Anti-Columbus Day Protesters Cover Teddy Roosevelt Statue at Natural History Museum

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Protesters covered a statue depicting President Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by caricatures of Native American and African American men during an anti-Columbus Day rally Monday.

The statue, located at the Central Park entrance of the American Museum of Natural History, represents "A stark embodiment of the white supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted," protesters wrote in an open letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The covering of the Roosevelt statue was part of a larger Anti-Columbus Day Tour of the Natural History Museum organized by activist group Decolonize This Place.

"New York’s premier scientific museum continues to honor the bogus racial classification that assigned colonized peoples to the domain of Nature and the colonizers to the realm of Culture," reads Decolonize This Place's open letter.

During the tour, protesters walked through the museum from about 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., Decolonize This Place organizer Amin Husain told Patch. During the tour of the museum, Husain said he noticed an increased security presence, but that even some security guards took pamphlets and seemed engaged in the tour.

It wasn't until after 5 p.m. that 200 to 300 protesters circled the statue and used long poles to drape the tarp over the front of the statue.

In its open letter, Decolonize This Place calls on the City Council to take the statue down. The statue is city-owned and on land owned by the Parks Department, so the city would have jurisdiction. Husain told Patch that the city has not given any indication they are looking to take the statue down.

As long as the statue, and other symbols of white supremacy stands, protests will become a more regular occurrence, Husain said.

"The days that let white supremacy and racism that would go unchecked in our institutions are over," Husain told Patch. "There's going to be a more concerted effort, including these types of actions to up the ante until people get what they want, which is not to have these types of statues and not to have a Columbus Day, not to celebrate a murderer."

A message left with a spokesman from the American Museum of Natural History has not been returned.

Photo: Courtesy of Twitter user Sean M. Kennedy