A student group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is calling for the school to remove its popular Abraham Lincoln statue, saying the president who is known as the “Great Emancipator” is a symbol of racism.

The statue has sat atop the university’s Bascom Hill for more than a century and is a popular backdrop for graduate photos, according to WISC-TV. But students in the university’s black student union say that its continued presence on campus ignores the 16th president’s stated opinions against racial equality.

“He was also very publicly anti-Black,” Nalah McWhorter, the president of UW-Madison’s black student union, said. “Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-black.”

“He said a lot in his presidential campaigns. His fourth presidential campaign speech, he said that he believes there should be an inferior and superior, and he believes white people should be the superior race,” she added.

It should be noted that Lincoln did in fact express those sentiments in a presidential campaign speech on Sept. 18, 1858, though that was nearly five years before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

“Like those of all presidents, Lincoln’s legacy is complex and contains actions which, 150 years later, appear flawed,” Chancellor Becky Blank said in response to the calls for the statue’s removal.

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