PEORIA, Ill. — The Peoria Park District heard public feedback Wednesday night regarding the future of the Christopher Columbus statue that currently resides in Bradley Park.
Participants were given five minutes to comment both in person and via Zoom.
The district board prior to Wednesday night’s meeting laid out a number of potential outcomes for the statue, which included leaving it as-is, leaving it and changing the signage around it, leaving it but modifying it to resemble a different historical figure, selling it, putting it into storage, removing it and leaving the pedestal for a future sculpture, and removing it completely.
Passion ran high on both sides of the spectrum.
“There has been a number of misquotes and misunderstandings that have been maybe kind of popularized with our current culture and what’s going on, and it seems as if Christopher Columbus has been unfairly maligned,” said Peoria resident Timothy Anders.
“If we’re always going to looking to pick apart on people, Martin Luther King, Jr. was not the best man as far as how he treated women, but we don’t memorialize people like that because of the things they did wrong. We memorialize people for the things they did right.
“If we’re looking for somebody to memorialize who was perfect, we’re never going to have anybody to look up to or to ever inspire us to be better.”
Fellow resident Jean Hines concurred with keeping the statue where it is.
“I’m so glad to see our young people standing up for what they believe is right. It’s disheartening to see they’ve been indoctrinated by our government training camps,” she said.
“I have things to say concerning Christopher Columbus’s life, which a lot of activists have dragged through the mud, and it’s really sad, because it’s not the truth.
“There is a movement and a course underway to erase history of the United States of America, and this is part of history, and I believe it should stay, and light it.”
Others, like Peorian Tommy Rosecrans, leaned in a polar opposite direction.
“I am for destroying this statue, completely,” he said.
“Columbus kidnapped a Carib woman and gave her to a crew member to rape. On Hispaniola, a member of Columbus’s crew publicly cut off an Indian’s ears to shock others into submission.
“Also, what does Columbus have to do with Peoria, at all? Pretty sure he didn’t sail over here.”
Heart of Illinois Sierra Club Chairperson Rob Jorgensen urged the district to remove the statue.
“We here in Peoria must take actionable steps to change the white privileged and inaccurate narrative of history that has glorified the history those such as Columbus, but ignored their brutality and the wrongs done to other people,” he said.
“Christopher Columbus landed in areas including the Bahamas, Haiti, and Cuba. He enslaved native peoples and was called back to Spain because of his extreme cruelty.
“We must work honestly to face our history as a nation and to make equity changes among all people.”
Additional comments may be submitted through the month to ppd@peoriaparks.org.
Comments and recommendations from Wednesday night’s meeting and e-mail will be incorporated into a proposal devised Sept. 1 by the PPD Planning Committee, which will then be presented Sept. 23 at a full park board meeting.
The statue was placed in 1902 in the middle of the intersection of Columbia Terrace and North Institute Place, before being moved in 1947 to its current home in Bradley Park.
Deterioration and vandalism have forced the district to restore and renovate it many times over the years.
