Like other countries, the United States has for several years been questioning its history globally, in particular with regard to its slavery past. The least we can say is that the New York City Hall made a radical decision on this subject on Monday, October 18. The statue of Thomas Jefferson will no longer be enthroned in the town council chamber. This work by French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers should be moved to a room at the Town’s Historical Society, dedicated to the history of New York and more broadly of the United States. The city council, meeting in committee, unanimously adopted this decision to withdraw.
Thomas Jefferson is known to have actively participated in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of 1776 and to have been the third president of the country. But he also owned a plantation in Virginia, in which more than 600 slaves worked. Six children were born from his union with one of the plantation’s slave women, Sally Hemings. In eighteenth-century American society, it was also common for white masters to have sex with some of their black slaves.
In the 1990s, the highlighting of this part of Thomas Jefferson’s life caused a stir. Descendants of Sally Hemings were even invited to the program of journalist Oprah Winfrey in 1998. These revelations ” remind us that our heroes, starting with our presidents, are neither gods nor saints, but flesh and blood beings “, Underlined at the time the historian Joseph Ellis, quoted by Release.
A request from municipal councilors
The president’s statue has been controversial for years in New York City Council. But it’s mostly the murder of George Floyd, killed in May 2020 by white policeman Derek Chauvin, which revived the debate.
City Council Chairman Corey Johnson and several other Latino and black city councilors addressed a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio, in June 2020. In this letter, they urge him to proceed with the removal of this statue which they judge ” inappropriate “Because it constantly recalls the” injustices affecting communities of color ».
Thomas Jefferson « represents some of the most shameful pages in our country’s long and nuanced history “, Says the African-American New York city councilor Adrienne Adams. For his part, Bill de Blasio was himself in favor of moving the statue. He said he understood why the story of Thomas Jefferson, as a slave owner, ” deeply disturbs people and why they find it to be something that cannot be ignored ».
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