Given the killing of George Floyd and the consequent race protests across the nation and world, now would be an excellent time for Kansas City to make a couple more changes. Sure, it's been announced the local police are finally going to have and wear cameras on them all the time and that's a great change but here are two more we should make.
First, as Steve Kraske so well and rightly said some time ago, we need to rename the JC Nichols Fountain.
JC Nichols was a publicly known racist. He's one of the biggest reasons the city was and still is, to this day, so racially segregated and separated. Mr. Kraske did a great job of calling it out at the time, thankfully. Unfortunately, that was 3 years ago and nothing has yet been done. It's incredibly ironic that these racial protests are taking place around the fountain named after him and at the shopping center he created.
Then, next, the second thing we should do, as a city, is to finally, at long last, take down the Andrew Jackson statue downtown. There is no bigger or worst, known racist than Andrew Jackson, former President or no.
Andrew Jackson, President, Patriot, War Hero, Racist
The state and Governor of Virginia are doing it, so should we.
Philadelphia, too, removed a statue of racist former Mayor Frank Rizzo.
Philadelphia removes statue
of controversial former mayor
Birmingham, too, did the right thing and removed a statue. This was 2 days ago.
Birmingham Mayor Orders Removal
of Confederate Monument
This was announced late today.
To be clear and complete, too, we should take down this Andrew Jackson statue downtown and melt it down, not put it anywhere else.
It's time, Kansas City. It's time. In fact, it's long, long past time.
Let's do this.
Let's change both.
Additinal links:
Steve Kraske: I’m still talking about J.C. Nichols, racism and renaming the fountain
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