President Barack Obama moved the Martin Luther King Jr. bust into the Oval Office in 2009. Trump kept it during his first term but now it’s gone.
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A bronze bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. placed in the Oval Office by former President Barack Obama has been moved out.
The bust of the famed civil rights leaders now sits in President Donald Trump’s private dining room, steps away from the Oval Office, a White House official confirmed to USA TODAY.
It’s a room where he holds private meetings and lunches with senior staff and is part of various changes he’s made to the Oval Office, said the official. The Oval Office now features various flourishes including gold ornaments around door frames, gold figurines on the fireplace mantle and a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence behind blue velvet curtains.
During Trump’s first term in office, the bust of the civil rights leader – first installed by Obama in 2009 – held a prominent place in the Oval Office.
Also returning to the Oval Office? A bust of Winston Churchill.
Trump brought back the bust of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom by Sir Jacob Epstein in the Oval Office on January 20, his first day as president.
Trump was fulfilling “a promise he made after his election win and returning a Churchill bust to the place it was prominently displayed during his first term,” according to America’s National Churchill Museum.
Obama had moved Churchill’s bust to the Treaty Roomlocated on the second floor of the White House Residence during his tenure.
In 2009, the year Obama was sworn-in as the nation’s first African American president, he moved King’s bust from the White House library into the Oval Office. The bust was cast by Black artist Charles Alston in 1970, two years after King’s assassination. Alston received a commission from Rev. Donald Harrington for the Community Church of New York to create a bust of the civil rights leader for $5,000.
King’s bust, on loan from the Smithsonian, was first brought to the White House library in 2000, during former President Clinton’s second term.
Earlier this week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a civil rights organization, announced that for the first time in 116 years, the sitting president of the U.S. will not be invited to the NAACP National Convention to be held in July.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House Correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal
