CHICAGO — Two years ago, as the city of Chicago reeled from a bloody battle between police officers and protesters over a prominent statue of Christopher Columbus, Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched an ambitious review of public monuments she said would be “a racial healing and historical reckoning project.”
This week, the Chicago Monuments Project finally released its long-delayed report recommending a series of new public memorials across the city and the removal of several statues that the commission flagged for honoring white supremacy or disrespecting Indigenous peoples.
Whether Lightfoot will follow the committee’s recommendations remains to be seen, however, as the mayor has promised to return Columbus statues to their former spots in the public square and has been critical of what she has said are efforts to rewrite history.
