The authorities of American Boston decided to remove from the park in the city center a monument depicting the 16th US President Abraham Lincoln, during the reign of which slavery was abolished.
“Today, the Boston art commission unanimously voted to remove the bronze depictions of the emancipation memorial from its location in Park Square”, – the commission said in a statement.
This is a monument that depicts Lincoln at full height with his hand raised above a dark-skinned man kneeling beside him with broken shackles on his wrists. The date of dismantling the monument is still unknown. The commission also advocated considering the possibility of installing the memorial in another place where it will be accessible to people.
A number of statues were removed by decision of the authorities or spontaneously demolished in recent weeks amid mass protests after the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis. This affected the monuments to soldiers and generals of the slave-owning South during the American Civil War, as well as the statue of the discoverer of America Christopher Columbus, whom left activists accuse of genocide of the indigenous population of America.
Abraham Lincoln is the 16th president of the United States, during the reign of which and thanks to which slavery was abolished in the country. Lincoln signed a decree abolishing slavery in the United States in 1862, which was reinforced by the Proclamation of the Slave of 1863. He also signed the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which entered into force two years later and prohibited slavery and forced labor.