Park Square is freed of that Emancipation statue

In order for the Brahmins to make themselves look better to themselves and lay claim to be the real founders of America, not some Italian guy working for Spain, there was a series of historical "evidence" items claiming that the Vikings and not some southern Europeans discovered America.

Great little stories like the Vikings strolled up the Charles and had an encampment at Norumbega. Vikings building a stone tower in Newport, etchings in rocks, etc. to prove that it was true Norseman and not some 28 generation descendent of a Roman farmer who discovered this great White Protestant Nation or so they thought.

Besides Ericson looking at all of the trash in the Muddy River, did you know the Longfellow Bridge has Viking boat motifs to tie into the Norumbega theory?

Were there Vikings in North America? Probably in Newfoundland on a seasonal basis as shown through research at L'Anse Aux Meadow. Big deal - companies set up and close locations all the time. There are a lot of myths out there like St. Brendan sailing in a small boat out of Tralee all the way across the Atlantic. Let's emphasize myth.

As far as your OH BY THE WAY ERICSON WAS A CATHOLIC fit above, so was nearly everyone else technically in Western Europe outside of parts of Spain and the northern extremities of Scandinavia at that time. You know until that Luther guy came along a few years after Columbus.

So, yes to answer you, the local "it was northern Europeans and not southern Europeans discovered America" thing was in full swing at the time to counter the Eye-talian story was an attempt to discredit those decadent "swarthy" people with their good wine, perfect disco records, great food, and nice weather.

It is well known that once upon a time Italian (and Portuguese and Spanish) immigrants where not considered “white enough” for Protestant white society. This idea is extensively talked about in sociology and history classes and is neither new nor controversial.

Brent Staples’s article “How Italians Became White” does a nice job outlining the issue using the backdrop of the lynching of Italian immigrants in 1891 New Orleans.

Racist dogma about Southern Italians found fertile soil in the United States. As the historian Jennifer Guglielmo writes, the newcomers encountered waves of books, magazines and newspapers that “bombarded Americans with images of Italians as racially suspect.” They were sometimes shut out of schools, movie houses and labor unions, or consigned to church pews set aside for black people. They were described in the press as “swarthy,” “kinky haired” members of a criminal race and derided in the streets with epithets like “dago,” “guinea” — a term of derision applied to enslaved Africans and their descendants — and more familiarly racist insults like “white n*****” and “n***** wop.”

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/columbus-day-ital...

No one is arguing that Italians are “people of color” today, but it’s silly to deny that white immigrants from Italy (and Ireland) faced the same virulent racist abuse and obstacles that is often faced by today’s immigrants from places like Latin America and Asia.

Why don't you get off your ass and mosey on down I-91 and get Columbus Avenue in Springfield changed to Nasmith Boulevard or Maddow Street?