The New York Times has set its sights on Mount Rushmore as protesters demand the removal of historic monuments in the name of racial justice, citing its location on “Indigenous land,” the sculptor’s purported ties to white supremacy, and two of its subjects’ slave ownership.
“Mount Rushmore was built on land that belonged to the Lakota tribe and sculpted by a man who had strong bonds with the Ku Klux Klan. It features the faces of 2 U.S. presidents who were slaveholders,” the New York Times wrote, linking to a news article detailing complaints against American landmark:
Mount Rushmore was built on land that belonged to the Lakota tribe and sculpted by a man who had strong bonds with the Ku Klux Klan. It features the faces of 2 U.S. presidents who were slaveholders.https://t.co/pHmJScnYbb
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 1, 2020
The Times piece lists three broad grievances with Mount Rushmore, beginning with the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, who was previously involved in “an enormous bas-relief at Stone Mountain in Georgia that memorialized Confederate leaders.”
“It was eventually completed without him, but Mr. Borglum formed strong bonds with leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and participated in their meetings, in part to secure funding for the Stone Mountain project,” the Times wrote, adding that Borglum “also espoused white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideas, according to excerpts from his letters included in ‘Great White Fathers,’ a book by the writer John Taliaferro about the history of Mount Rushmore.” – READ MORE
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