Episode two explores Columbus Day at its cultural peak, when parades filled city streets and school children built paper replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. From the early nineteen hundreds through the nineteen seventies, Columbus Day became a major American celebration, particularly for Italian American communities asserting their heritage and belonging. We examine the massive Fifth Avenue parades, the department store sales, the elementary school pageants teaching discovery narratives, and what different communities thought they were honoring. But even at its height, cracks were forming. Native American activists and scholars began questioning what was actually being celebrated, planting seeds for the controversy to come and revealing how cultural consensus can mask deeper tensions.
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