A sift through emails regarding comments about what city officials should do with a statue of Columbus removed from a park named in his honor included this insight from Ivey Avery. “In the late ’60’s when I was a college student attending Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia and a member of Sisters In Blackness, my answer “should the city sell the statue? Make it a gift? Or put it back at Unity park would be different than my answer today. In the ’60’s I would have said, sell it, destroy it, just get rid of it. But today as a retired teacher and advocate for African American history and truth in education I am against destroying the statue. Today I believe that we can not alter history, or recreate a different story that is more palatable to the  descendants of perpetrators of many of the atrocities committed against people of color by colonialist. I think that the statues should be displayed with a narrative of who they are and the positive and negative things they did. Pan-African activist, journalist and entrepreneur, Marcus Garvey, wrote “a people without knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.” A Nation that tries to hide its history is doomed and will not flourish.”