Split by race, county legislators kick the fate of Jackson statues to the voters
Jackson County voters will decide at the Nov. 3 election whether to remove the statues of President Andrew Jackson from outside the downtown Kansas City courthouse and the Historic Truman Courthouse in Independence.
The seven white members of the county legislature — five Democrats and two Republicans — voted Monday to put the issue on the general election ballot. The two Black members, Democrats Jalen Anderson and Ron Finley, voted no.
Anderson gave an impassioned speech, urging his colleagues to have the courage to make the decision themselves.
Chairwoman Theresa Galvin has said that the people of the county should decide whether to remove the statues, but Anderson said the people had no voice in installing the statues in the first place.
“The people put us here to make these decisions,” Anderson said.
Anderson had proposed that the statues be taken down and put in storage until a new home could be found for them. Legislator Crystal Williams joined Anderson and Finley in voting for that proposal, but it failed 6-3 and came after it had already been decided to put the matter on the general election ballot.
County Executive Frank White, who is Black, agreed with Anderson and scolded the legislature for punting on this issue while making myriad other controversial decisions at its weekly meetings without waiting for voters to weigh in.
“This is truly a body that doesn’t want to do what it’s been elected to do,” White said. “They don’t want to have criticism, and when that comes, you want to push this off on the public.”
White called for the removal of the statues last month and last week commended city leaders in Jackson, Mississippi, his home state, for removing a statue of Andrew Jackson on their city hall grounds.
Such moves were spurred by nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes.
Demonstrators across the nation tore down statues of Confederate generals and other historical figures with racist pasts. Andrew Jackson, for whom Jackson County is named, was both a slave owner and oversaw the removal of Native Americans from their homes in the Southeast in a forced migration known as the Trail of Tears during his presidency.
The statue at the downtown courthouse was vandalized last month.
That statue has stood outside the north entrance of the building since it opened in 1934. As county government’s chief executive during the building’s construction, Harry Truman commissioned it.
Truman befriended sculptor Charles Keck, who years later gave then-President Truman a half-size version of the original. Truman donated it to the county in 1949 for display outside the Independence courthouse. That building, which was renamed in Truman’s honor, no longer hosts trials but is now home to county offices.
Late last year, the legislature agreed to install informational plaques on both statues at the suggestion of Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker.
Baker said it bothered her that so many people walk into the downtown courthouse each weekday to engage with the judicial system only to pass the statue of a man with Jackson’s troubling history. Yet there was nothing to acknowledge that today’s society recognizes that everyone deserves equal treatment under the law.
Anderson and Williams sponsored that resolution.
Steps were being taken to design the plaques, but were put on hold when the Floyd protests erupted, a spokesman for Baker said.
Jackson County was named after Andrew Jackson in 1826, two years before he was elected president, in recognition of his military service during the War of 1812 and other accomplishments.
This story was originally published July 13, 2020 at 12:25 PM with the headline "Split by race, county legislators kick the fate of Jackson statues to the voters."
