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I mean, frankly, I don’t have a problem with Koko the Gorilla.
Oh, wait.
This isn’t actually Koko?
CNN:
A monument honoring famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman was unveiled in Newark, New Jersey, this week, replacing a statue of Christopher Columbus removed in 2020 amid social injustice protests, officials said.
The 25-foot-tall monument, titled “Shadow of a Face,” was revealed Thursday at the heart of the city’s recently renamed Harriet Tubman Square, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka announced in a statement.
“In a time when so many cities are choosing to topple statutes that limit the scope of their people’s story, we have chosen to erect a monument that spurs us into our future story of exemplary strength and solidity,” Baraka said.
Koko’s granddaughter, Kuku, posing with the monument
“We have created a focal point in the heart of our city that expresses our participation in an ongoing living history of a people who have grappled through many conflicts to steadily lead our nation in its progress toward racial equality.”
Harriet Tubman’s lifeTubman was born into slavery in Maryland and eventually escaped to Pennsylvania. From 1850 to 1860, she made more than a dozen trips to Maryland to help enslaved people reach freedom through the Underground Railroad, a secret network of routes and safe houses, according to the US National Parks Service.
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“One way I wanted to bring about their connection is really to meet the community with the prompt, ‘What is your story of liberation? What is your story – big or small – of really overcoming multiple obstacles that we all have to overcome,’ ” Cooke John said in an interview published by the Harriet Tubman Monument Project.
‘Compassion, courage’Michele Jones Gavin, Tubman’s three-times great-grand niece, said the monument will commemorate the activist’s heroism and inspire future generations to take action in the face of injustice.
“Let’s forever remember Harriet Tubman, for her compassion, courage, bravery, service to others, her patriotism, and her commitment to faith, family, fortitude, and freedom,” Gavin said.
The Columbus statue Tubman’s memorial replaces was removed amid a nationwide racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The movement spurred the removal or renaming of dozens of monuments, including those of Confederate leaders and other controversial figures in US history.
Columbus has long been a contentious figure for his treatment of the Indigenous communities he encountered and for his role in the violent colonization at their expense.
A monument and audio experience
The monument includes two sections: a portrait wall and a mosaic of tiles, all contained within a circular learning wall inscribed with stories of Tubman’s life and Newark’s history of Black liberation, the mayor’s statement said.
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“Not only are their stories physically a part of the monument, but they can also come to the monument and feel that ownership because they were really a part of creating it,” Cooke John said in her interview with the Harriet Tubman Monument Project.
“Seeing their stories being a part of other stories of people from Newark in this mosaic that’s on the wall and is attached to the backside of the wall that has Harriet Tubman’s face, the central figure which grounds us in the larger-than-life story of Harriet Tubman.”
Residents also recorded some of their personal stories for the monument’s audio experience, according to the mayor’s statement. The audio experience includes the story of Tubman’s life, narrated by entertainer Queen Latifah. Audio clips will also be included in school curricula, in collaboration with the Newark Museum of Art.
The really funny part about the attacks on Christopher Columbus is that he is a figure who was brought into the American story in order to include Italian immigrants as real Americans. This was a very deliberate thing, where Italians were viewed as “outsiders” by most normal Americans, and people were attempting to figure out a way to kind of link them to the core American identity, and they did this in part by adding Columbus to the American founding myth.
That is to say: there are statues of Christopher Columbus in America for the sake of “inclusiveness.”
Of course, now the Italians are a legitimate part of Americanism (and in everywhere other than the East Coast, they have really just mixed in with the normal population, to the point where if someone has an Italian name, they are probably 75% normal North European). Therefore, they are now considered enemies of the Jews, rather than a tool for division in the way they were 100 years ago. So it does make sense that Columbus is attacked. But it’s useful to look at the dynamics of this in order to understand how the narrative changes and how anything is used for the agenda.
