Art handlers packed up a 187-year-old Thomas Jefferson statue after a mayoral commission voted to remove the nation’s third president from City Hall in New York City, because he owned slaves.
Nearly one dozen workers with Marshall Fine Arts spent several hours removing the painted monument from its home inside the City Council chambers.
Executive director of the Public Design Commission, Keri Butler, voted to remove the statue without a public hearing.
Erin Thompson, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of the book “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments,” said the removal would help New Yorkers “learn” who Thomas Jefferson was.
“Moving this statue doesn’t mean New Yorkers will forget who Thomas Jefferson was, but 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,” Thompson said.
Minority leader Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said removing the statue was an attempt to “sideline history” while Black, Latino and Asian Caucus co-chair I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens) said the statue doesn’t “represent” contemporary values.
