A Mississippi city named after former President Andrew Jackson will remove a downtown statue of him and put it in a less prominent spot. ...
A Mississippi city named after former President Andrew Jackson will remove a downtown statue of him and put it in a less prominent spot.
The City Council in Jackson, Mississippi, voted 5-1 Tuesday to relocate the bronze figure that has stood outside City Hall for decades.
It's the latest of many changes in the United States as people reconsider monuments to historical figures with connections to slavery and racism.
Andrew Jackson was the seventh president, serving from 1829 to 1837.
In addition to owning enslaved people and co-owning a plantation in Coahoma County, he also oversaw the forced migration of Native Americans in which many died.
This June 10, 1999, file photograph shows the bronze statue of Andrew Jackson in front of Jackson, Miss., City Hall. The City Council voted 5-1, Tuesday to relocate it to a less prominent spot
Jackson, the nation's seventh president, owned enslaved people and oversaw the forced migration of Native Americans in which many died
Jackson is Mississippi's capital city, with a population of about 160,600. About 82% of its residents are African American.
Councilman Kenneth Stokes proposed removing the statue, saying the city is showing leadership by making the change.
The only dissenting vote came from the council's lone Republican, Ashby Foote.
'I'm a big history buff. The whole idea of tearing down historical statues and monuments is generally a bad idea,' Foote said. 'We need to understand our history, not tear it down.'
The statue was made in 1968 and dedicated in 1972, 135 years after Jackson's terms ended.
In history books he has been remembered for his role in helping defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans. His face is on the $20 bill.
City Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay said the statue could go to a museum, the Clarion Ledger reported.
Mayor Lumumba said he'd prefer a statue of Medgar Evers, an American civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1963, five years before the statue was made to honor Jackson.
In history books he has been remembered for his role in helping defeat the British in the Battle of New Orleans. His face is on the $20 bill
'While removing a statue does little to change our condition as oppressed people, we should not have to constantly encounter the likenesses of those who profited off of the blood, sweat, and despair of our ancestors or see them immortalized as honorable,' Democratic Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba, said.
'When I took office, I found out the name Jackson means "God has shown favor." So, we want to reclaim the name of our city for that meaning and divorce it from the legacy of a brutal owner of enslaved people who was instrumental in initiating the Trail of Tears against indigenous people.
'Black people have reclaimed and repurposed names given to our families by slave owners for centuries. This is no different.'
No immediate plans were made for a time or place to move the Andrew Jackson statue, which shows him standing in a military uniform.
'This is the first step. It's not coming down tomorrow or anything like that. We will need to do the appropriate research and take those steps to do it appropriately since it is a historic landmark,' Ward 2 Councilman, Melvin Priester, said.
Four people have been charged with trying to pull down a large statue of Jackson near the White House during protests June 22 in Washington.
It was after President Donald Trump said Jackson was a hero of his and compared himself to the seventh president.
On Monday, the all-white Lafayette County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 to reject a proposal to relocate a statue of a Confederate soldier which has stood in place at Oxford Square for decades.
It comes as many communities in Mississippi debate whether to remove Confederate statues from their public spaces amid a nationwide reckoning on race, sparked by the death of unarmed black man George Floyd.
Supervisors in Bolivar and Lowndes Counties voted Monday to relocate Civil War monuments located within their jurisdictions.
And just last week, Mississippi's Republican Governor Tate Reeves signed a new law removing the Confederate symbol from its state flag.
Last Tuesday, Gov. Reeves signed the historic bill immediately removing official status for the 126-year-old banner that has been a source of division for generations.
The following day, three flags flying at the Capitol were lowered as dozens of people watched on the lawn or from open windows inside the building.
Mississippi voters chose to keep the flag in a 2001 statewide election, with supporters saying they saw it as a symbol of Southern heritage.
Since then, a growing number of cities and all the state's public universities have abandoned it.
Now, voters will be asked to approve a new design in the November 3 election. If they reject it, the commission will draft a different design using the same guidelines, to be sent to voters later.
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