Park Service to Revive Statue of Founding Father Who Enslaved Hundreds

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

Feb. 28, 2026 Updated 8:27 a.m. ET


A founding father and slave owner whose statue in Delaware was removed in 2020 amid calls for racial reckoning will be given a position in honor in Washington by the Trump administration as part of celebrations of the nation’s 250th birthday, internal Interior Department documents show.

On July 2, 1776, Caesar Rodney raced from Dover, Del., to Philadelphia on horseback to cast his state’s decisive vote in favor of the Declaration of Independence. It would be formally adopted by the Continental Congress two days later, July 4, on what is now celebrated as Independence Day.

Though somewhat obscure as founding fathers go, Mr. Rodney caught President Trump’s attention during his first term. (A conservative think tank in Delaware that, like Mr. Trump, opposes offshore wind farms and advocates for cutting taxes and regulation, is named after Caesar Rodney.) At the time, Mr. Trump criticized the city of Wilmington for removing Mr. Rodney’s statue, calling it part of a “radical purge of America’s founding generation.” Historians said Mr. Rodney enslaved as many as 200 men and women.

Now the Interior Department plans to take Mr. Rodney’s statue from a Delaware storage facility and temporarily place it in Washington’s Freedom Plaza as part of America’s semiquincentennial, according to a Feb. 3 National Park Service memo reviewed by The New York Times.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/climate/caesar-rodney-statue-trump.html

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No paywall (gift)

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. Where it will get pulled down. NT

[mdbl]

2. It's Dump's way of celebrating Black History Month.

[moniss]

3. The GQP has always been about

celebrating slavery as a nostalgia sort of thing. The Antebellum South and all. Previously they've mostly been more quiet about just being blatant about it. Obviously combined with removing books, cleansing historical references to it etc. they are now comfortable with doing it in the open since they have a virulent racist heading their party.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. They could display the statue in a prison cell.

And if the gov't won't do it, volunteers could build one.

[JustAnotherGen]

5. Those concentration camps they are building

Are for Black.Americans. We've always been America's end game.

[Raine]

6. Caesar Rodney ... one of my ancestors 🤔

can't pick who you're related too.

[OldBaldy1701E]

7. Nope.

As Chief Miles O'Brien so famously said, "You choose your enemies and you choose your friends... but family? That's in the stars!"