On Columbus Day in 1963, Trump Marched up Fifth Avenue in New York’s Parade

The future president was 17 years old. Blond hair, blue eyes, a strapping 6-foot-2 or 3. He wore a dapper military uniform: white-crowned cap emblazoned with a bald eagle, fully pressed blue uniform with badges and shiny buttons, pristine white gloves.

As the commanding officer of the drill team for the New York Military Academy, Donald John Trump stood on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street, the starting point of the Columbus Day Parade on Oct. 12, 1963.

The country was poised between the hope of the March on Washington, held 45 days prior, and the devastation of a presidential assassination in Dallas, 41 days ahead. It was a sunny afternoon, wind blowing out of the north, as the teenage Trump began marching uptown.

Thousands of spectators lined Fifth Avenue to watch the city honor the Italian explorer credited with “discovering” America in 1492. There was no talk of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, no beheading of statues, no commander in chief denouncing efforts to dismantle memorials to Confederate generals or presidents who enslaved people. There was no pandemic canceling Columbus Day parades across the country, including New York’s, which is being held virtually this year.

In Manhattan, Columbus stood tall at the southwest corner of Central Park, 14 feet of solid marble atop a 76-foot monument, and no one denounced him as a killer and a trader of enslaved people.