For more than a dozen years, Marion Reid, 77, had walked past the statue of Theodore Roosevelt on his way to work in information technology at the American Museum of Natural History, an employer that he said often failed to treat African-Americans with dignity.
The protesters Sunday came to defy the nationwide movement that for decades has fought to bring down monuments that, like the Roosevelt statue, have been associated with racism, colonialism and oppression.
The museum announced last week that, with approval from the mayor and President Roosevelt’s family, it would remove the 80-year-old bronze statue.
The museum’s president, Ellen V. Futter, emphasized last week that the decision was not about Roosevelt but about the statue itself — namely its “hierarchical composition.”
The decision came as a pleasant surprise for the hundreds of activists who have demanded the monument’s removal through annual Columbus Day protests at the museum, which saw the statue splashed with red liquid in 2017.
