New York will keep its famed but controversial statue of Christopher Columbus following a review of "symbols of hate," as the United States debates tributes to figures whose legacies are increasingly questioned. Democratic Party Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the 90-day review after deadly violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Virginia last August built nationwide momentum to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Civil War South.
The commission recommended that just one of four statues on public land - that of a gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women without anesthesia - be relocated from Central Park to a Brooklyn cemetery. A plaque dedicated to Philippe Petain, a World War I hero who later collaborated with the Nazis and lead Vichy France, would remain in place, the commission recommended. De Blasio had initially said the plaque would be the first to go.
"Reckoning with our collective histories is a complicated undertaking with no easy solution," said de Blasio. "Our approach will focus on adding detail and nuance to - instead of removing entirely - the representations of these histories."
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