Replicas of Christopher Columbus' Niña and Pinta have arrived along Mississippi's Gulf Coast, sailing into a Biloxi harbor as spectators aimed their phones out to the horizon. About a dozen spectators lined a pier Wednesday as the ships arrived. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic on the Niña on his three voyages of discovery to the New World beginning in 1492.

He was long celebrated in the U.S., and is honored with a federal holiday — but in 1992, with the 500th anniversary of his first transatlantic voyage, more voices joined in the call for a reckoning with the brutal aspects of his legacy. Columbus' arrival brought violence, disease, enslavement, racism and exploitation to the native people.