A statue of Theodore Roosevelt will be removed from its place in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The statue portrays the 26th president on horseback, with a Black man and Native American man standing on each side.
The museum’s president, Ellen Futter, explained how the current racial climate in the wake of nationwide protests and renewed momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement played a role in the timing of the decision, saying the museum’s “community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd,” in a statement to The New York Times.
The statue, named Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt and sculpted by James Earle Fraser, depicts the Black and Native American men as the former’s president’s “manservants” who carry his rifles.
The decision to remove the statue has been well received by Roosevelt’s own descendants: Roosevelt’s great-grandson Theodore Roosevelt IV also co-signed the statue’s removal, stating that it is time to “move forward.”
