A statue of a USC founder whose connection to groups that carried out extralegal lynchings raised questions on the statue’s placement was removed final month for routine upkeep, college officers mentioned.
Judge Robert Widney was one of the USC’s founders, and since 2014 an 8-foot bronze statue of him had stood exterior the Widney Alumni House.
In an instagram submit, The Daily Trojan reported Widney’s statue and the plaque had been taken down Nov. 28.
In an emailed assertion, the college mentioned the statue was removed for “maintenance and cleaning,” however didn’t reply a query on whether or not it will likely be returned.
Like many establishments, USC was met with reinvigorated calls to purge its namesake websites tied to racist figures, which included college founders, presidents and athletics coaches after a police officer murdered George Floyd on digital camera in 2020. The fury and protests over the killing strengthened a nationwide motion to take away symbols or names related with racism in public areas and on faculty campuses. Monuments, statues and buildings had been toppled, dismantled or renamed as organizations, faculties and cities reckoned with their pasts.
In June 2020, after years of calls for for the college to take motion, USC removed the Von KleinSmid Center for International and Public Affairs, which was named after Rufus B. von KleinSmid, the college’s fifth president.He was additionally a main determine in California’s eugenics motion.
A bust of Von KleinSmid was additionally removed from campus after a unanimous vote from the board of trustees’ govt committee.
In 2021, the constructing was renamed in honor of Joseph Medicine Crow, a Native American alumnus who wrote influential works about Indigenous historical past and tradition.
Over the summer time, the college renamed its observe and subject in honor of athlete and alumna Allyson Felix, the most adorned American observe and subject athlete in Olympics historical past. The house had beforehand been named after Dean Cromwell, a former USC observe coach who was criticized for anti-Black views and antisemitic actions.
But the statue of Widney had remained. According to USC, Widney is one of the 4 founding fathers of the faculty, and he had outsized affect on its development in the late 1870s.
But Widney was additionally tied to the Home Guard Vigilance Committee in the late 1800s. At the time, vigilante groups in Los Angeles typically focused Native Americans and folks of coloration, in accordance to a number of historians.
A professor and historian at UC Merced instructed The Times in 2020 that Robert Widney was “most certainly” supportive of extralegal lynchings. Widney’s statue got here below sharper scrutiny after the college stripped Von KleinSmid’s title from the landmark constructing.
Widney’s brother, Joseph Widney, was USC’s second president. He expressed racist views in his writing, together with that Black and white folks “cannot live together as equals.” Historian Torres-Rouff described the racial beliefs Joseph Widney espoused in his ebook as “repugnant,” citing them in a 2018 article asking universities “to confront their past, not omit it.”
Times employees author Tomás Mier contributed to this report.
