Chicago Pastor Wants Mayor To Remove Former Slave Owners Names From Parks

Bishop James Dukes, a pastor of Liberation Christian Center, is asking Chicago's Mayor, Rahm Emmanuel, to remove the names of former presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson from parks on the South Side. The reason he is giving is that we should not be honoring slave owners in predominantly black communities.

Pastor Dukes isn't looking to deny Washington's or Jackson place in history, he just feels that it is not appropriate to celebrate them in the black community. 

​At the corner of 51st and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive sits a statue of George Washington on horseback. “When I see that, I see a person who fought for the liberties, and I see people that fought for the justice and freedom of white America, because at that moment, we were still chattel slavery, and was three-fifths of humans,” Pastor Dukes said. “Some people out here ask me, say ‘Well, you know, he taught his slaves to read.’ That’s almost sad; the equivalent of someone who kidnaps you, that you gave them something to eat.”

Dukes said, even though Washington was the nation’s first president and led the American army in the Revolutionary War, he’s no hero to the black community.

“There’s no way plausible that we would even think that they would erect a Malcolm X statue in Mount Greenwood, Lincoln Park, or any of that. Not that say Malcolm X was a bad guy; they just would not go for it,” he said. “Native Americans would not even think about putting up a Custer statue, because of the atrocities that he plagued upon Native Americans. And for them to say to us ‘just accept it’ is actually insulting.”

The pastor also said President Andrew Jackson’s name should be removed from nearby Jackson Park, because he also was a slave owner. He said he’s not necessarily asking the city rename the parks altogether. He suggested Washington Park could be named after former Mayor Harold Washington, and Jackson Park could be named after civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson or singer Michael Jackson.

“In an African-American community, it’s a slap in the face and it’s a disgrace for them to honor someone who was a slave owner."

Dukes said he has sent letters to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Chicago Park District asking them to change the names of Washington and Jackson parks. He shared the letter on Facebook.

​From report on CBS.com