Boston to remove statue of slave kneeling before Lincoln
BOSTON: Boston’s arts commission voted unanimously on Tuesday night to remove a statue that depicts a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet.
The commission had fielded escalating complaints about the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, as a nation confronting racial injustice rethinks old imagery.
The statue has stood in a park just off Boston Common since 1879. It’s a copy of an identical monument that was erected in Washington, DC, three years earlier. Although the monument was created to celebrate the freeing of slaves in America, its design disturbed many who objected to the optics of a Black man kneeling before Lincoln.
COP CHARGED FOR SHOVING BLACK WOMAN
FORT LAUDERDALE: A white Florida policeman was charged with battery for allegedly shoving a kneeling Black woman to the ground during a protest march last month, prosecutors said.
Broward State Attorney Mike Satz said Fort Lauderdale officer Steven Pohorence, 29, was seen
“intentionally touching or striking” the 19-year-old woman during a civil rights protest march on May 31. The charge is a misdemeanour punishable by up to a year in jail.
TRUMP’S VETO THREAT TO KEEP BASE NAMES
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act if an amendment to change the names of military bases honouring Confederate generals is included in the final version. The Senate draft bill includes an amendment backed by Elizabeth Warren that would establish a commission to implement a names removal plan within three years.
The final measure Trump sees on his desk could be even stronger. A House bill is expected to go further than the Senate’s, requiring such names to be changed within a year.
Trump also said he may get rid of a fair-housing rule originally designed to desegregate neighbourhoods.