Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes
Record date: 2020-07-08
Executive Order 13934 of July 3, 2020 Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1 . Purpose. America owes its present greatness to its past sacrifices. Because the past is always at risk of being forgotten, monuments will always be needed to honor those who came before. Since the time of our founding, Americans have raised monuments to our greatest citizens. In 1784,
What this record contains
- Federal Register document
- 2020-14872
- Publication date
- 2020-07-08
- Citation
- 85 FR 41165
- Issuing office
- Executive Office of the President
Official record excerpt
Executive Order 13934 of July 3, 2020 Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1 . Purpose. America owes its present greatness to its past sacrifices. Because the past is always at risk of being forgotten, monuments will always be needed to honor those who came before. Since the time of our founding, Americans have raised monuments to our greatest citizens. In 1784, the legislature of Virginia commissioned the earliest statue of George Washington, a “monument of affection and gratitude” to a man who “unit[ed] to the endowment[s] of the Hero the virtues of the Patriot” and gave to the world “an Immortal Example of true Glory.” I Res. H. Del. (June 24, 1784). In our public parks and plazas, we have erected statues of great Americans who, through acts of wisdom and daring, built and preserved for us a republic of ordered liberty. These statues are silent teachers in solid form of stone and metal. They preserve the memory of our American story and stir in us a spirit of responsibility for the chapters yet unwritten. These works of art call forth gratitude for the accomplishments and sacrifices of our exceptional fellow citizens who, despite their flaws, placed their virtues, their talents, and their lives in the service of our Nation. These monuments express our noblest ideals: respect for our ancestors, love of freedom, and striving for a more perfect union. They are works of beauty, created as enduring tributes. In preserving them, we show reverence for our past, we dignify our present, and we inspire those who are to come. To build a monument is to ratify our shared national project. To destroy a monument is to desecrate our common inheritance. In recent weeks, in the midst of protests across America, many monuments have been vandalized or destroyed. Some local governments have responded by taking their monuments down. Among others, monuments to Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Francis Scott Key, Ulysses S. Grant, leaders of the abolitionist movement, the first all-volunteer African-American regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War, and American soldiers killed in the First and Second World Wars have been vandalized, destroyed, or removed. These statues are not ours alone, to be discarded at the whim of those inflamed by fashionable political passions; they belong to generations that have come before us and to generations yet unborn. My Administration will not abide an assault on our collective national memory. In the face of such acts of destruction, it is our responsibility as Americans to stand strong against this violence, and to peacefully transmit our great national story to future generations through newly commissioned monuments to American heroes. Sec. 2 . Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes. (a) There is hereby established the Interagency Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes (Task Force). The Task Force shall be chaired by the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), and shall include the following additional members: (i) the Administrator of General Services (Administrator); (ii) the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); ( printed page 41166) (iii) the Chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); (iv) the Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP); and (v) any officers or employees of any executive department or agency (agency) designated by the President or the Secretary. (b) The Department of the Interior shall provide funding and administrative support as may be necessary for the performance and functions of the Task Force. The Secretary shall designate an official of the Department of the Interior to serve as the Executive Director of the Task Force, responsible for coordinating its day-to-day activities. (c) The Chairpersons of the NEA and NEH and the Chairman of the ACHP shall establish cross-department initiatives within the NEA, NEH, and ACHP, respectively, to advance the purposes of the Task Force and this order and to coordinate relevant agency operations with the Task Force. Sec. 3 . National Garden of American Heroes. (a) It shall be
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