A statue of Thomas Jefferson was yesterday removed from New York City's City Hall via the back door after 187 years because workers co...
A statue of Thomas Jefferson was yesterday removed from New York City's City Hall via the back door after 187 years because workers complained the slave-owning third president made them uncomfortable.
The request for Jefferson's statue removal came from the Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation, led by outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife Charlene McCray, after black staff complained about the statue that honors a slave owner.
City Council members intensified their calls to remove the Jefferson statue from City Hall in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd due to the former president's racist past.
The third U.S president, who is famous for his words 'all men are created equal,' owned more than 600 slaves in his lifetime, Smithsonian.com reported.
The Thomas Jefferson statue (pictured) was removed from its pedestal inside the City Council chambers yesterday by art handlers from Marshall Fine Arts over several hours
Before the commission made its decision, Democratic mayoral candidate Eric Adams said that he hoped the commission would consider 'uplifting underrepresented faces and communities' by removing the statue, and that he supported its removal.
The Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and Progressive Caucus of the New York City Council, who convene on issues of concern to the city's Black, Latino and Asian communities, demanded that the Jefferson statue be removed before the Council holds its next meeting in the chamber on November 23.
Black, Latino and Asian Caucus co-chair I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens) said the statue should go because it does not represent 'contemporary values.'
It was removed from its pedestal inside the City Council chambers yesterday by art handlers from Marshall Fine Arts over several hours.
The 884-pound monument was surrounded by sections of foam and wooden boards before it was packed into a wooden crate.
The massive statue was then taken down the stairs which lead to the building's first-floor rotunda through a pulley system.
The Public Design Commission approved plans in mid November to relocate the statue to the New York Historical Society after a lengthy October hearing.
It will be placed in its lobby gallery for six months before being relocated to the museum's reading room for the duration of the 10-year loan agreement, both areas of which are free for public viewing, according to the New York Times.
The 884-pound monument (pictured) was yesterday surrounded by sections of foam and wooden boards before it was packed into a wooden crate
There was also an attempt by the Public Design Commission to vote on the removal of the statue before there had been a public hearing which was discovered by the New York Post.
Louise Mirrer, the New York Historical Society's president and chief executive, told the New York Times that the statue will be displayed starting in April and it will coincide with an exhibition looking at the 'principal contradiction' of our founding ideals.
'From the start, we have seen the opportunity to display the statue as consistent with the ways in which we look at history at our institution,' she said. 'Jefferson just has to be one of those figures that really draws attention to the distance between our founding ideals and the reality of our nation.'
Public Design Commission executives including director Keri Butler voted to remove the Jefferson statue in a lengthy October hearing. Pictured: file image of the statue in City Hall
It will be placed in the New York Historical Society's lobby gallery for six months before being relocated to the museum's reading room for the duration of the 10-year loan agreement, both areas of which are free for public viewing (file image of the statue in City Hall)
The statue removal divided members of the City Council as minority leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said the move would 'sideline history'.
The removal of the Jefferson statue comes after a surge in the removal of confederate statues and historical monuments across America in the last 12 months.
Last year in a four-month period, 130 Confederate statues were removed across three dozen states.
These statues were taken down during a wave of BLM protests across America after the killing of unarmed black man George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin.
The three dozen states also had multiple historical statues taken down including a Christopher Columbus statue which was toppled in Minnesota last June.
Another statue of Jefferson was toppled on June 14, 2020 at Portland High School in Oregon by a group of protesters.
Footage of the vandalism revealed protesters tying a rope around the neck of the statue to bring it down as well as using a hammer to loosen the base of the structure.
The statue was also covered in graffiti reading 'Black Lives Matter' and 'George Floyd 8:46' in reference to the amount of time former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin had knelt on his neck for.
Another statue of Jefferson (pictured) was toppled on June 14, 2020 at Portland High School in Oregon by a group of protesters
People have called for other historical statues and Confederate monuments across America to be removed because of their association with slavery.
Republican politicians however railed against the latest move to rewrite history by booting the statue of the former president Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence.
'The de Blasio administration will continue the progressive war on history as he, himself, fades away into a portrait on a City Hall wall,' Councilman Joe Borelli told the New York Post.
'I hope he is at least gone a couple hundred years before someone cancels him.'
Councilman I. Daneek Miller, a Democrat, defended exiling the statue and told Fox News, 'There's so much about Thomas Jefferson and his own personal writings, memoirs about how he treated his slaves, his family members and things of that nature and how he perceived African Americans and slaves — that they lacked intelligence, that they were not to assimilate into society. For us to really highlight such an individual is really not who we are as a council.'
McCray, the head of the Commission on Racial Justice and Reconciliation, had made the decision to remove the Jefferson statue following a meeting in June 2020.
The RRC was organized to 'promote social learning, collective introspection, and policy action' as well as create a historical record of racial discrimination, with an emphasis on housing, criminal justice, environmental racism and public health' in the wake of protests over George Floyd's death.
The statue in Portland (pictured) was also covered in graffiti reading 'Black Lives Matter' and 'George Floyd 8:46' in reference to the amount of time former Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin had knelt on his neck for
De Blasio had previously written a letter to City Hall following his wife's suggestion.
'The statue of Thomas Jefferson in the City Council Chambers is inappropriate and serves as a constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country,' he wrote.
'Jefferson is America's most noted slave holder... and a scholar who maintained that Blacks were inferior to whites.'
The letter dated June 18, 2020 was signed by de Blasio and fellow Council members.
Jefferson was considered the largest slaveholder during his day with over 600 slaves at this Virginia home.
Sculptor Pierre-Jean David's original bronze statue is still on display in Washington DC where it is in place in the Capitol Rotunda.
City Hall's plaster replica was gifted to City Hall by naval officer and Jefferson admirer Uriah Phillips Levy in 1834.
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