Mississippi’s Jackson council votes to relocate statue of president

A Mississippi city named after former US President Andrew Jackson will remove a downtown statue of him and put it in a less prominent spot, council officials said.

The City Council in Jackson, Mississippi, voted 5-1 onTuesday to relocate the bronze figure that has stood outside City Hall since the early 1970s.

The shift in civic attitude towards Jackson, who owned slaves and oversaw the forced migration of Native Americans in which many people died, is the latest of many changes as people reconsider monuments to historical figures with connections to slavery and racism.

On Saturday Baltimore joined Miami and Boston as another city to have a statue of Christopher Columbus pulled down after protesters threw it in the city’s harbour.

Demonstrators mobilised by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police have called for the removal of statues of Columbus, Confederate figures and others.

Jackson is Mississippi’s capital city, with a population of about 160,600 and about 82% of its residents are African American.

Andrew Jackson was the seventh president, serving from 1829 to 1837, whose face is on the $20 bill.

Four people have been charged with trying to pull down a large statue of Jackson near the White House during protests on June 22 in Washington.