A vandal has marred the bust of Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile by painting what appears to be a black mask over DuSable’s eyes, with paint running down his face looking like black tears.
The bust’s artist, Erik Blome, called a friend in Chicago about the vandalism Sunday morning, and the friend, Owen Leroy, went out to see it for himself later that day.
“When you see something like that, it hurts, definitely,” Leroy said. “I didn’t want to make anything about it except, who is that idiot who has the time to do such a thing?”
Leroy said he also wondered “Why would they do that on Martin Luther King weekend?”
Leroy visited the bust at the artist’s request and took photographs to document the vandalism. Blome hopes to visit the bust this Wednesday to repair the damage–apparently from some kind of black enamel, Leroy said.
DuSable, a native of Haiti, is credited with opening Chicago’s first trading post and settlement in the 1770′s near the junction of the Chicago River and Upper Michigan Avenue. The bust hailing DuSable as the “Founder of Chicago” is located in the Pioneer Court plaza commemorating that site.
Haitian-born Lesly Benodin of Evanston donated the bust to the city of Chicago and it was erected in 2009 under then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Local
Thousands of emails about the vandalism were shared over the weekend, particularly among Chicago’s Haitian community, Leroy said. Even Lesly Conde, the consul general of the Republic of Haiti in Chicago, called him afterwards to get details about the incident, he said.
“He kind of calmed me down because I was so upset about it,” said Leroy, a Haitian native and owner of a Chicago publishing company.
“To all of us Haitians, the bust was very important for us, just as a way to say `We are in Chicago,’” Leroy said. “He said it was probably some kids who did that and not to take it seriously.”
