County legislator makes new push to remove Andrew Jackson statue at KC courthouse

A Jackson County legislator introduced a resolution Monday that would authorize the awarding of contracts to remove the statues of former U.S. President Andrew Jackson that stand at the courthouses in Kansas City and Independence.

The resolution is the latest effort to remove the monuments. The question was put on the 2020 ballot despite opposition from Black county leaders who wanted to remove them with legislation. The effort failed when 59% of voters favored keeping them up.

Democrat Manuel “Manny” Abarca IV, 1st District, introduced the resolution at Monday’s meeting. It states it is in the “moral interest” of Jackson County, which is named after the former president, to remove the statues “so as to not accidentally bestow honor on individuals who were engaged in the genocide of indigenous groups or proponents of slavery.”

The resolution notes that Jackson, who was president from 1829 to 1837, owned hundreds of slaves. It also mentions that more than 430 confederate monuments and memorials have been removed across the U.S. as of May.

The resolution was sent Monday afternoon to the budget committee.

If passed later by the full legislature, the resolution would authorize County Executive Frank White Jr. to award contracts for the removal and storage of the statues — which stand outside the downtown Kansas City courthouse and the Historic Truman Courthouse at the center of Independence Square — as well as for site repairs of damage created by the removals.

The statue has stood outside the north entrance of the courthouse in Kansas City since the building opened in 1934.

In 2019, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker proposed installing plaques next to both statues outlining Jackson’s controversial past. At the time, she said context was needed for visitors who walked past them.

The statue became a flash point during the demonstrations for racial justice in Kansas City following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. In June 2020, the statue was spray painted with expletives and the words: “Slave Owner.”

In 2021, a plaque was added to the bronze statue of Jackson outside the courthouse in Kansas City spelling out the former president’s history as a slave owner and his support of forcefully removing Native Americans from their land.

More recently, Baker in May wrote that she was “torn” on if placing the plaque on the statue and leaving it in front of courthouse was the “best solution.” She wrote about the statue after visiting a courthouse in Alamance County, North Carolina, where she was sickened by the inscription on the statue of a confederate soldier.

“But whatever we do in the future, we should not fight for an upside-down view of patriotism as they have in Alamance County, or a history supported by dishonest reasoning and ignorance of our true American history,” she wrote in a blog post. “It’s past time for America to be on the right side of race.”