The Statue of Thomas Jefferson, one of the parents of the American homeland and the first author of the Declaration of Independence, will stop preside over the Juntas Room of the New York City Council by its slave past.

The decision is part of the intense debate that emerged as a result of George Floyd’s death, a black man who died suffocated under his knee of a white policeman and who led to the Black Lives Matter movement (the life of blacks matters).

The racial inequalities that developed the pandemic of Coronavirus and the debate on whether the monuments of the Confederates, who defended slavery in the Civil War, should be withdrawn are part of that movement that has been growing hard in the last year.

Latin and black councilors of the New York Consistory had claimed for years the withdrawal of the Statue of Jefferson, of little more than two meters high, which for more than a century has presided over the meetings in the Town Hall meeting room.

The main author of the Declaration of Independence in (1776) and third president of the United States (1801-1809), Jefferson possessed more 600 slaves and had more than six children with one of them, Sally Hemings.

“Jefferson represents some of the most shameful parts of the long and nuanced history of our country,” said African-American councilor Adrienne Adams, cited by the New York Times.

After strong discussions about the future location of the statue, the Commission also decided that it will be transferred to the Historical Society of New York, which has accepted the loan, in order to “protect artistic work and provide opportunities to display it in a context
Educational and historical “.

The professor of the Harvard Faculty of Law and specialist in Jefferson, Annette Gordon-Reed, also black, does not agree with the consistory decision.
“I understand why people want to withdraw it from it, although I do not agree, it would be good for her to be accompanied by an explanation,” she said on Twitter.

“It would be good for everyone, I could think about all kinds of information that could accompany it. It would serve for the objective of history,” he added.

The statue, made in plaster following Jefferson’s bronze model that is exhibited at the Capitol’s roundabout in Washington, was commissioned in 1833 by Uriah P.Levy, the first Comodoro Jew in the US Navy, to commemorate the support of one of one of one
The parents of the homeland to religious freedom in the armed forces.

Made by the famous French artist Pierre-Jean David d’Angers, the Statue of Washington was dedicated to the American people and the copy of Plaster arrived at the New York City Council around 1834.

In 2019, the city of Jefferson, Charlottesville in Virginia, decided to stop celebrating the holiday that commemorated the anniversary of this revolutionary leader, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison unified thirteen
Colonies and led the War of Independence of the United Kingdom who gave foot to the birth of the new United States in the last decades of the 18th century.

Like many regions of the world, as has been recently seen with Christopher Columbus, whose role has been questioned by indigenous peoples in Latin America, the city of New York has begun to reflect on many historical figures.

The mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would review the “symbols of hatred” from the city after the disturbances that staged white supremacists in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, which began as a simple protest against the withdrawal of the Statue of Robert E. Lee.

Thus, the statue of the father of modern gynecology, Marion Sims, has been withdrawn, which perfected his techniques using slaves, and was approved at the beginning of the year withdrawing that of Theodor Roosevelt that is at the entrance of the Natural History Museum, which is not yet
It has been completed.