Trump Re-Erects Monument of Enslaver Removed in 2020
The statue of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence who enslaved at least 200 people, is now on display in DC's Freedom Plaza.
WASHINGTON, DC — A group of sculptures installed at Freedom Plaza on Friday, May 22, includes a statue of a Revolutionary War officer who enslaved at least 200 people during his lifetime. The equestrian monument of Caesar Rodney, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, had been removed by the city of Wilmington in Delaware in June 2020, amid historic Black Lives Matter protests against racist violence.
The sculpture, created by artist James Edward Kelly, joins a long-standing bronze statue of Casimir Pulaski, an American Revolutionary general who was born in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The identities of the other 11 sculptures are unknown, but the Interior Department told Hyperallergic that they depict soldiers from the US Revolutionary War.
A note from the National Park Service (NPS) zip-tied to the fence at Freedom Plaza stated that the site, along with neighboring Sheridan Park, would be closed from December 29, 2025, through Friday, May 15, 2026. However, the plaza was still cordoned off when Hyperallergic visited on Monday.
Signs with the logos of the Department of the Interior, NPS, and Trump’s “Freedom 250” program were also zip-tied along the fence. One read, “We are making DC SAFE & BEAUTIFUL”; another stated, “These improvements are being completed using your fee dollars. Thank you for your support.”
Some signs had been stickered over with guerrilla QR codes encouraging people to check their pay stubs amid rising concerns about pay equity in Washington, DC.
In October 2020, during his first presidency, Donald Trump issued a proclamation honoring Rodney's overnight horseback ride to Philadelphia to cast his vote for the Declaration of Independence. Trump blamed "critical race theorists on college campuses" and "cancel culture adherents" for threatening his legacy, and promised to include Rodney in his notorious and expensive “National Garden of American Heroes.”
Rodney is also featured on the White House’s “Founders Museum” website, where Rodney’s history of enslaving people is not mentioned. Instead, the White House notes that “Rodney inherited wealth and responsibility that he used for the good of the new nation.”
When news of the statue's reinstallation first broke last month, Trump-appointed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum celebrated the move as part of celebrations ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary. The event has been utilized by the president to advance his agenda of downplaying or erasing the country’s history of slavery and other abuses.
In March, the White House unveiled another formerly toppled sculpture on its grounds: a monument of Christopher Columbus that was once on display in Baltimore before it was pushed into the harbor, also in the summer of 2020. Pieces of the broken statue were collected and repurposed into a new sculpture that is now on display in front of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
The president has also criticized the Smithsonian and its museums for focusing on “how bad slavery was” and ordered content reviews of the institution and other fully or partly federally funded entities. The city of Philadelphia successfully sued the administration after officials removed wall text and illustrations describing slavery from a historical park, securing an order to reinstate the display this February.
