The annual celebration, attended by thousands of Northeast Ohioans, honors 500 years of immigration to America.
CLEVELAND, Ohio (Oct. 2, 2022) — The Columbus Day Parade, sponsored by Italian Sons and Daughters of America (ISDA), is marching back to Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood on Monday, Oct. 10 along Mayfield and Murray Hill roads.
Elaborate floats, marching bands, local artifacts, and city leaders will comprise the parade, which steps off at noon to celebrate Northeast Ohio’s deeply rooted Italian American culture.
Paola Allegra Baistrocchi, the Consul of Italy in Detroit, will serve as the Grand Marshal, and 92.3’s Tony Lima will be the emcee.
Special ISDA guests include Phyllis Lippardo, Marie Frank and Joe Frank.
Apart from enjoying the sights and feasting on local recipes, attendees are encouraged to tour the Italian American Museum of Cleveland, which opened last October.
As usual, Columbus Day Mass will be held at Holy Rosary Church on Mayfield Road at 10 a.m.
Wine-stomping competition
Little Italy Wines will participate in the Columbus Day Parade and host a Grape Stomping following the parade in front of the wine shop. Start time is between 2:30 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Participants will stomp a predetermined amount of grapes and the winner of the most juice stomped will receive a $100 gift certificate to the Wine Shop.
Cost to participate is $10 per person or $15 per couple, stomping at the same time.
Reservations are suggested since there will be a limited amount of grapes to stomp.
Please call the wine shop if you want to make a reservation at 216-231-9463.
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— Cleveland’s Columbus Day History —
The earliest Christopher Columbus Day event was held in 1892, as revealed by a review of The Plain Dealerarchives. On the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ 1492 voyage, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation that the United States would mark the occasion as a holiday. Following this, cities across the country, including Cleveland, organized events and parades. Many scholars suggest that Harrison also used the anniversary celebration as a gesture to improve diplomatic relations with Italy and the Italian immigrants living in the U.S. after the horrific lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans in March 1891.
Not until the 1910s is there another mention in The Plain Dealer of a city-wide Columbus Day celebration in Cleveland. For a decade prior, however, Italian immigrants had observed Columbus Day on a smaller scale in their own neighborhoods. Echoes of the New Orleans lynching and the discrimination the Italian immigrants faced in their everyday lives inspired them to celebrate Columbus, who was one of their own countrymen. Expressing pride in Columbus allowed the Italian immigrants to publicly express pride in their culture, and served as a way to legitimize their presence in the U.S. to those who otherwise thought they did not belong in the country.
Related story: No Turning Back: The Formation (and Preservation) of Italian America
In 1910, Columbus Day was declared a legal holiday in the state of Ohio, primarily due to the efforts of Giuseppe Carabelli. Carabelli was a leader in Cleveland’s Italian immigrant community. He was the first Italian American to serve in the Ohio House of Representatives and was the proprietor of The Carabelli Co., a stone carving and sculpting firm located on Euclid Avenue, opposite Lake View Cemetery. On October 12, 1910, a grand celebration of Columbus Day was held in Cleveland, organized by a committee comprised of both Italian Americans and city leaders. The day was marked with a large parade on Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland that ended with a grand banquet sponsored by the Knights of Columbus at the Hotel Hollenden.
The Columbus Day Parade continued to be held annually in downtown Cleveland until 2004 when the committee in charge decided to move it to Little Italy.
STATEMENT FROM ISDA NATIONAL PRESIDENT AND GREATER CLEVELAND COLUMBUS DAY CHAIRMAN BASIL M. RUSSO:
On Columbus Day, Italian Americans pay tribute to our ancestors, and to all walks of life, who arrived in Northeast Ohio and built better lives for their families. Many aren’t aware of this, but Columbus’ parades and statues were used by early Italian Americans to fuel assimilation and fight discrimination during a decades-long period of oppression. In fact, the first national Columbus Day celebration honoring Italian Americans was held in 1892 as a way to ease tensions after 11 innocent Italian immigrants were murdered in New Orleans, in front of the largest lynch mob ever to assemble on U.S. soil.
Columbus’ celebrations and monuments are now conflated with today’s prevailing social issues, and to bridge these cultural divisions, we must all sit down and listen to one another, which is why I’ve launched an outreach campaign to establish mutual partnerships that will one day form a multi-ethnic coalition. It’s time for more dialogue and more acceptance. Please join us on Columbus Day in Cleveland’s historic Little Italy neighborhood, and please join the conversation.
Make the Pledge and join Italian Sons and Daughters of America today.
