Controversial monument depicting Lincoln standing over a freed slave removed from the Back Bay

A controversial statue depicting Abraham Lincoln standing over a half-dressed, formerly enslaved man has been removed from its longtime location in Boston’s Back Bay, months after the city’s Art Commission voted to take it down amid a nationwide reckoning on racial justice.

On Tuesday morning, workers took the statue, “Emancipation Group,” from its perch in Park Square across the street from the Park Plaza Hotel.

“Over the course of two public hearings that allowed hundreds of residents to express their feelings, and after taking into account the petition from local artist Tory Bullock that gained more than 12,000 signatures to remove the statue, we’re pleased to have taken it down this morning,” a spokesperson for Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement.