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Dueling holidays Monday mean closures, but LA schools in session
LA County Oct 09, 2023
The statue of Christopher Columbus that once stood at Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles; a dancer performs at LA's first Indigenous Peoples Day celebration in 2018. | Photos courtesy of Steve Saldivar/X; Luke Harold/Flickr (CC0 1.0)
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By Steven Herbert
There will be no mail delivery and federal courts will be closed Monday along with many banks for the federal Columbus Day holiday.
City and county offices will be closed Monday, including libraries, for Indigenous Peoples Day.
Los Angeles Unified School District schools will be open. Metro buses and trains will run on a regular schedule, along with Metrolink trains.
Los Angeles County courts will be open. They were closed Sept. 22 for Native American Day.
A 2017 ordinance declared the second Monday in October in Los Angeles as Indigenous Peoples Day, replacing Columbus Day as a holiday on the city calendar.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors also voted in 2017 to declare the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day, replacing Columbus Day as a holiday on the county calendar.
The Oct. 12, 1492, sighting of land by a sailor on board the Pinta during Christopher Columbus‘ first voyage to the Americas was first marked as a holiday in 1892.
President Benjamin Harrison declared Oct. 21, 1892, “as a general holiday for the people of the United States” to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America following passage of a joint resolution by both houses of Congress.
The resolution came in response to a lynching in New Orleans, where a mob had killed 11 Italian immigrants.
In his proclamation declaring Monday as Columbus Day, President Joe Biden made reference to the killings, saying, “For so many people across our country, that first Columbus Day was a way to honor the lives that had been lost and to celebrate the hope, possibilities and ingenuity Italian Americans have contributed to our country since before the birth of our republic.
“More than a century later, we mark Columbus Day with that purpose — celebrating the heritage of Italian Americans, whose hands helped build our nation and whose hearts have always carried faith in the American dream.”
In 1907, Colorado became the first state to declare Columbus Day a holiday.
Columbus Day became a federal holiday in 1968, celebrated on the second Monday in October under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
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