Bringing Teddy Roosevelt Down to Earth

Sculptor James Earle Fraser’s “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt”  has sat majestically for eight decades at the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. On June 21, 2020, amid the ongoing protests for racial justice, it was officially  scheduled for removal. 

The monument to the twenty-sixth President of the United States joins an ever-growing cohort of “fallen” idols banished from the public sphere—another casualty of America’s recent reckoning with its troubled racial history (rather than the “cancel” culture that often gets saddled with the blame). 

Bringing Teddy down to earth should not be seen as a break with a glorious past but a much-needed correction to reflect a more accurate portrayal of American History.

Fraser’s statue, designed to be the dominant feature of the museum’s entrance, was built in 1939 by the state of New York at the cost of $3.5 million. It was believed at the time to be the third largest equestrian statue in the world—a bronze expression of American Nationalism dedicated on the eighty-second anniversary of Roosevelt’s birth. It was, and remains, a sixteen-foot-tall monument to American imperialism and white supremacy, beckoning visitors to enjoy the fruits of conquest in a museum full of artifacts mostly stolen from other cultures.

As the historian Gary Gerstel has observed, “Any examination of American Nationalism must, sooner or later contend with its contradictory character.”  It appears that Roosevelt’s time, or at least the time of his statue, has come. 

It is not solely the statue of Roosevelt that has invited controversy over the years. Instead, it is what it symbolizes. The statue is flanked by bronze representations of Africa and America in the form of a Black man and Native American man which, given Roosevelt’s exalted status on horseback, centers him as the paragon of white masculinity, the tamer of men and continents.

This is a view that Roosevelt likely would have endorsed, as he was deeply proud of his white heritage and highlighted the same as a key ingredient in his success. It was central to the narrative he crafted of himself:  a bootstraps story of rising from a poor sickly youth to a virulent power broker, without acknowledging the immense privilege of being born into one of New York’s oldest and wealthiest families.  

Roosevelt was contradictory  on issues of race, but rarely to the detriment of his fundamental belief in White Supremacy. After the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt initially praised Black soldiers noting how “no one can tell whether it was the Rough Riders or the men of the 9th who came forward with the greater courage to offer their lives in the service of their country.” 

But later, perhaps to reflect the White Supremacist sensibilities of the age, he changed his tune, claiming that “Negro troops were shirkers in their duties and would only go as far as they were led by white officers.”

It is exactly this type of contradictions that should not be imposed on future generations in totems of marble and bronze. For some, these statues have become stark reminders of the “knee on our neck,” the slavery, conquest, and genocide that produced the wealth and power upon which the fallacy of White Supremacy ultimately rested.

Bringing Teddy down to earth should not be seen as a break with a glorious past but a much-needed correction to reflect a more accurate portrayal of American History. So, as we witness Teddy’s Last Ride, we might do well to reflect on America at a crossroads as we continue to ask the hard questions about what we choose to honor and why. 

Such a conversation must involve reckoning with a racist past, of which the statues erected in the public sphere are reminders of. In 2017, well before George Floyd’s murder, a group calling itself the Monument Removal Brigade splashed red paint at the foot of the Roosevelt statue.

“Now the statue is bleeding,” the group proclaimed. “We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation.” It called for this symbol of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism” to be taken down.

The American Museum of Natural History took such concerns seriously, in July 2019 launching a special exhibition entitled, “Addressing the Statue.”

Nearly one year later, on June 21, it was announced that the statue will be permanently removed. 

There is much that we could learn with regard to the process followed in this case—where protest led to conversation and that conversation led to real reflection and change. While his statute will soon be removed from its pride of place at the entrance, there may now be, especially in this moment, a more fitting place for it—inside the museum, among the artifacts from other bygone eras.