Erasing Thomas Jefferson: City Council’s Statue Pull
THE ISSUE: The City Council’s decision to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall.
What ignoramuses (“Jefferson knocked off his pedestal,” Oct 19). What self-centered blinds. They only see Thomas Jefferson as someone who owned slaves.
Cancel culture will not win out. Along with Mayor de Blasio, the city officials who are taking down the Jefferson statue are the ones who should be removed.
John Frankle
Manhattan
The Sovietization of New York continues apace. Banishing Jefferson’s statue from City Hall is the latest step toward turning us into a people without a past.
Judith Weizner
Bronxville
Statues of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Jefferson were removed in New York City. How about the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC? And all those Jefferson nickels?
More important, who’s next? George Washington owned slaves. Andrew Jackson owned slaves, too. And the list of slave-owning presidents goes on.
Will the progressives demand that all the faces on our currency be replaced? Will they demand all those statues come down? When will the madness end?
Mike Barrett Ashburn, Va.
As the City Council pondered whether to exile a statue of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson from its chamber, the New York Public Library “Treasures” exhibition was displaying his original handwritten draft of the Declaration of Independence, which contains a passionate and eloquent condemnation of the African slave trade.
It was eventually cut from the final, official text of the declaration by his colleagues of the Continental Congress.
On the audio accompaniment to the NYPL show, a commentator ponders how Jefferson could reconcile his opposition to slavery with his ownership over his lifetime of 600 slaves.
Could it be that committing economic suicide did not seem like a viable option to him — just as abandoning fossil fuels and motorized vehicles for the sake of the environment does not seem like a viable option to us today?
Elsa A. Solender
Manhattan
Council members have shown disrespect to the values, honor and ethics of our Founding Fathers over the years.
Removing Thomas Jefferson from that den of inequity, lies and corruption known as the City Council chamber was the honorable thing to do.
Robert Neglia
The Bronx