WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) – A statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and an enslaver, that was taken down in Delaware in 2020 amid racial justice protests will be displayed by President Donald Trump’s administration this year in Washington.
The National Park Service plans to install the bronze statue of the Delaware plantation owner on horseback in Washington, D.C., temporarily, the Interior Department said.
The statue recalls Rodney’s famous ride in 1776 to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence.
It will remain in place for up to six months in Freedom Plaza, a federal park in downtown Washington, as part of the Trump administration’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, the Washington Post reported.
Rodney enslaved 200 people and his statue was taken down after 97 years from its location in Wilmington, Delaware, in 2020 when racial justice protests spread following the killing of George Floyd. It has been stored in a warehouse since then.
In a campaign against what Trump calls “anti-American” ideology, he has ordered the dismantling of slavery exhibits, restoration of Confederate statues and other moves that civil rights advocates say could reverse decades of social progress.
The Interior Department statement did not note that Rodney was an enslaver nor that his statue was taken down in Wilmington. The department’s spokesperson said displaying it was part of the administration’s commitment to “acknowledging the full breadth of our nation’s history, including the story of Caesar Rodney.”Rodney suffered from a disfiguring facial cancer and died in 1784. A statue of Confederate General Albert Pike, which was overturned during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, was reinstalled in Washington last year.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Donna Bryson and Cynthia Osterman)
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