A statue of Christopher Columbus that was installed 137 years ago in the California state Capitol’s rotunda will be removed.
California legislative leaders said Tuesday that a statue of Columbus and Queen Isabella from 1883 will be removed following multiple calls from activists to dismantle statues of the explorer across the country.
“Christopher Columbus is a deeply polarizing historical figure given the deadly impact his arrival in this hemisphere had on indigenous populations,” Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, and Assembly Rules Chairman Ken Cooley said in a statement, according to Politico. “The continued presence of this statue in California’s Capitol, where it has been since 1883, is completely out of place today. It will be removed.”
The move has received pushback from Republicans, including former Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello.
“I guess now if we don’t like part of our history we just erase it,” he tweeted Tuesday.
I guess now if we don’t like part of our history we just erase it.
— RogerNiello (@RogerNiello) June 17, 2020
Statues of Columbus have been toppled or vandalized across the country as some protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death have turned violent.
A middle school social studies teacher in Rhode Island was placed on leave last week after he was charged with defacing a statue of Columbus. And in Boston, police found a statue of Columbus beheaded. Another Columbus statue in St. Paul, Minnesota, was also destroyed, and another in Richmond, Virginia, was also pulled down.
