Baltimore Columbus statue vandalized

BALTIMORE — A monument in Baltimore to Christopher Columbus was vandalized overnight.

Baltimore police said they were looking into the incident.

A video posted on YouTube shows a man striking the base of the monument near Herring Run Park repeatedly with a sledgehammer. Another person holds a sign that says, “Racism, tear it down.” Another sign is taped to the monument saying, “The future is racial and economic justice.”

The narrator of the video, who says his name is Ty, calls Christopher Columbus a “genocidal terrorist.”

The vandalism comes nearly one week after city officials swiftly removed four controversial monuments: a statue of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate Women’s monument, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and a statue of U.S. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which upheld slavery.

In Annapolis, state officials followed suit and removed a Taney statue there early Friday.

Ever since white supremacists protested the removal of a Lee statue in Charlottesville, Va., last month, government officials across the country have begun to re-examine monuments and statues.

The celebration of Columbus’ exploits in the Americas has long been criticized by those who feel the Italian explorer’s misdeeds are too often glossed over. Many associate Columbus, who is often falsely credited with “discovering” what is now the United States, with enslaving, brutalizing and killing the Native people he encountered in his travels.