Statue Removal in 2020

The questions regarding Dowlings statue and the memory of Dick Dowling have taken a new turn in 2020. After the murder of George Floyd, a Houstonian who went to Yates High School in the Third Ward, by Minneapolis Minnesota policeman Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, a series of racial protests against police violence began across the country. These protests, which have continued through the month of June, eventually moved away from a sole focus on police violence and towards a broader question of race relations in America, including the placement of Confederate monuments. Monuments honoring Confederate soliders have been forcibly removed by protesters. In response to these vast changes, the Dick Dowling statue was removed by the city of Houston on June 17, 2020. This was also done to honor the 155th Juneteenth, which fell on June 19, 2020, an important holiday that denotes the day the enslaved in Texas were told of their freedom at the conclusion of the Civil War, over two years and 5 months after the Emancipation Proclamation was annouced by President Abraham Lincoln. The final location of the Dowling statue is unclear, but it may move to the Houston Museum of African American Culture. For more information on the statue removal and potential final location, please see this article. In addition, Professor Caleb McDaniel, wrote an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle regarding the removal of the Dick Dowling monument available here. 

Edited on June 21, 2020