Trenton says bye to Columbus statue
31-year-old Jasi Edwards, a lifelong Trentonian who is Black and Native American, was almost reduced to tears.
She called the removal “liberating.”
“This statue stood for something in white America. In white America, not a diverse American, not a united America,” she said. “Oppression has hit its boiling point. We are mad. It’s over. We’re not sitting around waiting anymore for anyone that does not look like us to come save us. It’s not going to happen. We have to save ourselves. We have to stand up for our own rights, our own freedoms, and liberate ourselves.”
That anger was evident when several Black bystanders accused John Scarpati, the president of the Mercer County Italian American Festival Association, of telling them to go back to the country they came from.
Trentonian columnist L.A, Parker confirmed hearing Scarpati make the remark, which bystanders derided as racist.
The group exchanged barbs with Scarpati while a Trenton Police officer looked on. At one point, Scarpati approached the officer, who waived him off.
“Freedom of speech,” Scarpati told the group calling him out for the racist remark.
“F**k you,” a man shouted at Scarpati, threatening to put a foot in his “a**.”
“You are a f**king racist,” another woman charged.
“You come and touch me, I’ll show you something,” Scarpati responded to the man, who then flipped him off.
The unabashedly proud Italian told the man to put his finger where the “sun don’t shine,” and further agitated the crowd by calling Columbus the “greatest hero of all-time.”
“For people who look like you,” a woman responded. “All you racist motherf**kers are going to be destroyed. You white motherf**ker aren’t supposed to be here. Your f**king race don’t exist. We built this sh*t. Go back to where you came from.”
Scarpati told The Trentonian he felt the city acted too swiftly to remove the statue after it was vandalized last month.
Officials held a meeting this week that Gusciora originally billed as a private discussion among invited stakeholders.
The original plan was to establish a committee that, in turn, would hold public discussions about the Italian explorer’s fate, the mayor said.
The Trentonian planned to attend the discussion, but Gusciora said it wasn’t open to the public. But the meeting quickly turned into a free-for-all, with some residents reportedly joining via Zoom to share opinions about the statue.
Asked about the denial — a possible violation of the Open Public Meetings Act — the mayor’s spokesman William Skaggs told the newspaper the discussion was “not a public forum, so it wasn’t recorded.”
Whatever was said then, city officials came away with a clear message: People wanted the statue gone.
And so late Tuesday, the mayor’s office issued a statement announcing the decision to remove the statue and rename the park.
Scarpati said that Columbus is still an important figure in American history “no matter what he did,” pointing to the federally recognized holiday.
Many states have since changed Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, to recognize the suffering of native populations killed, enslaved and displaced by Columbus and other European explorers.
“He brought everything here, horses, pigs, food. Maybe he didn’t set foot on American soil,” Scarpati said, dismissing the atrocities. “I wasn’t there, and they weren’t there.”
He compared Columbus to incarcerated people who “deserve a second chance,” and wondered where the line is as protesters across the country take out their fury on Columbus and monuments valorizing Confederate leaders.
“Maybe you could take all the faces off the money,” Scarpati said, referring to many of the nation’s presidents who owned slaves. “It goes on and on and on.”
Edwards said the “whitewashed” history books are replete with favorable accounts of Columbus as a hero and often gloss over his culpability in the violence and enslavement of the indigenous people.
“What he brought here was smallpox and disease,” she said. “What he brought here was the slave trade. That’s what that statue means for me today.”
Statues of Columbus have been taken down in Newark, Camden and elsewhere in the U.S. In Baltimore, protesters felled the statue and flung it in the Inner Harbor.
Gusciora said the city acted to prevent further damage to the statue, which will remain stored until officials decides what to do with it.
East Ward councilman Joe Harrison said it’s not only Columbus who is on trial in the court of public opinion.
A segment of Trenton has tossed around the idea of renaming the capital city, which takes after the slave-owning merchant and trader William Trent.
The William Trent House, built in 1719, is considered a landmark on the state and national historic registries. The museum is owned by the city and managed by the Trent House Association.
“When do we stop?” said Harrison, who is white. “This city right now, William Trent, he trades furs and trades slaves. So do we have to change the name of Trenton? Overall, we gotta come together in this country.”
Also last month, protesters targeted the George Washington monument in the Mill Hill section of the city.
Two city women, Tanay Lee, 21, and Niambi McCoy, 23, were charged with defacing the statue, which had red and black spray painted words of Black Lives Matter and BLM on its base.
At-large councilman Jerell
Blakeley applauded the women, who were decrying that the first president owned slaves.
Washington is also credited with sailing across the Delaware River to Trenton in a surprise attack on the Hessians that helped turn the tide the Revolutionary War.
Because Washington’s history is intimately tied with New Jersey’s capital, Gusciora said there was no plans to remove his statue.
The city will consider adding plaques that discuss the troubling aspects of Washington’s life, to provide a greater historical context around the “flawed” figure, the mayor said.
“George, despite his flaws, was still front and center in the revolutionary history of Trenton,” Gusciora said.
As for the renaming of Columbus Park, Edwards believes that honor should go to someone beyond reproach.
“The park should be renamed after someone in the Civil Rights movement or who helped with the Underground Railroad or a Native American,” she said. “Anyone other than our oppressors.”