Boston’s mayor is in favor of taking down a local statue of President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed black man, after a petition was launched for its removal, his office says.
Mayor Marty Walsh’s office added that the pol wants a community discussion about its future and whether a new statue commemorating the end of slavery should be commissioned to take its place, according to the Boston Globe.
The controversial statue, situated in the city’s Park Square, is a replica of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington and shows Lincoln with one hand raised above a kneeling man with broken shackles on his wrists.
The monument was intended to show Lincoln freeing the man from slavery, but a new petition argues that it “instead represents us still beneath someone else.
“It says that it’s a statue that’s supposed to represent freedom. But, to me, it represents submissiveness,” said Tory Bullock, who started the online petition, which had more than 8,300 signatures as of Monday.
“It represents ‘Know your place, because that’s where you belong.'”
Bullock said he’d like to see the statue replaced with a new one that symbolizes equality.
“This is a great opportunity to get some local black artists involved in the creation of (a new) statue, to come up with something new that represents equality,” Bullock told WCVB-TV.
The calls to dismantle the statue come after a Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded last week in the North End neighborhood amid protests over the death of George Floyd.
Other controversial monuments have also been destroyed in recent days.
With Post wires