#Charleston’s Calhoun statue to be removed amid civil unrest

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The statue of John C. Calhoun in Charleston, South Carolina.
AP Photo/Jeffrey Collins, File

A long-controversial monument to Vice President John C. Calhoun in Charleston, South Carolina, is coming down.

City officials will remove and relocate the nearly 124-year-old statue from its prominent location in a downtown square, Mayor John Tecklenburg announced Wednesday amid ongoing civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.

The pledge to take down the monument to the slavery-championing statesman also came on the fifth anniversary of the shooting Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, where white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine African American worshippers at a bible study in 2015.

The statue “comemorat[es] a man who can rightly be called South Carolina’s most prominent national statesman, but also be called its most consequential defender of slavery and white supremacy,” Tecklenburg said at a news conference.

“That we Charlestonians must reckon with Mr. Calhoun’s towering and deeply troubling legacy is a given,” he added.

“That we must allow this memorial to continue to divide our city while we do that reckoning, however, is not a given,” he said.

The city plans to relocate the statue to a local museum or academic institution, the mayor said. The City Council plans to vote on a resolution formally removing and relocating the monument next week. All but two Council members stood with Tecklenburg in support of its removal Wednesday.

The Calhoun monument would join many in the country and across the world that have either been formally removed or toppled by protesters demanding justice for Floyd and the addressing of systemic racism.

The monument has been a flashpoint among residents in the city for years. It was quickly vandalized Wednesday by celebratory protesters following the city’s announcement that it would be removed, Charleston’s The Post and Courrier reported.