A statue of Thomas Jefferson that stands over New York City Hall’s council chamber will be removed following a city commission vote on Monday.
The New York City Design Commission voted unanimously to move the statue to a public location, yet to be determined, before the end of 2021. Efforts to remove the statue of of the third U.S. president — who owned about 130 slaves upon his death in 1826 — were renewed during the nationwide racial reckoning that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
The original proposal, to move the statue to the New York Historical Society, was modified after testimony at the meeting raised questions about access to the publicly-owned artwork at a private museum that charges admission.
The New York City Design Commission and the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment.
Asked about the statue on Thursday at his daily press briefing, de Blasio said he understood why Jefferson’s history as a slaveowner “profoundly bothers people, and why they find it’s something that can’t be ignored.”
The seven-foot tall, 1833 plaster statue is a replica of a bronze piece by Pierre-Jean David D’Algers that sits in the U.S. Capitol. The plaster replica has been inside New York City’s current council chamber since 1915.
Uriah Philips Levy, the first Jewish commodore of the U.S. Navy, commissioned the bronze statue and its plaster replica to honor Jefferson, in part because he fought for religious freedom in the armed forces, the NYC Design Commission said in its presentation.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson spearheaded the effort to remove the statue last summer with a letter to de Blasio. Johnson wrote that he and Black, Latino and Asian members of the city council found it “inappropriate” that Jefferson had such a prominent display in City Hall.
“There are disturbing images of divisiveness and racism in our City that need to be revisited immediately,” that letter read. “That starts with City Hall.”
Council member Adrienne Adams said she “immediately noticed the statue of Thomas Jefferson” after being elected to the city council, saying it is one of the “most prominent” statues in the chamber.
“He … compared the very idea of freeing slaves from captivity to abandoning children,” she said, noting Jefferson fathered children with his teenage slave, Sally Hemmings.
Testifying in favor of the removal, council member Inez Barron said slaveholders acted as a sort of “pimp” so plantations could be expanded and profits could “be increased.”
She also said Jefferson enacted some of the first removal measures against Native Americans, contributing to the “ethnic cleansing and genocidal replacement” of indigenous people.
“We are not being revisionist, we are not waging a war on history, we are saying that we want to make sure that the total story is told, that there are no half-truths and that we are not perpetrating lies,” Barron said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
