Trumps Garden of Heroes, including black Americans, wont be in New York thanks to the #Resistance

Speaking at a Black History event Thursday in the White House, President Donald Trump praised the memory of Prince Estabrook, a slave and Massachusetts Minuteman who was wounded at the 1775 Battle of Lexington.Trump noted that the African American patriot was “one of the first in the nation to spill blood in that very, very tough time,” and went on to announce that his statue will be erected in the coming National Garden of American Heroes — a project the president put forth in his first term, and has revived.The new “statue park,” Trump explained, will “honor hundreds of our greatest Americans to ever live, including countless black American icons.”To great applause, the president named Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Booker T.Washington, Frederick Douglass and Muhammad Ali, among others, as examples of the caliber of American heroes whose statues will populate this new park.Kobe Bryant, Trump added, will be included, as will the NASA mathematicians featured in “Hidden Figures.”Sounds great! If only the nation already had a world-class national “statue park,” featuring bronze-cast representations of the greatest Americans.Imagine if New York City had an attraction such as this.Oh, wait — we do: The Hall of Fame for Great Americans, inaugurated in 1901, stands proudly atop a Bronx bluff overlooking the Harlem River.Situated on the former NYU campus, now Bronx Community College, the Hall of Fame was designed by the great Stanford White as a colonnade around the majestic Gould Library.Now fallen into obscurity, the Hall of Fame was once a national obsession and tourist attraction drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually.Nominations to the Hall of Fame were closely covered by the national media through the 1950s.New plaques and busts were installed once a decade, attended by pomp and presidents.The whole thing was taken very seriously; changes to the voting process were debated in The New York Times.This once-glorious site is now a dilapidat...