KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — Following the decision in many southern communities to remove Confederate Statues, some have been trying to rekindle the debate over Kalamazoo’s Iannelli Fountain.
City Commissioner Shannon Sykes said at a recent city commission meeting that there are those who are still offended by the sculpture, and she thinks it should be moved.
Mayor Bobby Hopewell says they have been working with the Gun Lake Tribe to add educational kiosks at the park to put the Fountain of the Pioneers into context.
He says this agreement has been in place for a while and approved by the City Commission as part of the larger plan to improve Bronson Park.
They have been raising the money they need to do the work from private sources and grants. The plan within the plan is to refurbish the Art Deco fountain, which needs new plumbing and to have its crumbling features restored.
An opinion piece written by a local attorney appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week, and applauds the decision to refurbish instead of remove the Fountain.
The argument has been that most of the Confederate Statues were actually erected in the early 1900’s to reinforce Jim Crow laws and thus the symbolism and the reason for their existence has less to do with legacy and more to do with white superiority.
Let’s face it, it looks like a pioneer holding a club over the head of an Indian.
The Fountain of the Pioneers was designed by Alphonso Iannelli, and his intent appears to have been mainly historical, to symbolize the westward movement of pioneers with the Indian in a “posture of noble resistance”.
The intent of the city now is to expand on that original vision with contextual and educational displays at the fountain and extend it out to the edges of what was then the tribal reservation with markers erected on those borders.
