List of monument and memorial controversies in the United States
The standing statue was carved in London by Jooseph Wilton and depicts Pitt in a Classical oratory pose holding Magna Carta.
The following month another statue by Wilton, this one of William Pitt, a British politician very popular in the Americas for being responsible for the repeal of the much-hated Stamp Act of 1765 was erected.
On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read in New York City, and to celebrate it a group of patriots pulled down the King's statue, and eventually melted it down to make bullets with which to fight the British.
A rally was called the next day, held near Haymarket Square at which time an unknown person threw a bomb into a group of policemen, killing eight.
[5] Several years later, after winning an 1887 competition, a monument by Johannes Gelert portraying a "robust policeman, in his countenance frank, kind, and resolute", was created.
[7] In 1900, after it had been frequently vandalized and defaced and "unmistakable traces" of an attempt to blow it up were discovered, the statue was moved to near Randolph and Ogden streets in Union Park.
One astute observer noted the woman had no wedding ring .... while a chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas declared it, 'the greatest insult that could be offered to these women who believed and practiced the virtue of modesty'.
[28] Shortly after the winner, Ohio native[29] Maya Lin, a twenty-year-old female student of Chinese descent, was announced, controversy began.
[49] A third statue of Serra is set to be removed and replaced as of September 2017 from the Santa Barbara Mission after being decapitated and doused in red paint that month.
According to a coalition of student groups, which requested the stadium be renamed, Byrd was "a racist and a segregationist", and "he barred blacks from participating in sports and enrolling into the University until 1951.
Responding to student pressure, because of Royall's brutal treatment of slaves (77 were burned alive in Antigua),[53] the School decided in 2016 to design a new seal.
[63] Holding signs in the video saying "The future is racial and economic justice" and "Racism: Tear it down," the narrator said that "Christopher Columbus symbolizes the initial invasion of European capitalism into the Western Hemisphere.
Columbus initiated a centuries-old wave of terrorism, murder, genocide, rape, slavery, ecological degradation and capitalist exploitation of labor in the Americas.
[65] The Speaker of the City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, has suggested its removal because "Columbus's journeys to the Western Hemisphere led to the genocide of native peoples.
[68] Also in September, 2017, the hands of a statue of Columbus in New York City's Central Park were covered with red paint, and the hashtag #somethingscoming and "Hate will not be tolerated" were written on the pedestal.
"[86] The inscription at the monument reads:Surgeon & philanthropist founder of the Women's Hospital, State of New York his brilliant achievement carried the fame of American surgery throughout the world.
L.L.D.In recognition of his services in the cause of science & mankind awarded the highest honors by his countrymen & decorations from the governments of Belgium France – Italy – Spain & Portugal Died 1883[87]In January, 2018, mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the statue would be moved to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where he is buried.
"Commissioned in 1900 by Andrew Mellon and other wealthy industrialists, the sculpture depicts Foster sitting high above a black man who is positioned sycophantically playing the banjo at his feet.
[99] The statue Early Days (1894), in San Francisco, California, depicted "a Native American on his back, defeated, a Catholic priest above him pointing to the heavens, and an anglicized vaquero bestriding the scene in triumph.
[103][104] The decision to remove Prospector Pete, a statue at California State University, Long Beach, was made in 2018 "after years of activism and a formal committee inquiry....
"[107] Goodloe Sutton, former editor of a small Alabama newspaper, has been removed from the journalism Hall of Fame of his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, after he published in February 2019 an editorial calling for the Ku Klux Klan to lynch Democrats and centrist Republicans in Washington.
[114] The headnotes of two gravestones of WWII German POWs marked with swastikas at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, were replaced on December 24, 2020.
[117] The board of trustees acknowledged that "newly discovered research",[118] uncovered by historian Paul Finkelman,[119] had revealed that influential 19th century U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall was a slave trader and owner who practiced "pro-slavery jurisprudence", which was deemed inappropriate for the school's namesake.
[118] As Mayor of Palm Springs, California in the mid-1960's, Frank Bogert was an advocate for the eviction of non-Native Americans from Section 14, a tract of land held by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians but leased to others.
[121] The Palm Springs Human Relations Commission cited this history, as well as a conflict of interest while Bogert acted as conservator for tribal land which was being demolished by the city, and racist comments regarding the "poor Blacks" who lived in Section 14, as justification for removing a statue of Bogert on horseback[122] placed in 1990 in front of the Palm Springs City Hall.
[136] "In Chicago, a campaign is underway to remove a monument to Italo Balbo, an Italian air marshal, which the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini presented to the city in 1933.
[139] A statue of Diego de Vargas, a symbol of Spanish conquest and rule, is located in a city park in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"[36] North Carolina Supreme Court announced on December 24 it will remove a portrait of Thomas Ruffin, a former chief justice who was a slave owner, from one of its walls.
[149] On August 12, 2020, the Philadelphia Art Commission issued an order to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus from Marconi Plaza and to place it in temporary storage.
Todd Little, the county's top executive, is said to have asked another man to paint over the sign, which was uncovered during renovations and marked with a placard as a reminder of the evil of segregation.
