LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Two controversial statues in Louisville will be relocated, according to the city’s mayor.
The announcement was made by Mayor Greg Fischer on Wednesday. WAVE 3 News reports that the plan will relocate a statue of Confederate officer and President of the Board of Park Commissioners John Breckinridge Castleman from the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood. The George Dennison Prentice statue, now housed outside the Louisville Free Public Library, will also be relocated.
The Castleman statue is notorious for being frequently vandalized.
“While Castleman was honored for contributions to the community, it cannot be ignored that he also fought to continue the horrific and brutal slavery of men, women and children; heralded that part of his life in his autobiography; and had his coffin draped with both a U.S. and Confederate flag,” Fischer said in a statement. “And while Prentice was founder and long-time editor of the Louisville Journal newspaper, he used that platform to advocate an anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant message that led to the 1865 Bloody Monday riot where 22 people were killed.”
Mayor Fischer insisted that moving the statues does not erase history; instead, moving the statues allows Louisville residents to examine "history in a new context that more accurately reflects the reality of the day, a time when the moral deprivation of slavery is clear.”
The city is in talks with Cave Hill Cemetery to relocate the statues near the family’s burial grounds.
