Thanks to the Kansas City Star and editorial team for hosting my op-ed about the Andrew Jackson monument reckoning in our community. I loved interviewing creatives, elected officials, neighbors, 3rd generation Kansas Citians and more to write this short piece. The title is not mine (although not arguing with it), rather I encourage decisiveness and offer tools and inspiration for reconciling our past, and giving more visibility to the undertold stories of people who built this region. If you can, please support the Star and follow this link.
Otherwise my writing is below.
The Andrew Jackson monument at the county courthouse in downtown Kansas City has been at the center of a citywide reckoning about history and representation for years. Concerns about permanently keeping the statue in its place have continued to arise, and we find ourselves at a crossroads with two choices: Commit to a resolution for this contested monument, or continue a cycle of indecision that wastes time and resources.
For four years, city officials and engaged community groups have been debating the presence of this statue — which to some represents the glorification of slavery and the forced displacement of Indigenous people — in a space where people come to seek justice.
In 2020, a countywide ballot initiative asked voters to weigh in on the fate of this statue and a similar one that sits in Independence. A majority of voters chose to leave the sculptures in place, yet the debate has continued. In June, Jackson County legislators voted 7-1 to remove both Jackson statues and even determined removal costs to clear a path ahead. Many saw this as bringing much-needed finality to the issue, until we learned a few weeks later that legislators will put this on the countywide ballot again in 2024. It feels like we’re back where we started, when we need to move forward.
Kansas City is not unique in its effort to confront problematic symbols in public spaces. Many cities have appointed commissions to review and reconcile contested monuments, including the Chicago Monuments Project, the Monument Avenue Commission in Richmond, Virginia, and the New York City Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers. Kansas City could benefit from such a commission.
Meanwhile, community groups have led these conversations, questioning whether things commemorated in the past reflect current values. In 2020 the name of discriminatory real estate developer J.C. Nichols was removed from the fountain in Mill Creek Park. A confederate monument on Ward Parkway was dismantled in 2017. And soon, Troost Avenue may become Truth Avenue.
Open dialogue and dissenting views are healthy parts of a strong democracy. Each new generation establishes values for itself and challenges symbols of the past that may no longer represent us. We also understand that what we do now creates a road map for the future. We can’t afford indecisiveness.
In the place where the monument to Jackson stands today in Kansas City — facing City Hall, a space of centralized power greeting hundreds of visitors daily — are there other stories we could include that tell a fuller, more inclusive history of the people who built this city?
Take for instance, the story of the Conley sisters of the Wyandot tribe, who built a defense fort in the Wyandot National Burying Ground in the early 1900s, succeeding in saving it from developers. Their legal case went all the way to the Supreme Court and influenced future legal arguments in preservation and tribal sovereignty laws. The Wyandot Nation of Kansas is collaborating on a new monument. Consider the powerful story of Black women suffragists in the Kansas City area who organized to successfully gain voting rights for women. The Black Archives of Mid-America has launched an effort — powered by an all-volunteer committee — to ensure their story is widely known. These projects are deserving of public resources and support, and just two examples of many vibrant stories we could commemorate in our shared urban spaces.
Public spaces are just that: open and accessible to all, with the potential to shift and respond to new information and identities. Rarely does one person’s story or one dominant history represent the collective actions and experiences we can all tap into. We must reconcile the fate of Andrew Jackson’s statue, and shift our energies toward igniting civic imagination. Public spaces can evolve to represent us all.
Neysa Page-Lieberman is a contemporary art curator and co-founder of Monuments to Movements, a project that creates commemorative public artwork about collective action. She is launching a series of essays, “Kansas City’s Removal Act: The Reckoning of Andrew Jackson Monuments.”
