When the legislature decided to swap out the statues of Marcus Whitman for Billy Frank Jr. in Washington D.C. and Olympia almost four years ago, they were pretty clear about what they wanted done with the D.C. statue: ask the Whitman County commissioners what they wanted done with it.
But the legislature was silent about the massive stone and bronze piece in the north entrance of the state capitol. So now, the various committees that manage the state capitol campus are months into figuring out not only how exactly to remove the statue but also where to put it.
First, spoiler alert: they shouldn’t be worried about saving it or moving it somewhere else on the campus. They should just get rid of it.
But first, we need to rewind a bit. This isn’t the first statue that should be removed from the capitol campus.
Not Our First Statue
Consider the case of the John Rogers statue in Sylvester Park. Governor Rogers is best known for his support of the “Barefoot Schoolboy” bill, which expanded education in Washington. However, his legacy is tainted by his explicit anti-Semitic writings, in which he blamed “Jewish Money Lords” for economic woes in the U.S. His statue was erected shortly after his death, during a period of heightened emotion, without the critical distance necessary to evaluate his full legacy.
The Rogers statue remains a reminder of a troubling era in Washington’s history. Rogers’ broader political philosophy was tied to the populist movement of the late 19th century, which included efforts to remove Chinese residents and contained threads of racial and economic animus. This context forces us to confront the problematic aspects of his legacy and question whether honoring him with a statue is appropriate.
The lesson here is clear: statues are not just about honoring achievements—they also preserve the broader, often darker legacies of the people they depict.
Statue Process
When I first wrote about the Rogers statue in 2021, the response I received was that the Department of Enterprise Services did not have a formal process to remove statues. And that seems to be the procedural problem they’re forced to grapple with now regarding the Whitman statue.
In 2022, Senator Sam Hunt sponsored SB 5570, which would have established a process for the removal or relocation statues on capitol campus. The bill would have authorized the Department of Enterprise Services (DES) to remove or relocate statues, monuments, and other significant works under specific conditions, such as legislative approval, construction needs, or a determination that the work was offensive or outdated.
It also outlined procedures for periodic reviews of major works and for convening a work group to evaluate removal proposals. The work group, composed of state officials and representatives from cultural commissions, would provide detailed recommendations to the State Capitol Committee, including costs and funding sources for removal or relocation. Despite its comprehensive framework, the bill did not pass, leaving the state without a codified process for addressing controversial or outdated monuments.
But DES and the state campus committees seem to be working on a similar process now. Boiling it down, once the legislature tells them to remove a statue, they’ll work with a broad set of historic and public art stakeholders, mix in some public comment, and make a decision.
Has the last four years been the Seattle Process for statues? With all the love in my heart for my other government-employed neighbors, yes, it is.
Marcus Whitman Should Not Be Saved
Bottom line: the last thing we should do is leave the Marcus Whitman statue right where it is. The current proposal seems to be to either leave it where it is or put it under the southern covered entrance.
But the Marcus Whitman statue should be removed from the campus entirely. We know what symbols mean, and we know that preserving the statue on the campus as it is preserves its original legacy as a historic lie meant to cement white supremacy in our state.
We knew what we were doing. The official program for the installation of the Whitman statue in Olympia casts our history in such starkly racist terms, we should be running away fast:
What the Whitman statue symbolizes now isn’t the false myth of Whitman. That is already in our historic dustbin. It doesn’t even represent some sort of minor figure deserving of honor. There are dozens of historical actors remembered without needing larger-than-life bronze representations.
What the statue symbolizes and celebrates now is the decades-long propaganda campaign that framed American Pacific Northwest history and society in a factually wrong, racist, and religiously sectarian context. We know the people behind the Whitman myth lied. We know why they lied. The physical representation of their lies should not stand.
It is absolutely okay for us to not only move the statue somewhere else but to dispose of it entirely.
We should bury it, give it away to an artist to adapt to a modern frame, or hand out metal files or hacksaws to people who donate $5 for a crack at it. Anything other than being a fully formed Marcus Whitman statue on the state campus.
What a fucking joke! Post some more of your opinions that nobody cares about on here… Go ahead we need more print to wipe our ass with. Honestly to waste time and effort on something like this shows how meaningless your life must be
You said “this was intentional”. Well, so is removing those statues. Every single person on the planet is, for lack of a better term, both “good” and “bad”. There is not one human who was or is a perfect role model (except Jesus). Removing all evidence of a person whose actions shaped who we are today, however imperfect they were, will doom us to IGNORANCE and to make the same mistakes they did. I’m a teacher. This kind of stupidity makes me want to scream. Stop ERASING HISTORY! Leave the statues. All of them. And then take the time to add the long view of history on another placque to explain why and how we now see these people in a different light. Give our descendents a reason to learn from and evaluate human behavior so we can become better.
People not having statues dedicated to them doesn’t erase them from history. There are still plenty of books about Marcus Whitman, many of them debunked by further study. We build statues because we want to elevate someone. Leaving the Whitman statues as it is is what is actually destroying the true history of events.