Response to Castleman Decision

The Statue of John Castleman is a symbol of white supremacy and has no place in any community committed to equity and racial justice.  Disproportionately impacting Louisville’s Black community, where the legacy of slavery continues to impact economic outcomes, housing, over policing, incarceration and a lower life expectancy——statues that salute the Confederacy are part of slavery’s continuing crimes.
Today's state Supreme Court decision pointing to process errors leading to the removal of the John Castleman statue from the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood does not change the position of Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice. We agree with the findings of the Public Art and Movements Advisory Committee, which provided the research and foundation for the Fischer administration's decision to remove the statue.
We urge Mayor Craig Greenberg and our entire community to be steadfast in the need to have public art reflect who we want to be as a community, and not retain the symbols of oppression in our past.
The removal does not erase history but puts it into context. Specifically, the Castleman statues was installed at a time when hundreds of monuments celebrating Confederate generals and politicians were being erected -- as deliberate symbols intended to strengthen the illusion of nobility of the South's Lost Cause, to visibly bolster Jim Crow laws to prevent integration and true reconstruction.
John Castleman was a convicted terrorist and leader of Confederate raiders planning to attack a prison near Chicago. He was a member of the slave-holding elite. He laid the basis for the segregation of Louisville’s parks.  He should not have been pardoned and celebrated, then or now, as some kind of kindly and reformed Confederate.

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