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\n\tLast Friday, the Trump administration erected 13 statues on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington D.C.\u2014including an equestrian monument dedicated to the Revolutionary War figure and slave owner Caesar Rodney that was removed from view in Wilmington, Delaware amidst the Black Lives Matter movement in June, 2020.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe statue depicts Rodney\u2019s famed 1776 ride from battle in Dover, Delaware to Philadelphia, where he cast the decisive vote for the country\u2019s Independence. Rodney died in 1784, at his home on the Byfield plantation, where he owned 200 slaves.<\/p>\n
Surrounding the statue are 12 soldiers, who \u201crepresent the collective sacrifice of those who served during the Revolutionary War, reflecting the broad range of individuals who contributed to the nation\u2019s founding,\u201d according to a written statement spokesperson from the Department of the Interior.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe spokesperson continued, \u201cas we approach America\u2019s 250th anniversary, the Trump administration has been committed to celebrating and acknowledging the full breadth of our nation\u2019s history.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tIn 2020, shortly after Rodney\u2019s statue was removed, Trump issued a proclamation celebrating the founding father\u2019s 292nd birthday, arguing the removal of Rodney\u2019s statue was the result of \u201can extreme anti-American historical revisionism\u201d led by \u201ccritical race theorists on college campuses, cancel culture adherents in corporate boardrooms, and flag-burning mobs on city streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tEarlier this year, the Trump administration announced the installation of a statue of Christopher Columbus, a replica of a monument that protesters in Baltimore tore down following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Fragments of the original were later recovered and refashioned to form the sculpture now standing on the north side of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe reinstallation of decommissioned monuments comes as Trump seeks to exert increased control over the Smithsonian Institute, which, in an order called \u201cRestoring Truth and Sanity to American History,\u201d he claims is espousing a version of history that \u201cdeepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-518796457-1.jpg?w=1024″] Last Friday, the Trump administration erected 13 statues on Freedom Plaza in downtown Washington D.C.\u2014including an equestrian monument dedicated to the Revolutionary War figure and slave owner Caesar Rodney that was removed from view in Wilmington, Delaware amidst the Black Lives Matter movement in June, 2020. The statue depicts Rodney\u2019s famed 1776 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1959508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1959508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1959508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1959508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1959508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}