CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long-delayed review of Chicago monuments still isn’t completed, but the mayor has restated her controversial pledge to return a Christopher Columbus statue to its prominent pedestal in Grant Park — the site of a bloody battle between police and demonstrators nearly two years ago.
Lightfoot ordered Columbus statues removed from Grant Park and Little Italy in summer 2020 after a clash between protesters and police injured numerous officers and demonstrators. Amid unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Lightfoot promised to conduct a broad review of monuments as part of what she called “a racial healing and historical reckoning project.”
That commission was supposed to finish its work by the end of 2020 but has been delayed numerous times. Lightfoot officials recently said it would be completed by the end of this month, but the administration is still working on the project, which is meant to catalog the city’s public monuments and make suggestions for new exhibits.
