Rapid City Will Not Remove Statues Of Presidents
In a story filed on KOTA-TV, Rapid City South Dakota - the city that calls itself "The City Of Presidents", it states that the city will not be removing any of the presidential statues in its downtown area.
Rapid City, being so close to Mount Rushmore, prides itself on honoring every president in American history.
Mayor Steve Allender, in an address on June 24th, answered a question about taking down the statues due to current unrest around the country.
The mayor said that when the first of the presidential statues were placed in downtown, he didn't understand their importance. But he now sees that both locals and tourists love each of the 44 statues. Folks love to pose with them.
Statues of some presidents offend people. The mayor has received phone calls asking for the Obama statue to be removed and even the Clinton statue. Some don't like the Ronald Reagan statue. But even as historical statues are being taken down across the nation, the mayor of Rapid City says that will not happen there.
"We are the city of presidents. We have statues of 44 presidents, of the United States, everyone of them did great things for our country, but everyone one of them was a sinner," said the mayor. "Everyone of them has made mistakes, has made a fool out of himself, maybe even embarrassed this country, because they are human beings who have risen to the status of president of this great country. We're not removing any of them."
The mayor then made a point to anyone who might want to do damage to any of the statues: each is valued at well over one hundred thousand dollars. He warned that removing or damaging them would result in jail time.
On a related note, the governor of South Dakota said that she would protect Mount Rushmore and that the monument was not coming down on her watch.