(Photo: Mary Inhea Kang)
Natural History Museum To Remove Roosevelt Statue
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office announced on Sunday that the statue of President Theodore Roosevelt will be removed from the front steps of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
The museum requested to remove the statue, which features America’s 46th President on a horse with a Native American man standing on one side and an African American man standing on the other.
The office of de Blasio’s said in a statement to CNN that the Museum asked to remove the statue of Theodore Roosevelt because it “explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.” Although the statue was originally meant to celebrate the nation’s President as a “devoted naturalist and author of works on natural history,” many members of the public claimed the statue communicated “racial hierarchy,” according to the press release on the museum’s website.
(Photo: Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Titled “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,” the statue was commissioned in 1925 and debuted in 1940 as part of New York’s larger memorial to Roosevelt, according to the museum. The move is one of many requests to remove confederate monuments and other controversial statues across the nation.
In New Jersey, Monmouth University will remove President Woodrow Wilson’s name from the campus’s Great Hall. North Carolina began removing Confederate statues in the state capital, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered the removal of four portraits from the Capitol building.
Each portrait depicts a former Speaker of the House that served the Confederacy.
By: Maytinee Kramer
