Back in the heat of summer, when the nation’s attention was on rioting white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that New York City would conduct a review of all “symbols of hate” in its parks and on its streets, to see which ones should be removed or otherwise confronted.
But in the absence of actual statues dedicated to Confederate leaders, Mr. de Blasio trained his sights on the city’s unique monumental inventory, which includes statues of Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt, and plaques to the likes of Philippe Pétain, the French World War I hero turned Nazi collaborator.
The mayor empaneled a special commission, which, after months of closed door meetings, public hearings and an online survey that drew some 3,000 responses, recommended that the city relocate just one piece of statuary: a monument to J. Marion Sims, a 19th century doctor who developed advances in gynecological surgery by conducting operations on black slave women.
Mr. de Blasio on Friday accepted the recommendations, which called for the Sims statue to be removed from Central Park and installed at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where he is buried.