Charleston’s Calhoun statue to be removed amid George Floyd protests

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

City officials will eliminate and relocate the practically 124-yr-outdated statue from its prominent place in a downtown square, Mayor John Tecklenburg introduced Wednesday amid ongoing civil unrest more than the law enforcement killing of George Floyd.

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

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

“That we Charlestonians need to reckon with Mr. Calhoun’s towering and deeply troubling legacy is a offered,” he extra.

“That we ought to let this memorial to continue on to divide our metropolis when we do that reckoning, nonetheless, is not a specified,” he stated.

The city programs to relocate the statue to a regional museum or academic institution, the mayor stated. The Town Council options to vote on a resolution formally eradicating and relocating the monument future week. All but two Council associates stood with Tecklenburg in aid of its removal Wednesday.

The Calhoun monument would sign up for several in the place and across the planet that have both been formally eradicated or toppled by protesters demanding justice for Floyd and the addressing of systemic racism.

The monument has been a flashpoint amongst people in the metropolis for decades. It was swiftly vandalized Wednesday by celebratory protesters adhering to the city’s announcement that it would be removed, Charleston’s The Article and Courrier described.