What to Know
- A Connecticut city on Sunday dedicated a new monument to immigrants to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus that was removed in 2020 amid nationwide criticism of the European explorer's role in enslaving and killing Native Americans.
- The statue in New Haven's heavily Italian neighborhood of Wooster Square depicts a young immigrant family as they arrive in America with just a handful of suitcases.
- The monument "Indicando la Via al Futuro" (Indicating the way to the future) was made by local artist Marc-Anthony Massaro and comes as a replacement for the previous Christopher Columbus statue that was removed in 2020 after a local high school student petitioned to take down the century old monument because of the national criticism of European settlers who enslaved and killed Native Americans.
A Connecticut city on Sunday dedicated a new monument to immigrants to replace a statue of Christopher Columbus that was removed in 2020 amid nationwide criticism of the European explorer's role in enslaving and killing Native Americans.
The statue in New Haven's heavily Italian neighborhood of Wooster Square depicts a young immigrant family as they arrive in America with just a handful of suitcases.
The monument "Indicando la Via al Futuro" (Indicating the way to the future) was made by local artist Marc-Anthony Massaro and comes as a replacement for the previous Christopher Columbus statue that was removed in 2020 after a local high school student petitioned to take down the century old monument because of the national criticism of European settlers who enslaved and killed Native Americans.
The Columbus statue had stood in the park for more than a century.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
Massaro, the grandson of Italian immigrants, says the piece is meant to honor immigrants who arrived in the 1900s, transforming countless cities across the Northeast, including New Haven, which is home to Yale University.
News
At the heavily Italian neighborhood of Wooster Square, this new monument honoring immigrants connects more with the people according to its creator. "My sculpture is intended as a gesture of respect for my grandfather’s generation,” Massaro said in a video on the Wooster Square Monument Project's YouTube page.
A generation of immigrants, not only from Italy but from everywhere in the world, who laid the foundations of opportunity for their descendants.
Marc-Anthony Massaro, artist
Since the 2020 killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, which started a more vocal protest about racism in the United States, many controversial landmarks have been recalled by citizens for perpetuating these ideas.
Columbus’ sailing expeditions opened the door to centuries of exploration, conquest and settlement of the Americas by Europeans that included establishment of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the killing of scores of Native Americans.
