Chicago mayor plans removal of George Washington statue in City Hall

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has decided to remove a statue of George Washington in City Hall, but, according to a top aide, the decision has nothing to do with the first president being a slave owner.  

The statue is located on the fifth floor right outside Johnson’s office, but the Democratic mayor’s communication director, Ronnie Reese, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the statue is being removed because the mayor is looking to make updates to the space.

“We’re just freshening up the space,” Reese told the outlet. “Making it a bit more current. There’s a lot of Chicago icons who would be deserving of statues as well. We should be considering that also — Ida B. Wells, DuSable, Harold Washington.”

There is no time frame for when the statue will be removed, and it has not been publicly disclosed how much it will cost the city. 

Reese said Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa is leading the charge for what to do with the monuments and statues.

“I know he has an idea of having like a public area in which we could put monuments and make it kind of like an open space, like park space dedicated solely to monuments, which I think is actually a pretty decent idea,” Reese told the outlet.

Johnson’s plan has been met with fierce criticism by Ald. Nicholas Sposato, the chairman of the City Council’s Committee on Cultural Affairs and Special Events. 

“He’s George Washington. He risked everything,” he said. “We are who we are because of this man. He could have just stood down and not get involved with the [Revolutionary] War and came here and lived a good life. But he fought for who we are. He should be honored all over the place. Next, are we gonna change the name of the streets?”

Johnson’s plan to remove Washington’s monuments follows former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to “temporarily” remove two Christopher Columbus statues during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 ignited by the death of George Floyd.

This led to City Hall launching an advisory committee, known as the Chicago Monuments Project, to review 5,000 Chicago statues and monuments that could be deemed problematic. The commission found 41 monuments that could be deemed problematic, including that of Washington (not the one in City Hall) and Abraham Lincoln.

At the time of his death, Washington owned 317 men, women, and children as slaves at his Mount Vernon home. He had also found himself uncomfortable with how slavery was affecting the trajectory of the nation, according to the Mount Vernon website.

“When he drafted his will at age 67, Washington included a provision that would free the 123 enslaved people he owned outright,” the website states.