The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously Monday to remove a statue of former President Thomas Jefferson from the New York City Council chambers, according to a report.
The commission oversees the city’s public art collection and voted 8-0 to remove the effigy of the third president after an almost two-decadelong movement to oust it, according to the report.
Members of the council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus were adamant about seeing the removal of the 1833 statue, which had stood in the chamber since 1915.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT STATUE DOUSED IN BLOOD-RED PAINT
The statue is set to be moved to a museum run by the state because it was inappropriate that the figure of a slave owner should be in a room of government officials, Councilwoman Inez Barron said.
“We’re not being revisionist. We’re not waging war on history,” Barron said. “We’re saying that we want to make sure that the total story is told.”
Barron’s sentiment was echoed by Councilwoman Adrienne Adams, according to comments by the co-chair of the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus.
“Thomas Jefferson was a slaveholder who owned over 600 human beings,” Adams said. “It makes me deeply uncomfortable knowing that we sit in the presence of a statue that pays homage to a slaveholder who fundamentally believed that people who look like me were inherently inferior, lacked intelligence, and were not worthy of freedom or rights.”
The statue’s removal is the “radical Left” gone crazy, according to a statement from former President Donald Trump shared with the Washington Examiner.
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“Well, it’s finally happened. The late, great Thomas Jefferson, one of our most important Founding Fathers, and a principal writer of the Constitution of the United States, is being “evicted” from the magnificent New York City Council Chamber,” Trump said. “Who would have thought this would ever be possible (I did, and called it long ago!). Next up, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and, of course, George Washington.”
