Let the monument debate begin
New York isn’t likely to have a quiet, scholarly debate over which public statues and monuments to keep and which to alter or remove. But I hope we can keep the grandstanding, ethnic chest-thumping and historical score-settling to a minimum.
The current round of tussling is part of a long and necessary national debate over monuments erected to the leaders of the Confederacy, who made war on the United States in the name of creating a slave empire. There are only a few busts and streets in New York bearing the names of these violent traitors; they will likely vanish without fuss or fanfare.
Things get trickier when we go after historical figures who are scorned or revered by a politically potent local constituency.
Back when he was a member of the City Council, Assemblyman Charles Barron famously demanded that a life-size statue of the principal author of the Declaration of Independence be removed from the main chamber at City Hall. Denouncing Thomas Jefferson as “a slaveholding pedophile,” Barron suggested that Jefferson’s likeness be replaced by a bust of Harlem’s own Malcolm X.
Years later, while showing me around East New York, Barron casually mentioned that his staff was researching the history of the names of streets and parks in the district. The goal, he said, was to replace the names of slaveholders with those of modern community leaders.
The two approaches by Barron capture the dilemma our city now faces. We can generate headlines with carefully staged demonstrations of moral outrage — or probe history with curiosity and care, and steadily make small but meaningful adjustments to our public monuments.
Take the case of the sidewalk plaques embedded in Lower Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes, the location of 202 ticker-tape parades for giants like Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela and Dwight Eisenhower. Mayor de Blasio has suggested that one of the names, Marshal Philippe Pétain, be removed because of Pétain’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during World War II.
That might seem like an easy call. Pétain and another hero-turned-villain, Prime Minister Pierre Laval, began as iconic leaders who were ultimately sentenced to death by a French court after the war. (Pétain was allowed to die in prison at age 95; Laval was executed by firing squad.)
But the Downtown Alliance, which installed the plaques in the first place, issued a wonderfully thoughtful response to the controversy earlier this year.
“We can’t erase the moment they marched up Broadway, nor whitewash history,” the Alliance wrote to the Tribeca Trib newspaper. “When this particular parade was held in 1931, Pétain was globally recognized as a French national hero. Less than 10 years later, he went from being an epic military figure of WWI to a justly reviled Nazi supporter and treasonous figure of WWII. In this case, Pétain’s presence can help us remember that heroism in one era can still lead to bigotry and hatred in another. These markers portray history as it was — full of contradictions and regrets.”
If we’re lucky, the current urge to impose today’s political judgement on the past will retain and explain some of those contradictions and regrets. One is near my home in the Grant Square section of Crown Heights, which is guarded by a massive statue of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on horseback.
I only recently learned that Grant, who led the Union armies to victory in the Civil War, also took time in 1862 to issue General Order No. 11, expelling all Jews from the territory under his control, ostensibly to end war profiteering. The order was rescinded days later on the express order of President Lincoln.
I have no opinion about whether that anti-Semitic episode means we should remove the statue from Crown Heights, rename Grant Square, or add a plaque about an ugly chapter in his career. But it’s a discussion worth having.
Ditto for Rikers Island, named for a man named Richard Riker, who was in charge of New York’s criminal courts in the 19th century — and stirred controversy at the time.
The website of #CloseRikers, a criminal justice advocacy group, notes that “Richard Riker led a cohort of officials who actively conspired to both send and sell free blacks, accused of being fugitives, to the South without due process.” The group led by Rikers was known as the “Kidnapping Club,” and adds one more reason to rename the jail — or, better yet, shut it down altogether.
Let the debate begin.