Historical figures under attack after Floyd’s death
Statues of colonists and Confederates draw ire of protesters
The rapidly unfolding movement to pull down Confederate monuments around the U.S. in the wake of George Floyd’s death has extended to statues of slave traders, imperialists and conquerors around the world, including Cecil Rhodes and Belgium’s King Leopold II.
Protests and acts of vandalism have taken place in Boston, New York, Paris, Brussels, and Oxford, England, in an intense re-examination of racial injustices over the centuries.
At the University of Oxford, protesters have pushed to remove a statue of Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist who made a fortune from gold and diamonds on the backs of African miners who labored in brutal conditions.
Oxford’s vice chancellor Louise Richardson 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 Española, activists are calling for the removal of a statue of Don Juan de Oñate, 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.
In the U.S., Floyd’s death May 25 has led to an all-out effort to remove symbols of the Confederacy and slavery.
On Wednesday night, protesters pulled down a century-old statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy.
A towering, 61-foot-high equestrian statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, the most revered of all Confederate leaders, was ordered removed by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam last week, but a judge blocked such action for now.