New York City to keep Christopher Columbus statue after 'hate' review

New York will keep its famed but controversial statue of Christopher Columbus following a review of “symbols of hate,” as the United States debates tributes to figures whose legacies are increasingly questioned. Democratic Party Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the 90-day review after deadly violence at a neo-Nazi rally in Virginia last August built nationwide momentum to remove symbols of the pro-slavery Civil War South. The commission recommended that just one of four statues on public land — that of a gynecologist who experimented on enslaved black women without anesthesia — be relocated from Central Park to a Brooklyn cemetery. A plaque dedicated to Philippe Petain, a World War I hero who later collaborated with the Nazis and lead Vichy France, would remain in place, the commission