Boston Mayor Marty Walsh (D) has come out in favor of removing a statue of Abraham Lincoln that has stood in the city for more than a century — but is opposed to renaming Faneuil Hall, which is named for a slave owner and is on the site of a slave market.
As Breitbart News has reported, left-wing activists are trying to have a statue of Abraham Lincoln removed from Park Square after nearly 150 years because they find the depiction of an emancipated slave in the sculpture to be offensive.
The statue has stood there since 1879 and is a replica of an original statue built with funds contributed by freed slaves.
Mayor Walsh’s office told the Boston Globe last week that he favors removing the Lincoln statue and replacing it with “one that recognizes equality.”
However, Mayor Walsh has opposed renaming Faneuil Hall, a major tourist attraction in downtown Boston, declaring last week: “The Mayor is always open to having a conversation, but he remains opposed to changing the name of Faneuil Hall.”
As NPR reported in 2018: “The building has been a meeting place for revolutionaries and abolitionists. Frederick Douglass spoke here. But it’s also a relic of the slave trade in Boston. Peter Faneuil was a merchant who made money off slavery and owned slaves himself. Slaves were bought and sold right next to what is now Faneuil Hall.”
At the time, Mayor Walsh favored a “memorial” to slavery on the site instead. But the artist who proposed the memorial, Steve Locke, withdrew his proposal, claiming that he had been falsely accused of being “the ‘house negro’ pawn of a white mayor.”
Mayor Walsh’s office had not responded to a request by Breitbart News for comment by time of publication.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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