Free Republic

Joe Biden's National Park Service under Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will remove the statue of William Penn from the park erected in 1982 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of his founding of the colony of Pennsylvania. The park is on the site of his original home in Philadelphia. The park, located in Philadelphia near the Delaware River at Sansom and Second Streets, will be "rehabilitated" and that proposal will include an "expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia." The plan was "developed in consultations with the representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware...

Created by the fiscal 2021 national defense authorization act, the Naming Commission’s duties included recommending procedures for renaming Department of Defense assets “to prevent commemoration of the Confederate States of America or any person who served voluntarily” with them. While nine U.S. Army posts named for Confederates have received the most attention, the commission’s “remit” extends much further. In fact, a logical end point to its (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion-inspired) work is nowhere to be found: The Commission recognizes that [defense] assets commemorating the Confederacy or an individual who voluntarily served with the Confederacy will continue to be identified after the submission of...

The names, below, are a few of the 375,000 Confederate soldiers about whom Union soldier and president of the United States, William McKinley, said: . . . every soldier’s grave made during our unfortunate civil war is a tribute to American valor . . . And the time has now come . . . when in the spirit of fraternity we should share in the care of the graves of the Confederate soldiers . . . The cordial feeling now happily existing between the North and South prompts this gracious act and if it needed further justification it is found...

Lee and Lee-Jackson highways may officially no more. In a 9-1 decision, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted to change names of Lee and Lee-Jackson highways to Route 29 and Route 50 respectively. “This is a necessary and important change for Fairfax County. We will continue to strive to realize our vision of a more equitable One Fairfax,” wrote Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay in a statement. The move comes after a yearlong review by the county’s Confederate Names Task Force, which called on renaming the highways. The task force submitted recommendations in December. Overall, updates...

The editorial board of the University of Virginia’s newspaper has called to remove references to University founder and Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. The University and the greater Charlottesville, Virginia, area in which it is located has taken it upon themselves to be defined not by academics, or history, or any other trait. Rather, those in charge of local government and University administration prefer to be defined by a single characteristic: the August 12, 2017, “Unite the Right” rally.

Two men have been arrested following an attack — involving lighting and throwing improvised explosive devices (similar to pipe bombs) at the remnant (the base) of the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville — amid a crowd mulling around about an hour after the city’s Fourth of July fireworks gala had finished, according to the Asheville Police Department. However, nobody was hurt and there was reportedly no damage to the monument’s base. The remainder of the 75-foot-tall granite obelisk monument has been deconstructed by the city and its stone blocks and other parts are being held, reportedly, in secure, undisclosed warehouses...

Two Virginia schools which had been named after Confederate generals and soldiers and which changed their names in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, are to revert back to their earlier names.

Police said that the young, Forest Hills resident is the woman who was caught on camera smashing a pair of church statues to pieces in July.FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — A 23-year-old Forest Hills resident was hit with hate crime charges on Friday, after police identified her as the person who smashed a pair of church statues in July, according to the NYPD. Jacqueline Nikiena was arrested on Friday, Sept. 10 on charges of criminal mischief as a hate crime and aggravated harassment, police said. Her arrest comes nearly two months after she was caught on camera smashing a pair of...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A crowd erupted in cheers and song Wednesday as work crews hoisted an enormous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee off the pedestal where it has towered over Virginia’s capital city for more than a century. One of America’s largest monuments to the Confederacy, the equestrian statue was lowered to the ground just before 9 a.m., after a construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from a crowd of hundreds. A work crew then began cutting it into...

WINDSOR TERRACE — Another statue of the Virgin Mary was vandalized outside a Catholic Church in New York City, this time early Sunday evening in the Bronx. At about 6 p.m. Sunday, a woman was seen setting fire to the statue outside the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Mary Church, at 150th St. and Melrose Avenue. The act was caught on video and broadcast by WABC Channel 7. “A woman came and put some clothing in front of the statue … and set it on fire,” said Father Sean McGillicuddy, pastor of the parish. He added that bystanders called the...

A pair of 84-year-old religious statues were smashed to pieces early Saturday by a woman outside a Queens church, the latest in a disturbing spate of incidents targeting local Catholic properties, church and police officials said. The incident occurred at the Our Lady of Mercy parish, where the venerable statues of the Blessed Mother and St. Therese the Little Flower were knocked over, dragged into the middle of the street and broken with a hammer around 3:30 a.m., said John Quaglione, a spokesman for the Diocese of Brooklyn....

Rutgers University-Camden will remove a statue of the famous poet Walt Whitman from the center of campus as a result of activists’ petitions and a recommendation from a committee of scholars. The statue of Whitman, featured prominently in the front courtyard of Camden’s Campus Center, will be “relocated to a historically relevant site on campus and contextualized,” interim Chancellor Margaret Marsh recently announced in an email to students and employees. That new location has yet to be announced by campus officials.

Charlottesville, Virginia's cancellation of history and art continued Saturday with an emergency meeting to bring down a statue featuring explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea. The Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously in a meeting hastily called on 20 minutes notice to take down the explorers after toppling statues of confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on Saturday. "I feel that it should just be melted down," a Sacagawea descendant Rose Ann Abrahamson said during the council meeting, The Daily Progress reported. “I feel that it's entirely offensive and it should be obliterated." Sacagawea was a 16-year-old...

The city of Charlottesville, Virginia, officially removed its statues of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on Saturday. Viewing areas for the removal of the statues were erected so that bystanders could watch cranes lift the statues from their plinth blocks; the process was nearly complete just before 9 a.m. Photos and videos posted to social media show a crowd gathered to watch the process on Saturday morning. Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker spoke at Saturday's gathering, calling the removal "one small step forward" in an effort to dismantle White supremacy, according to VPM reporter Ben Paviour....

WASHINGTON — The House voted on Tuesday to remove statues honoring Confederate and other white supremacist leaders from public display at the United States Capitol, renewing an effort to rid the seat of American democracy of symbols of rebellion and racism. The chamber voted 285 to 120 to approve the legislation, which aims to banish the likenesses of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Jefferson Davis and roughly a dozen other figures associated with the Confederacy or white supremacist causes. Sixty-seven Republicans, including the party’s top leader, joined with every Democrat who voted to support the changes, but a majority of...

Washington and Lee University may change its name -- well, both of them -- in June when the school’s board of trustees meets to decide the matter. The renaming controversy has surrounded the school for some time now, with many students and some faculty demanding a change while others wish to keep the current name of one of the oldest colleges in the country.In 1796, George Washington donated 100 shares of the James River Canal Company stock to the school, stock that he had received in recognition of his selfless service to his country. It was one of the largest...

A statue of Jesus was smashed and an American flag burned outside a Catholic church in Brooklyn — in what cops are calling a possible hate crime. The incident occurred around 10 p.m. Thursday when an unknown person hopped the fence at St. Athanasius Church on Bay Parkway at 61st Street in Bensonhurst, police said. The vandal pushed over a statue of Jesus’s crucifixion, breaking it into pieces, and torched an American flag hanging outside the rectory, according to cops. The church’s pastor, Msgr. David Cassato, noticed the act of vandalism around 8 a.m. Friday and reported it to the...

Link only (Gannett): https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Court-orders-upstate-woman-to-remove-Confederate-16156632.php

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is confronting the “hard truths of Chicago’s racial history,” launching a public process to review the fate of 41 statues and other monuments, including some of former presidents Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and William McKinley. Reasons for making the list include promoting narratives of white supremacy; presenting an inaccurate or demeaning portrayal of Native Americans; celebrating people with connections to slavery, genocide or racist acts; or “presenting selective, over-simplified, one-sided views of history.” Besides five statutes of Lincoln, others on the list include the General John Logan Monument in Grant Park; the General Philip...

Two German WWII tombstones at a Texas veterans cemetery — each bearing Nazi swastikas — have been removed and replaced with new ones that do not use the symbol. The 1943 gravestones belonging to German prisoners of war Alfred Kafka and Georg Forst at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery featured an Iron Cross with a swastika in the middle, and the phrase, “He died far from his home for the Leader (Führer), people and fatherland.” Cemetary workers removed the stones on Wednesday.