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US President Donald Trump proposed creating the national garden of statues in a July executive order, calling for historically significant Americans to be represented in the new national garden. Black Americans like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Trayvon Martin have been nominated by officials from across the United States to be featured in the White House National Garden of American Heroes. Trump administration launched a task force chaired by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. The task force released a list of predetermined individuals whose statues would be placed in the garden, from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin to Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jackie Robinson. The task force also sent out requests to a reported 2,000 officials throughout the US looking nominations for individuals to be considered for the national garden.

A Lehigh county commissioner in Pennsylvania, Amy Zanelli responded to that call for nominations with a letter of her own that urged the task force to include the black Americans whose deaths have resulted in a historic civil rights movement fuelled in part by the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. The county commissioner wrote to the task force, “Most recently, we can acknowledge that George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, and others, have shaped the future of America by finally bringing the systemic racial injustices present in our policing to the forefront of politics”. It is noteworthy that the officials in Denver, Colorado also voted to propose 18-year-old Kendrick Castillo.

They said, “We are making great advancements, and it would be prudent to remember them as historically significant Americans”. Kendrick Castillo was a high school student who was killed after lunging at a gunman amid a shooting in his school. A Douglas County commissioner, Lora Thomas said, “For me and my fellow commissioners, it was immediately a unanimous decision. A person of distinguished courage. Bravery. Good deeds. Noble. Gosh darn it, if Kendrick Castillo isn’t a hero, I don’t know who is”. Indigenous people were also nominated by several states, with Montana and North Dakota both recommending the Native American teen Sacagewea. The task force initially proposed 31 Americans be featured in the national garden.