The New York City Council chamber at City Hall has housed a 7-foot-tall Thomas Jefferson statue for over 100 years.
The city officials decided they will remove the statue after decades of black and Latino council members complaining about Jefferson’s history as a slaveholder.
The members did not set a removal date or place, which upset the black and Latino lawmakers:
The unexpected delay angered some Black and Latino lawmakers, who had expected the statue to be moved from City Hall because, as the caucus said in a letter to the mayor, it serves as “a constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country.”There have been various attempts to remove the statue; two decades ago, a call to banish the statue gained attention, but went nowhere.“Jefferson embodies some of the most shameful parts of our country’s history,” Adrienne Adams, a councilwoman from Queens and co-chair of the caucus, said at the hearing.
Assemblyman Charles Barron went all the way by suggesting someone destroy the statue or at the very least tuck it away in storage.
An agreement says the statue will land at the New-York Historical Society. The place promises “to present the statue in a historical context that captured Jefferson’s legacy as a founding father, but also as a man who enslaved more than 600 people and fathered six children with one of them, Sally Hemings.”
However, the statue might stay at City Hall. Historians suggest moving it back to the governor’s room. It stayed in that room for most of the 19th century.
The NYC Council is erasing the man who authored our Declaration of Independence, one of the greatest items penned in the English language. One of the greatest documents in the history of the world.
America’s Founding Father will no longer have a place in the city council chambers in America’s largest city.
We all know Jefferson’s history. We read about it throughout our school years.
I bet these people are the same people who absolutely LOVE the musical Hamilton and know all the words to the songs.
I bet these people are the same people who love and celebrate Abraham Lincoln even though he wanted to ship the blocks to the Caribbean.
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