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Editor, Asbury Park Sun,

The Asbury Park Historical Society would like to go on record in opposition to the recent request made by several people to have the 97-year-old statue of our city’s founder removed.

We have noted in the past that the statue of James A. Bradley stands at the eastern end of Sunset Park, a beautiful six-block-long stretch of green donated to the people of Asbury Park by Mr Bradley himself.  

In recognition of that, our trustees would like to reiterate the words found in our mission statement: “The mission of the Asbury Park Historical Society is to advance the understanding, appreciation, preservation and restoration of anything of historical value to the City of Asbury Park, New Jersey…”  

We certainly acknowledge that, although he was a visionary in many ways and brilliantly planned the city we love, there can be no doubt that our city’s founder, like so many people of his day [he was born in 1830], was shortsighted and wrong in his advocacy of segregation.

Separation of the races was, at the same time, both evil and outrageously the law of the land.  Mr Bradley’s great accomplishments will never erase the hurtful positions he espoused or some of the words he spoke or printed in his newspaper.

Like all of us, he too had feet of clay. Yet he never waged a traitorous war against the United States of America, never condoned slavery, or “owned” another human being.  He actually assisted in supplying the victorious Union Army in the war that ended slavery.

We should never turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of Mr Bradley or any other historical figure, but openly acknowledge them. Many of our brilliant founding fathers, whose statues and likenesses are ubiquitous, condoned slavery and trafficked in the sale of their fellow human beings.

Removing all of their statues and likenesses would be a denial, indeed a “whitewashing”, of our history, good and bad. It would be yet another step in our country’s descent into ‘know-nothing-ism.’  

Mr Bradley’s statue is both a historical reminder of his undeniable accomplishments as well as the shameful “Jim Crow” period in our nation’s history, one we must acknowledge in order to correct. ‘Separate but equal’ may have been the law of the land as decreed by the Supreme Court in 1896 [Plessy v. Ferguson], but we know that it may have been separate, but it was never equal.

The trustees of the Asbury Park Historical Society wish to go on record in complete opposition to the removal of the statue of the deeply flawed but brilliant founder of Asbury Park.

Asbury Park Historical Society

Fourth Avenue

[These letters represents the opinion of its writer and is not representative of any opinion of the Asbury Park Sun staff. All readers are welcome to submit Letters to the Editor to news@asburyparksun.com for our consideration. For guidelines on letter-writing and submission, click here.]

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