Monuments to problematic figures and historical events are increasingly the focus of issues relating to race and violence in the United States. Chicago’s own monuments to Italo Balbo are at the forefront of such discussions here in the city. The following is an abridged version of a research paper written for Loyola professor Dr. Timothy J Gilfoyle’s Urban History graduate seminar in 2015, meant to give historical context to the monuments, as well as to contextualize current calls to have them removed.
The column, mounted on a travertine base, was presented as a gift to the city of Chicago by Benito Mussolini in commemoration of the Italian Air Force’s 1933 transatlantic flight led by Italo Balbo, Air Marshall of the Aeronautica. Balbo and his squadron of pilots completed the final leg of their record-breaking flight in a spectacular landing in Chicago on the waters of Lake Michigan during the 1933-1934 World’s Fair. The column was unveiled a year later outside of the fair’s Italian Pavilion and has not moved from that spot since.
Crowds gather to hear Balbo give a speech at the dedication of the pillar at Italian Day at the Fair. Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1934.
And the column is not even the only monument to Balbo in Chicago. Two other memorials include Balbo Avenue, formerly 7th Street, which was renamed in Balbo’s honor in 1933, and a plaque on the side of the statue of Columbus in Grant Park, which was presented to Chicago by the Italian community at the Century of Progress World’s Fair.
Despite the United State’s tacit support of fascism in the interwar years, Alderman Burke’s campaign to have the monument removed and to rename Balbo Avenue is not the first. Individuals and politicians have periodically challenged the monuments and their place in the city since they were installed more than 80 years ago.
The monuments and the discussions they generate about how history should be remembered illustrate a complex process in which public memory is created and reinterpreted through time. The narrative of Balbo’s transatlantic flight and monuments began as a triumphant story of innovation and technology propelling humanity towards a more enlightened future. Today, they are seen as outdated at best and offensive at worst. Following the trajectory of how the flight was memorialized and the arguments that centered around the appropriateness of the monuments shows that public memory is a fluid and dynamic force, continually defining and redefining how individuals and institutions such as cities incorporate memory of historical events into the fabric of their identity.
The fair’s motto, “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Adapts,” and exhibits that centered around the use of technology to improve everyday life exemplified these new notions of progress.
The event was hugely successful, attracting a paid audience of 39 million people, and was the perfect setting for Italo Balbo’s squadron of twenty-four seaplanes, on an incredible voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, to make an impression.
While Chicago was mobilizing to host A Century of Progress, Italy was also battling the devastating effects of the global economic depression. After World War I, the country was plagued by political instability, high unemployment, and financial ruin. The National Fascist Party, Partito Nazionale Fascista, or PNF, led by a charismatic Benito Mussolini, claimed to have the answer to Italy’s problems. The fascists promoted an ideology that was rooted in extreme nationalism and the belief that Italy needed to restore and expand its territory to assert the nation’s superiority and strength and avoid succumbing to decay.  The PNF gained power and support throughout the early twentieth century, primarily through the party’s paramilitary wing, called squadristi or Blackshirts, and their violent intimidation of liberals, socialists, and anyone who disagreed with them.
Mussolini appointed Balbo Air Minister in 1926 and charged him with building the Italian Royal Air Force, the Aeronautica. Balbo was instrumental in developing Italy’s militarized air power, and his tenure as head of the Aeronautica coincided with the so-called “Golden Age” of aviation. During this period record-breaking flights across the globe and daring aerial races were extremely popular – pilots such as Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart were household names. Under Balbo, the Italian Air Force grew in acclaim, winning races and setting records for long distance flights.
Balbo, however, was uninterested in individual feats of aeronautical prowess because he felt they encouraged a prima donna mentality which was detrimental for a disciplined military force. His alternative to gaining publicity through hero-making solo flights was to lead mass squadrons of planes flying in formation across incredible distances. He led four major expeditions as Air Marshall.
The fourth, his most famous exploit, involved leading a squadron of twenty-four seaplanes carrying over 100 men across the North Atlantic from Rome to Chicago and back again, an ambitious feat that was never before attempted. To boost the publicity of the flight, the squadron landed in the middle of Chicago’s World’s Fair.
After the landing, Balbo and his men were swept into rounds of visits, banquets, parties, religious ceremonies, speeches, and receptions. Throughout their three day stay, Balbo and his fellow airmen toured the fair, attended a preview of the unveiling of a statue of Columbus in Grant Park, and Balbo was made an honorary Sioux chief at the American Indian Village.
By the end of the three-day visit, there were two monuments to Balbo in Chicago. A plaque was placed on the side of the Columbus statue in Grant Park, and Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly announced that 7th Street would be renamed Balbo Avenue. A year later, the third monument, an ancient Roman column, was unveiled outside the Italian Pavilion.
As the relationship between the United States and Italy changed from one of friendship to enmity in the shadow of the United States’ entrance into the War, Chicago’s monuments to Balbo fell under increased scrutiny from a public that had become highly critical of fascism and Mussolini’s alliance with Nazi Germany.
Since the end of World War II, the monument to Balbo that has come under the most attack is Balbo Avenue – formally 7th Street – named in his honor in 1933. There have been multiple efforts to rename the street. The most contentious came in 1946, when 90% of property owners along and adjacent to Balbo Avenue signed a petition to rename the street after Lieutenant Commander John C. Waldron, a United States Navy flyer and Chicago native who died in the Battle of Midway. The proposal was also heavily backed by the Illinois Congress of Parents and Teachers.
In a December 23, 1946, article on the proposal, the Tribune revealed that Chicago Mayor Edward Kelly had blocked the proposal to change the name by sending it to a subcommittee of the Council Committee on Streets and Alleys, where it was pigeonholed and died a slow death. The Tribune identified Kelly’s wish to maintain good relationships with the Italian American community as the reason for his actions, but then dismissed this notion based on their own observations that Kelly’s decisions had been decried by other Italian-American leaders in Chicago.
Despite the Tribune’s editorializing, there was Italian-American resistance to changing the name. At the council meeting, representatives from groups such as the Order of the Sons of Italy in America, the Italian-American Barbers of Chicago, and the Italian Welfare Council of Chicago joined the session to voice their opposition to the name change.
Reactions to news of Balbo’s death in 1940 also contained evidence of Kelly’s reluctance to pass the proposal. On June 28, 1940, Balbo’s plane was shot down over Tobruk, Libya. Initial accounts of his death reported that he was brought down by sharpshooting British aviators who were attacking the Italian base near the Egyptian border. However, conflicting accounts of Balbo’s death soon emerged.
It is most likely that Balbo’s plane was brought down by friendly fire, but soon rumors were circulating that Mussolini, jealous of Balbo’s popularity, had had him killed.
The New York Times continued the report of Balbo’s death, writing, “Marshal Balbo was regarded here as strongly anti-war and anti-German and as a rival of Count Ciano, Italian Foreign Minister, in the Fascist organization.”  The article also referenced Balbo’s 1933 flight to Chicago and the acclaim he received as a possible motive for Mussolini to have him killed.
The idea that Mussolini had Balbo assassinated has been thoroughly debunked. However, Mayor Edward Kelly took the conflicting accounts of Balbo’s death to heart. When confronted about his opposition to the 1946 proposal to change the street name, Kelly expressed that he wholeheartedly did not believe Balbo was a fascist.
Kelly’s denial of Balbo’s profoundly fascist identity illustrates that for him, Balbo and the Aeronautica’s arrival at a Century of Progress was something more than a political stunt. It was an embodiment of the technological and progressive capabilities of humankind. This dichotomous view of Balbo, as either fascists or hero, continued to define disagreements about the appropriateness of the monuments.
Jarrett’s column did not go uncontested. In a response to his June 6, 1983 editorial, Jerome N. Zurla and Carl De Moon, members of the Anti-Defamation Committee of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, wrote that Jarrett’s admonishment to avoid the celebration was “irresponsible and belittled an event of tremendous historical significance.”  The authors went on to argue that Jarrett’s condemnation of Balbo’s political views were irrelevant, and that Balbo’s role as an aviation pioneer outweighed his problematic political beliefs.
The heart of Dillon’s argument was that while the memorials were problematic, to erase them was to erase the evidence of the United State’s complicit role in supporting a violent, fascist regime.
Aldermen Burke’s and other Chicagoan’s calls to remove the monument and rename the street come down to a single question: What to do with our problematic history? Should these monuments remain as reminders of the United States’ participation and collusion with racists and fascists? Should they be erased from the landscape all together? Is there a middle ground?
In an article for the Association for State and Local History, author Modupe Labode, Associate Professor of History and Museum Studies, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, offers a few potential solutions to this problem, including adding interpretive panels to explain the racist motivations of those who erected the monuments, moving the monuments to a museum, or democratizing the monumental landscape with monuments to other figures. It is clear there is not a one-size fits all solution to these problems – communities must tackle these issues together, taking into account both historical context and broader historical trends.
The interpretation and reinterpretation of Balbo’s flight demonstrate the past is not a static force, even in memory. Rather, individuals and institutions constantly remake meaning from history, contextualizing events within their own frame of reference to define their identity. In contrast to Donald Trump’s statement in a tweet that “You can’t change history,” the story of the Balbo monuments reveals a past that is always changing. In 1933, the Balbo monuments were memorials to a fair and a city whose citizens prided themselves on technological innovation and their own potential to create a better world. Now, Chicagoans must decide what story they wish to tell about themselves, and decide if the monuments still have a place in the narrative they seek to build.
 Zach Long, Timeout Chicago, “Aldermen are Considering Removing the Balbo Monument and Renaming Balbo Drive,” August 17, 2017.
 David F. Schmitz, The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 1.
 Scott Ackman and Christopher Schwarz, “Dubious Legacy,” Chicago Magazine, July 10, 2008.
 “Naming wrongs: Rename Balbo Drive,” Chicago Tribune, June 27, 2011.
 Joseph Swanson and Samuel Williamson, “Estimates of National Product and Income for the United States Economy, 1919-1941,” Explorations in Economic History 10 (1972): 53-73.
 Cheryl Ganz, The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair: A Century of Progress, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 3.
 Aristotle A Kallis, Fascist Ideology: Territory and Expansionism in Italy and Germany, 1922-1945, (London: Routledge, 2000), 41.
 Claudio G. Segre, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 39.
 “Italians’ Flight for US Set Back,” New York Times, May 28, 1933; “Balbo Mass Flight Soon,” New York Times, May 28, 1933; “Ice and Fog Block Italian Seaplanes,” New York Times, June 4, 1933; “Italian Flyers Ready to Start Wednesday,” New York Times, June 12, 1933; “Weather Still Holds 104 Italian Fliers,” New York Times, June 15, 1933; “Weather Again Delays Italian Air Armada,” The New York Times, June 25, 1933.
 Time Magazine, July 24, 1933.
[11 ]“Chicago Fetes Balbo,” Chicago Tribune, July 17, 1933.
 “Loyalties,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1933.
 Quoted in Claudio Segre, Italo Balbo, 250.
 “Balbo Av. Name Change Backed by P.T.A. Head,” Chicago Tribune, December 26, 1946.
 “Italo-American Leaders Back Balbo Change,” Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1946.
 “British Hint Mystery in Death of Balbo,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1940.
 “Britain Skeptical of Balbo Report,” New York Times, July 1, 1940.
 Vernon Jarett, “Steer clear of Balbo celebration,” Chicago Tribune, June 8, 1983.
 Jerome N. Zurla and Carl De Moon, “Italo Bablo’s Historic Flight to Chicago,” Chicago Tribune, June 15, 1983.
 Robert V. Allegrini, “Brave and Daring Italian Aviator,” Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1983.
 Eric Zorn, “A Fascist Hides in Plain Sight Downtown,” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 2006.
 John Dillon, “What’s in a Name,” Chicago Tribune, July 3, 2011.
 Donald Trump, Twitter post, August 17, 2017, 8:02 a.m.