Time to clean the statue in honor of Samuel S. Cox, whose career included being United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
Also, as you may know:
He was a backer of the Life Saving Service, later merged into the United States Coast Guard. He was also known as the "letter carriers' friend" because of his support for paid benefits and a 40-hour work week for U.S. Post Office employees. In gratitude, postal workers raised $10,000 in 1891 to erect a statue to Cox in Tompkins Square Park in New York.
Photo by Bobby Willaims
Anybody else remember the graffito on the base in, I think, the 80s sometime: "Who?"
ReplyDeleteThat statue should be pulled down and one of Emma Goldman or Charlie Parker some other neighborhood notable put up in its place. Cox was a notorious Copperhead -- a Northern Confederate sympathizer/white supremacist traitor -- and then there's this, from the Wikipedia entry:
ReplyDeleteCox was elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1856, and served three terms representing Ohio's 12th congressional district and one representing the 7th district. After giving an impassioned speech in 1864 denouncing Republicans for allegedly supporting miscegenation (see miscegenation hoax), he was defeated for reelection and moved to New York City, where he resumed law practice.
Before leaving, however, he gave help to the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, although he did not actually vote for it himself. "As slavery was already dead by the bullet, I figured it would be better to stop the bloodshed," he told a crowd seven years later. That mattered more than "there mere empty, abstract ceremonial of burying the dead corpse of slavery."
Goldman? Building idols to atheists is strange but it's not a terribly bad suggestion. I'd rather see a statue of Trotsky, however, which offers a far more honest appraisal of how our modern state came to be.
ReplyDelete