The statue of Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of the American country and first author of the Declaration of Independence, will no longer preside over the boardroom of the New York City Council because of its slave-owning past.
The decision is part of the intense debate that arose in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who suffocated at the knee of a white policeman and who led the Black Lives Matter movement.
The racial inequalities that the coronavirus pandemic left in evidence and the debate over whether the monuments of the Confederates, who defended slavery in the civil war, should be removed are part of that movement that has been growing strongly in the last year.
Latino and black councilors from the New York City Council had for years demanded the removal of the Jefferson statue, just over six feet tall, which for more than a century has presided over meetings in the City Hall boardroom.
The main author of the Declaration of Independence in (1776) and the third president of the United States (1801–1809), Jefferson owned more than 600 slaves and had more than six children with one of them, Sally Hemings.
"Jefferson represents some of the most embarrassing parts of our country’s long and nuanced history"said African-American councilor Adrienne Adams, quoted by the New York Times.
After heated discussions about the future location of the statue, the commission also decided that it will be transferred to the New York Historical Society, which has accepted the loan in order to "protect artwork and provide opportunities to display it in an educational and historical context".
Harvard Law School professor and Jefferson specialist Annette Gordon-Reed, also black, disagrees with the council’s decision.
"I understand why people want to withdraw it, although I do not agree. It would be good if it was shown accompanied by an explanation", he assured on Twitter.
"It would be good for everyone. You could think of all kinds of information that could go along with it. It would serve the purpose of the story"added.
The plaster statue, modeled after the bronze Jefferson on display in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, was commissioned in 1833 by Uriah P. Levy, the first Jewish Commodore in the U.S. Navy, to commemorate the support of one of the fathers of the Nation to religious freedom in the armed forces.
Made by the celebrated French artist Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, the Washington statue was dedicated to the American people and the plaster copy reached New York City around 1834.
In 2019, the city of Jefferson, Charlottesville in Virginia, decided to stop celebrating the holiday that commemorated the anniversary of this revolutionary leader who together with George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison unified the Thirteen Colonies and led the United Kingdom’s war of independence that gave rise to the birth of the new United States in the last decades of the 18th century.
Like many regions of the world, as recently seen with Christopher Columbus, whose role has been questioned by indigenous peoples in Latin America, New York City has begun to reflect on many historical figures.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would review the "hate symbols" from the city following the 2017 white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, which began as a simple protest against the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.
Thus, the statue of the father of modern gynecology, Marion Sims, who perfected his techniques using slaves, has been removed, and it was approved at the beginning of the year to remove that of Theodoro Roosevelt, which is at the entrance to the Museum of Natural History, which is not yet it has been finalized.
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