NEW YORK (AP) – Transit officials have decided to alter subway station tiles that have a cross-like design similar to that of the Confederate flag.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is modifying the tiles at the 40th Street entrance to the Times Square subway stop to avoid any confusion about their meaning, MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said in a statement.
“These are not confederate flags” Ortiz said. The red, white and blue tiles installed decades ago are “based on geometric forms that represent the ‘Crossroads of the World,'” he added.
The decision comes in the wake of the deadly rally over a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has caused communities across the nation to remove Confederate memorials and symbols.
Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other politicians pressed the U.S. Army to rename two streets named for Confederate generals Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson on an Army base in Brooklyn. The Army has so far resisted, saying the streets were named for the generals “in the spirit of reconciliation” and to recognize them as individuals, not representatives of “any particular cause or ideology.”