(New York) Operations have started to remove, near Central Park in New York, a statue of former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, deemed degrading to African Americans and Native Americans, a symbol of the reflection of the country facing its past.
This bronze statue of “Teddy” Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, whose retirement was announced in June 2020, is now embedded in an imposing scaffolding on its site, where it welcomes visitors at the entrance of the American Museum Natural history for 80 years, noted Thursday an AFP photographer.
When questioned, the museum said the work “would take months”, giving no date for the final removal.
The statue of Roosevelt, distant relative of one of his successors Franklin Delano Roosevelt, shows the former president on horseback, overlooking a black man and a Native American on foot, a degrading representation for the Museum of Natural History, which had some requested the withdrawal to New York City.
The announcement, in June 2020, came shortly after the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by police in Minneapolis, which sent shock waves through the United States over racism.
At the time, several other historical figures had been targeted, such as former Presidents Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson. And last September, the gigantic statue of Confederate General Robert Lee, a symbol of the country’s slavery past, was taken down in Virginia.
If these debunkings seem legitimate to some, political figures and historians are worried about an endless race in what, according to them, is akin to “cancel culture”.
The Roosevelt statue will be housed, on long-term loan, in the future Theodore-Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota. This museum in honor of the former US president, which is due to open in 2026, has promised to recontextualize the object he describes as “problematic”, in consultation with representatives of Native Americans and African Americans.
More recently, New York City announced that a statue of Jefferson, the founding father of the United States, would be removed from the council chamber of the elect, because he had owned hundreds of slaves on his plantations in Virginia. .
Along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt are among four presidents whose faces are carved into the rock of the famous and touristic Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.