Newark Joins West Orange, Removes Columbus Monument From Park – Newark, NJ Patch

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Another municipality in Essex County has decided to take down a monument to Christopher Columbus in an effort to promote social justice.

On Friday, Newark officials announced that a statue of Columbus has been removed from Washington Park.

“In keeping with the movement to remove symbols of oppression and white supremacy, we have decided to remove the statue,” Mayor Ras Baraka said. “We took it down with city work crews in a safe and orderly manner, to avoid the potential danger of people taking it upon themselves to topple it.”

The statue will be kept in storage “until the city decides what to do with it,” Baraka said.

According to Baraka, the statue was dedicated in October 1927. It was a gift to the city from the Italian-American community, a fact that isn’t lost on city officials.

“The removal of this statue should not be perceived as an insult to the Italian American community,” Baraka said. “It is a statement against the barbarism, enslavement and oppression that this explorer represents.”

Newark isn’t the only Essex County municipality that recently decided to remove an image of Columbus from a public space.

Earlier this month, West Orange Mayor Robert Parisi announced that the township will remove a monument to Christopher Columbus from a local intersection because it is “divisive” and a “symbol of hate and oppression.”

Recently, someone hung a sign reading “Murderer” around the 5-foot granite monument, which was installed in 1992 for the 500th anniversary of his voyage to the Americas.

Parisi said the decision was made after speaking to local residents and the organization that installed it and maintained it over the years.

The decision to remove the monument at Valley Road and Kingsley Street comes amid a fierce controversy in West Orange. A pair of petitions — one demanding its removal and another urging its preservation — each garnered hundreds of signatures.

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