#Boston considers removing Abraham Lincoln statue with freed slave

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A statue depicting former President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed black man is seen in Boston.
AP/Michael Dwyer

Boston’s mayor says he’s considering taking down a statue of former President Abraham Lincoln standing before a freed black man after a petition was launched for its removal.

Mayor Marty Walsh’s office said he’s “willing to engage in a dialogue with the community about its future in Boston” and looking into the process required to make the change, news station WCVB reported.

The statue, which is situated in the city’s Park Square, is a replica of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington and shows Lincoln with one hand raised above a kneeling man with broken shackles on his wrists.

The monument was intended to show Lincoln freeing the man from slavery, but a new petition argues that it “instead represents us still beneath someone else.”

“It says that it’s a statue that’s supposed to represent freedom. But, to me, it represents submissiveness,” said Tory Bullock, who started the online petition, which has at least 7,800 signatures as of Monday morning.

“It represents ‘Know your place, because that’s where you belong.’”

Bullock said that he’d like to see the statue replaced with a new one that symbolizes equality.

“This is a great opportunity to get some local black artists involved in the creation of (a new) statue, to come up with something new that represents equality,” Bullock told WCVB.

The calls to dismantle the statue comes after a Christopher Columbus statue was beheaded last week in the North End neighborhood amid protests over the death of George Floyd.

Other controversial monuments have also been destroyed in recent days.

With Post wires