New York hides the controversial statue of Theodore Roosevelt

One of the most controversial statues in New York City, that of former President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) on horseback above a black and an indigenous, has just left these last days in all discretion of the majestic facade of the Natural History Museum, thus putting an end to yet another debate on the memory that the city owes to some of its heroes.

The statue, which carried several months locked in some scaffolding covered with cloth, it was finally dismantled at night since last Tuesday, as confirmed by a museum spokesman to Eph, who explained that the process was “Carried out with specialists in historical conservation” and that will culminate in a comprehensive restoration of the square where it stood, in front of Central Park.

Your final destination will be the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota., and although this institution will not open until 2026, the pressure to remove the statue became unsustainable especially after the Black Lives Matter movement, which sparked a national debate on public symbols and literally threw a multitude of sculptures to the ground, from Christopher Columbus to Confederate generals.

The white, the black and the indigenous

The controversial statue, erected in 1940, showed Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by two figures on foot below him: an Indian in feathers and a cape and a naked black man, both anonymous, simply representing their respective races.

“The statue itself conveys a message of racial hierarchy that the museum and members of the public have found disturbing”, recently recognized the museum, a place that in 2018 had more than 4 million visitors.

“It is the narrative of a man who tames: he tames the horse, but also the Native American and the black African.”, commented Mabel Wilson, professor of African Studies at Columbia University, in a video produced by the same museum.

The Mayor’s Office of New York had already launched a debate in 2017 on the most controversial statues in the city, and It was then that the museum produced an exhibition entitled “Let’s talk about the statue” and that video where historians of both trends expressed their opinion about the advisability of suppressing the sculpture or leave it as a witness of an era.

Finally, and during these last four years, the museum placed a plaque under the statue where, in a difficult exercise of political correctness, it was said that in that sculpture “some see a heroic group; others, a symbol of racial hierarchy”. Some of the latter vandalized the statue with paint on several occasions.

A much loved racist

Teddy Roosevelt, as he was popularly known, always appears within the group of “The best presidents of the United States”, either by popular consideration or by historians, and in fact he is one of the four fathers of the country, along with Abraham Lincoln, George Washington y Thomas Jefferson, whose busts appear carved in giant size in the rock of Mount Rushmore.

To him are owed, among other things, the creation of national parks in the United States and the promotion of a conservationist policy which explains why it was his image that presided over the Natural History Museum, famous for its dinosaur skeletons, its stuffed wild animals and its planetarium.

But an impetuous personality like Roosevelt was also a convinced racist, author of phrases that are inconceivable today. Of Native Americans he said: “I’m not going to say that the good Indian is the dead Indian, but I think that would apply to nine out of ten, and I wouldn’t ask much about the tenth. The most depraved cowboy has more moral height than the average Indian”.

Of blacks he wrote that “as a race as a whole, they are inferior to whites” and he told a senator that “most blacks in the south are ineligible to vote” and giving them the right to vote “would lower parts of the south to the level of Haiti.”

It cannot be said that the statue did not fully reflect the man that Roosevelt was., but in 2022 that image became unsustainable.

The museum ultimately chose to remove the statue but pledged in its message that its former location “continue to be the site of the official memorial to Theodore Roosevelt”.

In the place where the statue was, today a frieze runs through the empty square. On the frieze you can still read this description of that president: Statesman – Author – Historian – Humanitarian – Soldier – Patriot.