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Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is reportedly in favor of removing a local statue of President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed black man, according to The New York Post.
A petition has been launched for its removal, and Walsh is open to having a community-wide discussion about its future, and whether a new statue should commemorate the end of slavery, or if it should be replaced at all.
“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.’”
“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.
Last week, a statue of Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded and destroyed during protests over the death od George Floyd.
Multiple other controversial monuments have also been destroyed within recent days.
More from New York Post:
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.
Bullock said he’d like to see the statue replaced with a new one that symbolizes equality.
