A statue of Thomas Jefferson was packed up and removed from New York’s city hall after the city’s mayoral commission voted to remove the statue because the nation’s third president owned slaves.

The Washington Examiner reports:

The 187-year-old figure of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence was unceremoniously taken out through the back door.

It is reportedly on a long-term loan to the New York Historical Society.

The statue was banished from the chamber because it fails to represent contemporary values, said I. Daneek Miller, the co-chairman of the City Council’s Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus.

“Removing a monument without a public conversation about why it’s happening is useless,” said Erin Thompson, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “New Yorkers all need to talk about who we want to honor and why.”