My professional life has been defined by three principles: excellence, integrity, equality. They were bred into me by my father, a Tuskegee Airman and elementary school principal, and by my mother, a curriculum advisor for the Dayton Public Schools. Their point was simple. Black people do not yet experience equality, but in the meantime, we can situate ourselves in spaces where equality lives and work to extend them. Through a commitment to excellence and integrity in all that we do, we can lead by example and also sleep soundly at night.

Christopher Columbus had his comeuppance coming for a long, long time. Five hundred years, to be more specific. Here was an Italian adventurer, brigand and explorer who persuaded Queen Isabella of Spain to invest in an expedition he had been obsessed with—sailing into the unknown West and finding the...