2. George Washington (171)
3. Christopher Columbus (149)
4. Martin Luther King Jr. (86)
5. Saint Francis of Assisi (73)
6. Robert E. Lee (59)
7. Casimir Pulaski (51)
8. Benjamin Franklin (48)
9. John F. Kennedy (44)
10. Thomas Jefferson (36)
11. Ulysses S. Grant (35)
12. Stonewall Jackson (33)
13. Jefferson Davis (30)
15. Andrew Jackson (27)
16. Theodore Roosevelt (27)
17. William McKinley (27)
18. Joan of Arc (26)
19. Nathan Hale (24)
20. William Shakespeare (24)
21. José Marti (23)
22. Thaddeus Kosciuszko (22)
23. William Clark (22)
24. Harriet Tubman (21)
25. Tecumseh (21)
26. Alexander Hamilton (20)
28. Sacagawea (20)
29. Frederick Douglass (19)
30. Martin Luther (19)
31. Jacques Marquette (18)
32. Dwight Eisenhower (17)
33. Franklin D. Roosevelt (17)
34. Anthony Wayne (16)
35. Merriweather Lewis (16)
36. Simón Bolivar (16)
37. Robert L. Burns (15)
38. St. Paul (15)
39. Washington Irving (14)
41. George Rogers Clark (13)
42. John Marshall (13)
43. John Sullivan (13)
44. Nathan Bedford Forrest (13)
45. Oliver Hazard Perry (13)
46. Sam Houston (13)
47. Daniel Boone (12)
48. David Glasgow Farragut (12)
49. James Garfield (12)
50. John Logan (12)
The audit also discovered that American memorials reflect a national focus on violent events. Fully a third commemorate war. For example, while nearly 6,000 reference the Civil War, only nine mention the era of Reconstruction that followed. The study also found that memory of past violence is skewed: Not a single monument recalls any of the 34 massacres of Black Americans recorded during that tumultuous post-war period.
The experience of African Americans is not the only thread of national history neglected in public spaces. The team counted nearly a thousand memorials erected after 1930 celebrating white pioneers but largely avoiding mention of the darker aspects of migration to the West, such as massacres, land grabs, and reneging on solemn treaties with Native Americans.
“The story of the United States as told by our current monument landscape misrepresents our history,” the report concludes. “Where inequalities and injustices exist, monuments often perpetuate them.”
The feature photo is of the Grant monument in Brooklyn.
I never would have predicted Saint Francis in the Top 5.
It’s amazing that Christopher Columbus has the third spot, and by a large margin. Is the USA the only country in the Americans with a love affair with Columbus?
I’m also fascinated Casimir Pulaski made the Top 10. Most people today have no idea who he was. Did his death in the American Revolution make him a martyr to the cause in the eyes of the Founding Fathers generation? Or was he widely embraced by later Polish immigrant communities as their hero of choice?
Columbus used to be a major focus in Columbia and the Dominican Republic, though I think that has faded.