Congress Unanimously Votes to Nix Thomas Jefferson from St. Louis Arch
It’s totally a marketing move, not political correctness.
2.9.2018
20
Thomas Jefferson’s name has been associated with St. Louis’s famous Gateway Arch monument since 1935 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order making it the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial to commemorate our third president’s expansion West with the Louisiana Purchase. But on Thursday, Congress unanimously voted to scrap Jefferson’s name and rename the site the Gateway Arch National Park.
Two Missouri senators introduced the bill which passed the Senate back in December: Claire McCaskill (D) and Roy Blunt (R). Congress was uncharacteristically united when it easily passed the House and the bill now sits on President Trump’s desk awaiting his signature.
Lawmakers swear the name change has nothing to do with political correctness and reflects a marketing scheme to attract more visitors. They must think it’s hard for tourists to notice a large reflective steel structure soaring above the downtown buildings. In their mind, no one really called it by the Jefferson name anyway and generally referred to it as the Gateway Arch. They argued renaming it would make it more recognizable, like Hawaii Democrat Rep. Colleen Hanabusa said, “This gives this national icon an updated and recognizable name.”
In testimony before Congress last year, acting deputy director of the National Park Service Robert Vogel argued:
“The name ‘Jefferson National Expansion Memorial’ does not readily identify where the memorial is located or the fact that the key feature of the park is the Gateway Arch. Using ‘Gateway Arch’ in the name of the site would make the name immediately recognizable to all citizens and future visitors to St. Louis.”
Though Jefferson’s association with the arch was the reason to build the monument, the current director of the monument says the Founding Father will still be a focal point despite the name change.
“With this renovation, I think Jefferson’s role is highlighted even more than in the past,” Ryan McClure said. “Jefferson’s vision is still recognized and honored in the park, and I don’t think this diminishes his role at all.”
David Shestokas, an Illinois lawyer following the development, is welcoming of a name change but wondered, “Why not call it ‘Jefferson Gateway Arch National Park?’”
“That’s what all this was supposed to be about in the first place because without Jefferson there is no Louisiana Purchase,” he added.
The lawmakers behind the change admit that the arch “is one of the world’s most iconic landmarks” and also one of the easiest to recognize. Do they really think renaming it, when most people didn’t know the real name in the first place, is suddenly going to make it more recognizable and increase tourism?
Is it not too much to conceive that perhaps the toppling of historical monuments had anything to do with this? Statues of Jefferson have been targeted by Black Lives Matter groups and defaced with graffiti crying, “racist, rapist.” Is it even remotely possible that the nearby city of Ferguson was considered in this decision seeing as it is an epicenter for the BLM movement? If not, then maybe lawmakers ignored the very real possibility that visitation to the monument is down because of the the crime those communities bring into the St. Louis area.
Erasing history doesn't solve problems, it creates them.
H/T Washington Times
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