The
rapidly unfolding movement to pull down Confederate monuments around
the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police has
extended to statues of slave traders, imperialists, conquerors and
explorers around the world, including Christopher Columbus, Cecil Rhodes
and Belgium’s King Leopold II.
Protests and,
in some cases, acts of vandalism have taken place in such cities as
Boston; New York; Paris; Brussels; and Oxford, England, in an intense
re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries. Scholars are
divided over whether the campaign amounts to erasing history or updating
it.
New Zealand’s fourth-largest city removed a bronze statue
of the British naval officer Capt. John Hamilton, the city’s namesake,
on Friday, a day after a Maori tribe asked for the statue be taken down
and one Maori elder threatened to tear it down himself. The city of
Hamilton said it was clear the statue of the man accused of killing
indigenous Maori people in the 1860s would be vandalized. The city has
no plans to change its name.
At the
University of Oxford, protesters have stepped up their longtime push to
remove a statue of Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist who served as prime
minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa. He made a fortune from
gold and diamonds on the backs of miners who labored in brutal
conditions.
Oxford’s vice chancellor Louise Richardson, in an interview with the BBC, balked at the idea.
“We need to confront our past,” she said. “My own view on this is that hiding our history is not the route to enlightenment.”
Near Santa Fe,
New Mexico, activists are calling for the removal of a statue of Don
Juan de OƱate, a 16th-century Spanish conquistador revered as a Hispanic
founding father and reviled for brutality against Native Americans,
including an order to cut off the feet of two dozen people. Vandals
sawed off the statue’s right foot in the 1990s.
In Bristol,
England, demonstrators over the weekend toppled a statue of 17th-century
slave trader Edward Colston and threw it in the harbor. City
authorities said it will be put in a museum.
Across Belgium, statues of Leopold II have been defaced in half a dozen cities because of the king’s brutal rule over the Congo,
where more than a century ago he forced multitudes into slavery to
extract rubber, ivory and other resources for his own profit. Experts
say he left as many as 10 million dead.
“The Germans
would not get it into their head to erect statues of Hitler and cheer
them,” said Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, an activist in Congo who wants
Leopold statues removed from Belgian cities. “For us, Leopold has
committed a genocide.”
In the U.S.,
the May 25 death of Floyd, a black man who died after a white
Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck, has led to an
all-out effort to remove symbols of the Confederacy and slavery.
The Navy, the
Marines and NASCAR have embraced bans on the display of the Confederate
flag, and statues of rebel heroes across the South have been vandalized
or taken down, either by protesters or local authorities.
On Wednesday
night, protesters pulled down a century-old statue of Confederate
President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of
the Confederacy. The 8-foot (2.4-meter) bronze figure had already been
targeted for removal by city leaders, but the crowd took matters into
its own hands. No immediate arrests were made.
It stood a few
blocks away from a towering, 61-foot-high (18.5-meter-high) equestrian
statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the most revered of all Confederate
leaders. Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam last week ordered its removal,
but a judge blocked such action for now.
The spokesman
for the Virginia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, B. Frank
Earnest, condemned the toppling of “public works of art” and likened
losing the Confederate statues to losing a family member.
Richmond Mayor
Levar Stoney, who has proposed dismantling all Confederate statues in
the city, asked protesters not to take matters into their own hands for
their own safety. But he indicated the Davis statue is gone for good.
“He never deserved to be up on that pedestal,” Stoney said, calling Davis a “racist & traitor.”
Elsewhere
around the South, authorities in Alabama got rid of a massive obelisk in
Birmingham and a bronze likeness of a Confederate naval officer in
Mobile. In Virginia, a slave auction block was removed in
Fredericksburg, and protesters in Portsmouth knocked the heads off the
statues of four Confederates.
The monument
is believed to be located where a slave whipping post once stood, and
removing it is a small step in the right direction, Portsmouth activist
and organizer Rocky Hines said.
“It’s not a
history that we as a nation should necessarily be proud of. For us, the
history is a lot of history of slavery and hatred,” he said. “It’s
bothered people for a long time.”
In Washington,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it is time to remove statues of
Confederate figures from the U.S. Capitol and take their names off
military bases such as Fort Bragg, Fort Benning and Fort Hood.
President
Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected the idea of renaming bases. But
Republicans in the Senate, at risk of losing their majority in the
November elections, aren’t with Trump on this. A GOP-led Senate panel on
Thursday approved a plan to take Confederate names off military
installations.
Supporters of
Confederate monuments have argued that they are important reminders of
history; opponents contend they glorify those who went to war against
the U.S. to preserve slavery.
The Davis
monument and many others across the South were erected decades after the
Civil War during the Jim Crow era, when states imposed tough new
segregation laws, and during the Lost Cause movement, in which
historians and others sought to recast the South’s rebellion as a noble
undertaking, fought to defend not slavery but states’ rights.
For protesters
mobilized by Floyd’s death, the targets have ranged far beyond the
Confederacy. Statues of Columbus have been toppled or vandalized in
cities such as Miami; Richmond; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Boston, where
one was decapitated. The city of Camden, New Jersey, removed a statue of
Columbus. Protesters have accused the Italian explorer of genocide and
exploitation of native peoples.
New York Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, who is Italian American, said he opposes removal of a
statue of Columbus in Manhattan’s Columbus Circle.
“I understand
the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which
nobody would support,” he said. “But the statue has come to represent
and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New
York. So for that reason I support it.”
Historians have differing views of the campaigns.
“How far is
too far, in scrubbing away a history so that we won’t remember it wrong –
or, indeed, have occasion to remember it at all?” asked Mark Summers, a
University of Kentucky professor. “I’ve always felt that honor to the
past shouldn’t be done by having fewer monuments and memorials, but
more.”
Scott Sandage,
a historian at Carnegie Mellon University, noted that Americans have a
long tradition of arguing over monuments and memorials. He recalled the
bitter debate over the now-beloved Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in
Washington when the design was unveiled.
“Removing a
memorial doesn’t erase history. It makes new history,” Sandage said.
“And that’s always happening, no matter whether statues go up, come
down, or not.”
___
Rankin
reported from Richmond, Virginia, and Crary reported from New York.
Associated Press reporters around the United States and world
contributed.
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