Statue of black icon is trashed; Trump raps left
President Trump blamed leftists Monday for the weekend destruction of a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass in upstate Rochester — even though police have said they have not identified a motive.
Trump asserted without evidence that so-called “anarchists” carried out the vandalism of the historic statue.
“These anarchists have no bounds!” Trump tweeted.
Police have not identified any suspect or a motive. The article from rightwing Breitbart News that Trump amplified likewise did not suggest that leftwing or Black Lives Matter activists might have been responsible.
It’s unclear why Trump singled out progressive activists as the group to have damaged the Douglass statue.
Some activists have targeted statues of figures like the Founding Fathers, other slave owners and Christopher Columbus. But they have not taken aim at any black leaders.
Carvin Eison, a leader of the project that built the Douglass statue a few years ago, suggested that vandalism was likely carried out by white nationalists aligned with Trump, although he did not offer any evidence of that.
“Is this some type of retaliation because of the national fever over Confederate monuments right now? Very disappointing, it’s beyond disappointing,” Eison told WROC.
Police said the statue of Douglass was taken on Sunday from Maplewood Park, a site along the Underground Railroad where Douglass (photo) and Harriet Tubman helped shuttle slaves to freedom.
The statue was found at the brink of the Genesee River gorge about 50 feet from its pedestal, police said. There was damage to the base and a finger.
Eison told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle that another statue will take its place because the damage is too significant.
In Rochester on July 5, 1852, Douglass gave the speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July,” in which he called the celebration of liberty a sham in a nation that enslaves and oppresses its black citizens.
To a slave, Douglass said, Independence Day is “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”