbus Day" started as a one-time-only sop to the Italian government that was about to go to war with the United States in 1892.

Southern Italians were dissed in Italy just as black people were in America and remain so today. The whites of the north thought that the southies had to be part black because they lived so close to Africa. That contrived mythology followed the immigrants to the New World and found welcoming narrow minds ready to believe it here in Jim Crow America.

My mother's side of the family came from Palermo, Sicily. My father was born on the heel of the boot. I am one of "those people."

President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed Columbus Day as a one-time national celebration in 1892 because of a bloody New Orleans lynching that killed 11 Italian immigrants. Italiani were inflamed worldwide. Unlike former slaves, the victims fortunately had a whole country to bring political pressure on their behalf. The Italian government demanded reparations and President Harrison paid.

Much of the US had bought into the myth that Italians, like the freed slaves, were "black brutes," "links in a descending chain of evolution" and "sub-human assassins by nature." (The Times actually wrote such in the 1880s. I credit them for having the chutzpah to remind us of their sins.)

Southern Italians were "low" and "ignorant" according to the fake news Times of another time. Italian immigrant children were "utterly unfit --- ragged, filthy and verminous -- to be placed in the public primary schools among the decent children of American mechanics." (Remind you of anyone?)

Italians, like blacks, were thus deserving of death by rumor and mass hysteria. Or just plain entertainment for the lighter-skinned anointed of the Lord. So 11 were hung in New Orleans, a city founded by immigrants.

President Harrison's 1892 Columbus Day proclamation "opened the door for Italian-Americans to write themselves into the American origin story," Staples wrote, casting Columbus as the first immigrant although he never set foot in North America.

A grand jury investigation termed the Louisiana lynchings "praiseworthy." Historian Barbara Botein described it as "possibly one of the greatest whitewashes in American history." It's not alone.

WHITEWASH, WYOMING. Pressure has been building on UNR President Marc Johnson to act on increasing white nationalism at his school. Both Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Reno-Sparks NAACP President Lonnie Feemster have asked to be added to a petition admonishing him.

Johnson can act assertively and positively by using the UNR football team, elegantly and painlessly. Thursday, Oct. 17, is the 50th anniversary of The Black 14, a stain on Wyoming's history rewritten by a racist football coach.

On 10-17-1969, Wyoming's 14 black football players asked for a meeting with their coach before a home game against Brigham Young University. They were concerned about the Mormon Church's no-blacks priesthood policy and past incidents at BYU games. Before they uttered a word, the coach announced that he was pulling their scholarships and expelling all of them. (See the summer edition of The Crisis, the official NAACP magazine.) They would have played the game but never got a chance to say a word. The coach made it his business to smear their names in perpetuity, painting himself as a hero against black brutes.

UNR faced such a crossroads in 1946 and chose not to play at Mississippi State which told the Wolf Pack to leave its black players home. (Barbwire Nov. 6, 2011)

President Johnson should simply request that his players and coaches talk to people in Wyoming when they venture there on Oct. 26. Tell them about racism past and present at the two schools. Dolores would call it a teaching moment.

VOTE FOR DOLORES. TWICE. The late NAACP matriarch Dolores Feemster (1929-2018) and her family name will compete with each other for two new high school labels. The Washoe County School District school naming committee will meet Nov. 6 to recommend finalists. Support the Feemster of your choice by e-mailing <BoardMembers@washoeschools.net>

A newly endowed scholarship in Mrs. Feemster's name will be announced at Saturday's NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner at the Grand Sierra. Details and reservations at RenoSparksNAACP.org/ A few presidential candidates might even show up. I even invited Czar Donaldov.

TOO MUCH AIN'T ENOUGH. The Oakland Raiders have inked a promotional deal with a major southern California tribal casino. So, Nevada gives the bandidos a billion-dollar stadium and all the free infrastructure that goes with it and they sell the sizzle to one of Gomorrah South's biggest competitors. Somebody order more street lights in front of the new sporting palace so that Mark Davis and crew can better compete with the LV working girls.

REST IN PEACE, BRAVE WARRIOR. Word came this week that Mitsuye Endo has died. A 22 year-old Japanese-American typist during the post-Pearl Harbor hate hysteria, she became "the chief plaintiff in the only US Supreme Court case to successfully challenge Japanese incarceration during WW2." (NY Times Oct. 14)

Czar Donaldov has cloned her successors ten thousand times over. May her spirit guide the wayward waifs of the southern crossing.