University removes statue of slave-owning founder

Florida State University students will soon say goodbye to a familiar face – a prominent statue of one of the university’s slave-owning founders will be relocated from the institution’s front gates, the university’s president John Thrasher announced last week, write Maya Eliahou and Christina Zdanowicz for CNN.

In addition to the statue’s relocation, Thrasher approved seeking the removal of a pro-segregation Florida Supreme Court justice’s name from the campus’ law school building. However, Thrasher did not accept a third recommendation to change the name of a different campus building that bears the same name as the statue. “The great value of history is learning from it so we can move forward,” Thrasher wrote in a statement.

The recent decisions at Florida State University are only the latest in a nationwide movement to remove Confederate monuments and rename buildings that bore the names of former slaveholders. Cities like New Orleans, Memphis and Baltimore have been purging their cities of Confederate statues for several years.
Full report on the CNN site