The following is a list of monument and memorial controversies in the United States excluding those dealing with the Confederate States of America.
The first section is a chronological arrangement of monuments and memorials on which some action has already taken place, such as removal, defacement, and destruction. The final section is arranged alphabetically by state, and includes proposals bearing no action, authorized or not.
Action taken Statue of William Pitt (1770)
The first monumental statue in what was to become the United States of America was a sculpture of William Pitt erected at the corner of Meeting and Broad streets in Civic Square in Charleston, SC on July 5, 1770. The South Carolina Assembly had voted to erect the statue after Pitt's role in repealing the stamp act. The standing statue was carved in London by Jooseph Wilton and depicts Pitt in a Classical oratory pose holding Magna Carta.
Statue of King George III (1776) One month later, an equestrian statue of King George III was erected. It was executed by the British sculptor Joseph Wilton.Post, Chandler Rathfon, A History of European and American Sculpture: From the Early Christian Period to the Present Day, Volume ll, Harvard University Press, London, 1921 Commissioned in 1764 and cast in lead covered with gold leaf, the Neoclassical statue showed King George dressed in Roman garb astride a horse, the whole effect being reminiscent of the Marcus Aurelius statue in Rome. It was set up on a tall pedestal in Bowling Green Park in New York City and dedicated in August 1770.
The following month another statue by Wilton, this one of William Pitt, a British politician very popular in the Americas for being responsible for the repeal of the much-hated Stamp Act of 1765 was erected. As with the King George statue, Pitt is portrayed in Roman clothes and was also located in New York.
On July 9, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read in New York City, and to celebrate it a group of patriots pulled down the King's statue, and eventually melted it down to make bullets with which to fight the British. When British troops arrived in November of that year they retaliated by destroying the Pitt statue.Reynolds, Donald Martin, Monuments and Masterpieces: Histories and Views of Public Sculpture in New York City, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1988, pp.26–27
Haymarket statues (1900)
The Haymarket affair statues. On May 3, 1886 police in Chicago, feeling threatened by a crowd, fired into it, killing six people. A rally was called the next day, held near Haymarket Square at which time an unknown person threw a bomb into a group of policemen, killing eight. Although it was never learned who threw the bomb, eight labor leaders were arrested, all were tried and found guilty and, after one committed suicide the day before he was to be executed, four others were hanged.The Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Illinois, "The WPA Guide to Illinois, Pantheon Books, New York, 1983 pp.82–83 Several years later, after winning an 1887 competition, a monument by Johannes Gelert portraying a "robust policeman, in his countenance frank, kind, and resolute", was created. On the base were the words "In the name of the people of Illinois I command peace" though a reporter at the event had the policeman saying, "In the name of the law I command you to disperse." The monument, a policeman standing with his arm upraised, for which the sculptor had used a policeman directing traffic as his inspiration, was dedicated May 30, 1889. At the dedication the Mayor of Chicago, DeWitt Cregier, had said, "May it stand here unblemished so long as the metropolis shall endure". In 1900, after it had been frequently vandalized and defaced and "unmistakable traces" of an attempt to blow it up were discovered, the statue was moved to near Randolph and Ogden streets in Union Park. On May 4, 1927, on the forty-first anniversary of the Haymarket affair, a "streetcar traveling at full speed jumped the tracks and rammed the statue". The monument was moved again, further into the park. In October 1969 and again exactly one year later attempts were made to blow up the statue. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley placed the statue under 24-hour police guard. In 1972 the statue was moved into the Central Police Headquarters, and then moved again in 1976 into the garden of the Police Training center.
In 1893 the Haymarket Martyrs' Monument by Albert Weinert was unveiled in the German Waldheim Cemetery, where the four men executed, August Spies, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons, and George Engel, and Louis Lingg who committed suicide the day before the hanging, are buried.
On September 14, 2004, another monument was unveiled, this one by Mary Brogger. Historian Kara Kvaran quotes Chicago city historian Tim Samuelson as saying, "The unifying theme is it's a tragedy – a human tragedy of people under difficult circumstances reacting to something beyond their control."Burghart, Tare, "New Memorial Commemorates Bloody 1886 Labor Rally in Chicago, "Chicago Sun Times, September 16, 2004
Sacco and Vanzetti sculpture Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in 1927 after a great deal of controversy over the fairness of their trial and conviction. In 1928, a bas relief of them by Gutzon Borglum (sculptor of Mount Rushmore) was presented to the city of Boston. "The sculpture was never installed in the building it was intended for and, through the years, was rejected by one city or state official after another. Over time, the original bronze sculpture was lost, but a plaster mold was recovered." In 1997, 70 years later, the city finally accepted the sculpture. But a new casting from the mold has not been made, and it sits in storage at the Boston Public Library.
Pioneer Woman's Statue By October 1936, plans for a Pioneer Woman statue to be placed at the Texas Woman's University (TWU) in Denton, Texas, were moving forward by "inviting a group of leading American sculptors, about 80 in number, to submit photographs of their work and from this group several sculptors are to be chosen who will be required to submit models of the proposed statue to the Centennial Commission of Control and if the first model submitted is not acceptable other models will be submitted until an accepted group is submitted."Texas Woman's University Board of Regents meeting, October 3, 1936, Book 34, page 4
Among the artists who entered the competition was the Texas sculptor Waldine Tauch, who had entered seven different competitions conducted by the Commission. She was to win three of them (memorials to Moses Austin, Isaac and Frances Van Zandt and First Shot Fired For Texas Independence monument) but she was not able to win the Pioneer Woman statue.
It is not yet clear how many plaster models were submitted, but a "jury of professionals" unanimously chose the one submitted by William Zorach, a sculptor from New York. It includes not just a pioneer woman, nor a woman and child as does Tauch's model, but an entire family of mother, father, son, and daughterall nude.Thurman, Nita, "Original TWU pioneer statue caused a statewide hoopla", Denton Record-Chronicle, February 15, 2006 Nudity was seen, by some, as being appropriate for Classical, allegorical, or symbolical portrayals but was unacceptable for Texas pioneer women. Upon learning of the commission's decision, Tauch "wasted no time telephoning and writing letters to many friends throughout the state to report the incident".Hutson, Alice, From Chalk to Bronze: A Biography of Waldine Tauch, Shoal Creek Publishers, Austin, Texas 1978 pp. 96–97
"Anguished protests from Texans swelled into a controversy dwarfing all previous ones (in Zorach's career). One astute observer noted the woman had no wedding ring .... while a chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas declared it, 'the greatest insult that could be offered to these women who believed and practiced the virtue of modesty'."Baur, John I., William Zorach, Published for the Whitney Museum of American Art by Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1959 p.33 Zorach wrote "The newspapers said that if a Texas pioneer had gone around in such a state of nudity he would have been strung to the nearest tree. ... Gutzon Borglum was down there at the time and I was told that he said my figures looked like a bunch of apes",Zorach, William, Art is My Life: The Autobiography of William Zorach, The World Publishing Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 1967 p. 112 a remark that was widely quoted by opponents of the statue at the time. Eventually the commission was turned over to sculptor Leo Friedlander, who had not even entered the competition. He, along with the Piccirilli BrothersLittle, Carol Morris, A Comprehensive Guide to Outdoor Sculpture in Texas, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1996 p. 195 carvers, executed the work. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license and the GFDL.
Bust of United States Senator Joseph McCarthy United States Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (1908–1957) served as a Wisconsin Circuit Court judge prior to his election to the United States Senate. In 1959, a bust of Joseph McCarthy was dedicated at the Outagamie County Justice Center in Appleton, Wisconsin. Outagamie County officials discussed removing the bust from the justice center in 1986 and again in 1991. In 2001, the McCarthy bust was sent to the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, Wisconsin. The bust is part of an exhibit about Joseph McCarthy at the museum.
The Races of Mankind (1969) The Races of Mankind is a series of 104 sculptures created for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago by sculptor Malvina Hoffman, representing the various races of humankind, and unveiled in 1933. Most of the sculptures are life-sized. The works were initially housed in Hall 3, the Chauncey Keep Memorial Hall ("The Hall of the Races of Mankind"). In the 1960s such a portrayal of race became viewed negatively, as racist, and in February 1969 the Hall was dismantled and the statues were either spread around the museum or placed in storage. The museum stated that the Hall was "scientifically indefensible and socially objectionable". The Field Museum had previously allowed the Hammond World Atlas Corporation to use pictures of the statues in its Hammond's March of Civilization; A Historical Atlas."Hammond's March of Civilization; A Historical Atlas, C.S. Hammond & Co., Maplewood, New Jersey, 1963 pp. D1 – D 12 This permission was withdrawn in the late 1960s or early 1970s because it contained "outdated historical, linguistic and racial data".
Vietnam Veteran's Memorial