Get rid of the Andrew Jackson statues — and there’s a creative fix with his name, too | Opinion

I was thinking: Why should we continue to honor our county’s namesake, President Andrew Jackson? Seriously.

Not only should statues of Jackson outside the downtown Kansas City courthouse and the historic Truman Courthouse in Independence come down, shouldn’t we consider a name change as well?

Now that the new Jackson County Legislature has begun the tedious process of asking voters once again to consider deciding the fate of the statues, why not start this conversation, too?

Jackson, the seventh president, enslaved more than 150 people and had little issue using the free labor of Black people to become rich and powerful. He was a racist, history shows.

And no one responsible for the Indian Removal Act, which led to the death of thousands of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, should have a county named in his honor.

Last week, Jackson County legislators approved a resolution to start the process to consider the statues. Several procedure steps remain, 1st District Legislator Manny Abarca, told me.

In June, Abarca introduced the resolution, which passed the Legislature by a 7-1 vote. The proposal is the latest attempt to remove the statues.

If a potential ordinance is approved, the issue would be placed on the November 2024 ballot.

Any change to Jackson County would be a heavy lift, according to elected officials I spoke with. Game on.

How does Bo Jackson County sound? The former Royal and NFL great would make a great candidate, no?

Even former Kansas City A’s draft pick Reggie Jackson, an Afro-Latino who stood for equality, could be considered.

How about Mary Jackson, NASA’s first African American female engineer?

Washingon’s King County a model to follow?

I’m spitballing here. But keeping the Jackson name would be reminiscent of the process Seattle, Washington’s King County took.

In 1986, the King County Council approved a motion to rename its county. Almost two decades later, a charter change and approval from Washington state lawmakers, the state’s most populous country was renamed in honor of slain civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Originally, King County was named in honor of William Rufus King, who was elected vice president with President Franklin Pierce in 1852. King, a senator from Alabama, was a strong proponent of the Compromise of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act. That law called for people in free states who had broken out of bondage to be returned to the plantations they’d escaped in the South.

King was also an enslaver — sound familiar? He died at his plantation near Selma, Alabama, just after being sworn in as vice president, history records show.

Just two years ago, voters approved keeping the relics here in place. And I respect that. But the vote took place during an obscure election, to marginalize the minority voice and was binding, according to activists I spoke with.

The first minority-majority Legislature in Jackson County history will take a crack at doing what previous legislators didn’t have the courage to do: Remove the monuments.

History proves Jackson was a notorious owner of people who willingly participated in one of the nation’s darkest sins: the human trafficking of others.

Those statues belong in history museums, not in front of buildings meant to represent all of us. Some of you are probably thinking I am off my rocker, but Jackson was, in no pleasant terms, a genocidal maniac.

If voters get the chance to consider the removal of the statues, why not take the next step and rid our county of his foul memory?