A statue of Thomas Jefferson from 1833 was removed from City Hall in New York City because progressives were outraged at the former President’s history of slave ownership. The nine-member commission voted to remove the 187-year-old statue that was gifted to New York City in 1834 by Uriah Phillips Levy.
Members of the City’s minority caucus demanded Thomas Jefferson be removed by November 23 and will now be housed in the lobby of the New York Historical Society.
“Each day it is allowed to linger there serves as a reminder to our members of the horrors perpetrated against Black and Indigenous Peoples by revered figures — like Jefferson — who were instrumental in America’s creation, but also known practitioners of slavery that espoused white supremacist belief,” the members of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus said.
Republican Joe Borelli told the NY Post that removing Thomas Jefferson was not appropriate.
Borelli said:
“This is a vote to sideline history. That Jefferson is holding the bill of rights in the very statue is lost on those who have benefitted from his contribution.”
The New York Historical Society is placing the statue in the first-floor main gallery for the first six months at its new home before moving it to its final resting place in the society’s Library Reading Room.
“In both locations, the statue will be given appropriate historical context, including details of Thomas Jefferson’s complicated legacy – his contributions as a founder and draftsman of the Declaration of Independence and the contradictions between his vision of human equality and his ownership of enslaved people – and the statue’s original purpose as a tribute to Jefferson’s staunch defense of freedom of religion and separation of church and state,” a Historical Society spokesman told the Post.
Trump Was Right
“You're changing history, you're changing culture."pic.twitter.com/n0PtlN7lXx https://t.co/9XBCNHtEC7
— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) November 23, 2021
Conservatives are calling this another progressive attempt at erasing our culture and our history. Many are sharing videos of President Trump’s speech at the Trump Tower in New York. President Trump warned America progressives would be coming for our founding fathers as their quest to make Americans hate their country continues.
Erin Thompson, professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments,” congratulated the movement.
Thompson told the Post removing Thomas Jefferson won’t make people forget who he was, but now “some of them might learn from the controversy that the man who wrote ‘all men are created equal’ owned over 600 of his fellow humans.”
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