Confederate and Columbus Statues Torn Down and Defaced During Nationwide Protests

Leia IdlibyJun 11th, 2020, 12:43 pm
 

A statue of Confederate States President Jefferson Davis after it was pulled down in Richmond. Parker Michels-Boyce/AFP via Getty Images.

Nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice have reignited the issue of Confederate statues in the United States, and have even prompted demonstrators to topple some of the memorials themselves.

The issue of whether Confederate memorials should remain has been the subject of nationwide debates for years, many demanding they be taken down, as they act as racist symbols of slavery, while others claim they should stay standing because they represent the nation’s history.

But in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, many protesters are no longer waiting for state and city leaders to decide whether or not these memorials stay, removing and defiling the monuments themselves as part of the protests against racism in the United States.

Here are some of the monuments that have been taken down or destroyed in the past few weeks amid the protests across the U.S.

A statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, was removed in Richmond Wednesday night.

Photos and video from the scene showed the statue being taken away after it was pulled down:

Parker Michels-Boyce/AFP via Getty Images

Demonstrators danced and celebrated as others beheaded four Confederate statues in Portsmouth, Virginia on Wednesday night, one of which was burned while another was also pulled down:

A Christopher Columbus statue in Richmond, Virginia was removed and thrown into the lake on Wednesday:

Another Columbus statue was beheaded in Boston on Wednesday night, while yet another was torn down in St. Paul, Minnesota:

Headless Columbus in Boston. Tim Bradbury/Getty Images

A statue honoring fallen Confederate soldiers in Jacksonville, Florida was taken down on Tuesday:

A 1889 memorial that honored Confederate soldiers in Alexandria, Virginia was also removed following peaceful protests in the state earlier this month.

Mayor Justin Wilson shared pictures of the statue’s removal on Twitter with the caption “Alexandria, like all great cities, is constantly changing and evolving”:


The statue of Confederate veteran Charles Linn in a Birmingham, Alabama was torn down by protesters on May 31:


Protesters at Birmingham’s Linn Park attempted to remove the 115-year-old statue on May 31, and when Mayor Randall Woodfin arrived at the scene, he promised that he would “finish the job.”

“In order to prevent more civil unrest in our city, I think it is very imperative that we remove this statue that’s in Linn Park,” he said later during a news conference after the bulk of the statue was already torn down by protesters.

A statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee at Lee High School in Montgomery, Alabama was also removed, according to WSFA, and while it remains torn down, four people have been charged with first-degree criminal mischief.

There has even been an international in response to the uprising in the U.S. An statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down from its pedestal in Bristol, England on Sunday while a statue of Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square was defaced during a Black Lives Matter protest.

The Colston statue has since been removed from Bristol Harbour and will be part of the city’s museum collection:

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