SEPTEMBER 30, 2021 AT 3:38PM
Golden busts of George Floyd, John Lewis, and Breonna Taylor are being displayed in New York City just three months after the Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove a statue of Teddy Roosevelt from the American Museum of Natural History.
The trio of statues was on display after being unveiled in Union Square Park in New York on Wednesday.
The Belmont Star reports that the statues are “inspired by the events of 2020 and has empowered many to take a stand in demanding justice.”
“The series aims to honor the lives and ongoing messages through art, tying together three iconic people,” they explain.
Aside from the removal of American President Theodore Roosevelt, this is also the same city where members of the city council demanded that a statue of President Thomas Jefferson – author of the Declaration of Independence – be removed from City Hall.
Floyd died a little over one year ago in an arrest involving excessive force by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, sparking nationwide protests and riots.
Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in April.
Floyd spent many of his adult years in and out of prison.
The statue of George Floyd was originally unveiled in Flatbush, Brooklyn this past June for the Juneteenth celebration. It was vandalized less than a week later.
Five days after the Juneteenth reveal, the NYPD announced that “officers discovered graffiti on a George Floyd bust statue and pedestal” in Brooklyn.
“An unknown individual spray-painted the statue’s face black and covered the words on the pedestal with the black spray paint,” the police reported.
The incident prompted a hate crime investigation.
Roosevelt, Jefferson Cancelled
The bust of George Floyd, John Lewis, Breonna Taylor appear just months after the American Museum of Natural History announced an iconic statue of President Teddy Roosevelt was being removed.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pushed for the removal of Roosevelt’s statue last year claiming it “explicitly depicts black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior.”
Roosevelt is a man of such historic importance that he is memorialized on Mount Rushmore with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln – widely considered some of America’s most revered presidents.
Sam Biederman, chief of staff and assistant commissioner at NYC Parks, provided a ‘woke’ word salad explanation when announcing Roosevelt’s statue being removed.
“Though historical circumstances demonstrate that this sculpture was not erected with malice of intent, the compositional hierarchy … visually supports the thematic framework of colonization and racism,” he said.
And Teddy isn’t the only figure from Mount Rushmore to be cancelled, as mentioned earlier.
Just over a year ago, New York City council members were arguing for the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, one of the nation’s founding fathers.
“The statue of Thomas Jefferson in the City Council Chambers is inappropriate and serves as a constant reminder of the injustices that have plagued communities of color since the inception of our country,” Council members wrote in a letter to the mayor. “It must be removed.”
They described Jefferson’s statue as one of several “disturbing images of divisiveness and racism in our City.”
