Amid weeks of nationwide demonstrations for racial justice, public statues of Christopher Columbus — from D.C. to California — have come under heightened scrutiny, with statues being vandalized and ripped down by those who say the man's memory isn't something to celebrate. Here in Boston, a statue of the explorer in the North End was decapitated this month, then taken down and put in storage.

That statue is a relatively recent addition to the city's landscape. Far older is the challenge of reckoning with Columbus’ legacy of slavery, torture and killing of Native Americans.