WINDSOR, Conn. (AP) - A Connecticut town plans to remove a statue of its founder and leader of a massacre against the Pequot tribe, Major John Mason, from a public green, if it can get permission from state authorities.
Dozens of residents of Windsor, Connecticut, joined a digital town council meeting Monday to demand the statue’s removal.
The 2-ton statue was first erected in 1889 in Groton, Connecticut, which Mason is also credited with founding. In 1992, a member of the Pequot tribe campaigned to have it removed from Groton because he said it glorified the killing of his ancestors, and it was eventually relocated to Windsor in 1996, the Hartford Courant reported.
Now, 26 years later, Windsor residents and a town council member have renewed the call to take the statue off public display.
Over the weekend, the statue was painted with graffiti reading “BLM,” the newspaper reported. The Windsor town manager and police department did not return a request for additional information about the vandalism on Thursday.
The town is seeking to move the statue from the public green to the grounds of the nearby Windsor Historical Society, Mayor Don Trinks told the newspaper.
“My first choice is to keep the Mason statue in Windsor,” Trinks said. “The historical society has expressed interest in putting it in their compound where it can continue to be viewed for educational purposes.”
The mayor says he has contacted the state Department of Community Development’s historic preservation office, which governs historic statues, and the governor’s office to request its removal. The town leased the state the land on which the statue stands when it was first installed.
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