Yesterday was Indigenous Peoples Day, the holiday that celebrates the peoples and cultures who thrived before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the murderous, enslaving explorer who is frequently (and many say incorrectly) credited as the first European to “discover” the Americas. While there is still a federal holiday called Columbus Day, in recent years, the day has been rightly supplanted by Indigenous Peoples Day in order to celebrate the people who already called the Americas home before Columbus's 1492 landfall. (Including here in Cincinnati).
Despite this, Columbus is still championed by many Italian-Americans eager to see themselves as part of the tapestry of U.S. history. But I think we’d be better served lionizing Link Wray, another famous American you've probably never heard of, but who had a huge impact on our American popular culture.
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