*A statue in Boston depicting a formerly enslaved man kneeling at the feet of President Abraham Lincoln has been removed.
The Emancipation Group Memorial was removed after critics saw it as demeaning and racist. Among them was social media influencer Tory Bullock, who started a petition over the summer pushing for its removal.
“It’s an amazing funeral, I’m here to provide a silent eulogy for this piece of artwork that’s been here for 141 years,” Bullock told CBS Boston on Tuesday as the monument was being hauled away.
“I’m proud, I’m Black, and I’m young,” he said. “This image has been doing a lot of disservice to African-Americans in Boston and now it stops.”
The Emancipation Group, which is a replica of a statue in Washington D.C., was installed in 1879. The monument depicts Lincoln standing over a kneeling Archer Alexander, a Black man who helped the Union Army, escaped slavery and was recaptured under the Fugitive Slave Act, according to the Boston Art Commission.
Bullock’s petition earlier this year racked up thousands of signatures, prompting the Commission to vote unanimously in June to have it taken down.
Watch below:
Below, a time-lapse video of the removal from a different angle:
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