Across the country, demonstrators are demanding the removal of monuments to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom supported slavery and held Black people in servitude without fair compensation or free status. Since George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are represented on Mount Rushmore, the question has arisen whether it will soon follow suit.
White Americans are looking more closely at American history in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by white police officers in the Minneapolis Police Department. As any good American history book will tell you, Washington and Jefferson were elitists from the Colony of Virginia who amassed their vast wealth during slavery, when they did not pay Black slaves for their work.
Ben Shapiro was the first to notice Mount Rushmore as a potential monument that needed to be taken down. Shapiro is incensed by the state of racial equality in the United States, and he wanted to make sure that both liberals and conservatives were on the same page when it came to demonstrations.
Ben Shapiro wrote on Twitter: “So, when is our woke historical revisionist priesthood going to insist on blowing up Mount Rushmore?”
Following the demonstrations, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem made clear that Mount Rushmore was not going anywhere while she was in office.
Noem stated, “Not on my watch.”
Despite Noem’s popularity, many people are unconvinced that she will be able to halt the progressive tide sweeping across the country. More and more white Americans are becoming “woke” to the notion of racial inequality in the United States. It was because of slaves that men like Washington and Jefferson were able to rise above their station and amass enormous wealth and power, not only were Black people enslaved for nearly a century as stated in the Declaration of Independence.
However, Mount Rushmore may face an uncertain future due to more than just its honoring of slave-holding American leaders. That’s because the monument was built on land stolen from the Native American tribes of the region who were given permanent ownership of the Black Hills in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. Gen. George Custer, on the other hand, violated that agreement in 1874 by recruiting members of the United States Army to explore for gold in Indian territory.
Until they gave up the Black Hills to the federal government, rations were cut off to the Lakota tribe in 1876 under Indiana’s Appropriations Act.
In 1979, the United States Court of Claims ruled in favor of the Sioux Nation and awarded them $17.1 million in compensation for illegally seizing the Black Hills from them. The federal government, on the other hand, has refused to negotiate with the Sioux Nation. The conflict rages on, and even the United Nations declared in 2012 that Indigenous territory such as the Black Hills needs to be returned to its rightful owners: Native Americans.
