In the wake of George Floyd protests in 2020, the statue of U.S. Founding Father Caesar Rodney and his horse was taken down from its perch over Rodney Square in Wilmington, Delaware, and placed into storage. Born in 1728, Rodney was a lawyer and politician from Kent County, Delaware, and one of A merica’s Founding Fathers who served during the American Revolutionary War. He was also known for his overnight horseback ride to Philadelphia in a thunderstorm to cast his vote for independence. A statue of Rodney was originally erected in downtown Wilmington, Delaware, back in 1923. However, it was ultimately Rodney’s role as a slave owner that led to his statue coming down as the death of George Floyd in 2020 led to a national conversation on race. Now, more than five years after its removal, the statue will be coming out of storage after the National Park Service recently asked Wilmington if they could borrow it for events celebrating the nation’s 250th anniversary in Washington, D.C., this summer. “We don’t know how long it’ll be in D.C. They have indicated it’ll be there temporarily during the 250th,” Wilmington’s Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Walker said. “What is clear is we are having conversations about how you memorialize people in their moment in history and this will be wrapped into that broader conversation.” A Kent County Republican State Senator facilitated the process after asking the city if he could bring it to Dover. “The 250 Committee on the national scale thought it might be a good idea if we relocated him temporarily to D.C. and that led to a conversation with the Department of the Interior and that’s where we are today,” State Sen. Eric Buckson explained. The former mayor of Wilmington didn’t publicly push to make a decision on the Rodney statue and the current administration doesn’t seem to be fighting too hard for it. Meanwhile, Sen. Buckson says Legislative Hall in Dover would be a good spot to display Rodney if Wilmington doesn’t take it back after the 250 events. “After that story’s told then we can relocate him to Dover and then we can have that discussion about how his history is told including his slave ownership which can’t be ignored but also the impacts he had on Delaware and the country,” Buckson said. Wilmington leaders aren’t saying that this plan is locked down. Buckson wants Wilmington residents who want the statue back in Rodney Square to know that he was not pushing Wilmington to give it away, but he does not believe that it belongs in a storage facility. He explained that it makes the most sense to have the statue in Kent County where Caesar Rodney lived and died. “Other folks have expressed the desire. It’s just that nobody has been willing to step out and take the hits from some folks that are going to, you know, beat you up over it but I’m there because I think it’s the right thing to do,” Buckson told NBC10. Wilmington’s statue of Christopher Columbus was brought down around the same time as Caesar Rodney’s. There are discussions surrounding what to do with that statue as well. ...read more read less