Monuments Across the United States Re-Emerged as Targets of Rage Over a Weekend of Widespread Protest

Amid the breathtaking wave of
protests over police violence shaking the United States, public
monuments of all kinds have become flashpoints. Long-disputed
Confederate statues and other celebrations of figures associated
with racism have become both targets for protesters and rallying
sites for a nascent counter-protest movement.

Below is a partial accounting of some of the ways monuments
became targets of protest, just in the past few momentous days.

 

Richmond

In Richmond, Virginia, as riot police and protesters faced off
on Sunday, memorials to Confederate grandees Jefferson Davis,
Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart stood covered
in protest graffiti. “At one point,” the Commonwealth
Times reported of the
demonstrations, “a protester climbed the Jefferson Davis statue,
hung a noose around its neck and rallied other protesters to pull
the statue down, which was unsuccessful.”

Nearby, the headquarters of the United Daughters of the
Confederacy, the organization historically responsible for many
of the monuments to the Confederacy, was also covered with
graffiti, including phrases like “fucking racists,” “police are
creepy,” “stole from us,” and “abolition,” according to the
Richmond
Times-Dispatch. It was set ablaze in the early hours of
Sunday.

Nine fire trucks were called in to fight the blaze at the
institution, which is located between the Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts and the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

Nearby stands Rumors of War, a sculpture by
artist Kehinde Wiley depicting a contemporary black male
figure atop a rearing horse. The work was seen in Times Square
last year before being installed in Richmond as an artistic
reply to the nearby Confederate scultures. On Sunday, the
Washington Post reported that it was
untouched by graffiti nearby.

Birmingham

In Birmingham, Alabama, following a “Birmingham, the World Is
Watching” rally on Sunday night, protesters toppled a brass
sculpture of Charles Linn, a captain in the Confederate
navy. According to WBRC, the
Linn sculpture was pulled to the ground with a rope.

Nearby, a 52-foot-tall obelisk known as the Confederate Soldiers
and Sailors Monument, was also targeted, but not brought down.

The obelisk’s foundation was laid in 1894 at a Confederate
veterans reunion, and dedicated in 1905 by the United Daughters of
the Confederacy. Since the 2017 wave of protests against
Confederate memorials, it has been surrounded by plywood barriers
to keep it from public view, though supporters of the monument have
sought to protect it using the Alabama Heritage Preservation Act,
according to
Citylab.

On Sunday night, Sarah Parcak, a renowned professor of Egyptology at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, posted step-by-step
instructions on Twitter for how to tear down an obelisk, clearly
referring to the Birmingham protests.

Parcak’s Tweets inflamed Twitter, and made the Daily
Mail.

In a sign of how quickly context collapses on the internet, a
large number of
conservative voices including Ryan Fournier,
co-founder of Students for Trump, accused her of advocating the
destruction of the Washington Monument and called for her
firing.

 

Charleston

In Charleston, South Carolina, a Black Lives Matter
protest on Sunday faced off peacefully with a handful of Sons
of Confederate Soldiers activists.

The latter members were out to clear the “To the Confederate
Defenders of Charleston” monument, which had been vandalized the
previous night. The Sons of Confederate Soldiers have held a weekly
celebration of the Confederate flag at the monument since 2015, in
responses to demands that it be taken down. The monument has
been a frequent site of
protest since.

However, in a sign of the times, the founder of the weekly
Confederate meet-up, James Bessenger, called to end the
practice, according to the Post and
Courier.

“[T]hose in the Confederate Heritage Community who genuinely
wish to preserve the cultural, historical, and academic value of
the Confederacy are greatly and irreversibly outnumbered by those
who have far less honorable motives,” Bessenger, who also founded
the North Carolina Succession Party, told the paper.

“While I cannot undo the hurt, grief, fear, and apprehension
that the weekly flaggings at the battery have caused countless
passersby, I pray that I can play a part in putting an end to this
unnecessary, unproductive legacy,” Bessenger added.

 

Salisbury

Three and a half hours north of Charleston in Salisbury, North
Carolina, a confrontation between several dozen Black Lives Matters
protesters and a group of pro-Confederate activists at the local
Confederate monument took a more alarming turn on Saturday
night.

Local WBTV reported that police
arrested 49-year-old Jeffrey Allan Long, from the Confederate
counter-protesters, for firing a gun twice into the air after the
two groups got into a “very loud face-to-face argument.”

A second man, Brandon Walker, was also arrested and charged
with one count of carrying a concealed weapon.

Salisbury’s so-called “Fame” monument depicts
an angel cradling a wounded Confederate soldier. Cast in bronze, it
was erected by the Daughters of Confederate Soldiers in 1905.

 

Philadelphia

A variety of other types of monuments were targeted by the surge
of protest, usually ones that were already symbols of local
struggles over racism.

In Philadelphia on Saturday, a 10-foot sculpture of Frank Rizzo
dating from 1999 was defaced, with protesters attempting to pull it
down and set it on fire. Rizzo, a former police
commissioner-turned-mayor whose nickname was “Supercop,” was known
for strong-arm police tactics against the city’s black
community.

In a press conference on Sunday, mayor Jim Kenney declared that he “never
liked that statue,” which had been set to remain on the steps of
the Municipal Services Building until 2021 despite controversy.
Kenney suggesting it would now be moved in the next several months.
“We’re going to accelerate its movement.”

Striking images on Sunday afternoon showed the Rizzo statue
guarded by a solid wall of armed police.

San Antonio

In San Antonio, the Alamo Cenotaph was hit with graffiti on
Thursday night reading “[Down with] white supremacy / [down with] profit over people / [down with] the ALAMO.” Police arrested one
suspect.

The incident led members of the militia known as This Is Texas
Freedom Force (TITFF) to stand guard at the Cenotaph in the
following days, sporting rifles and shotguns. On Sunday, the Alamo
Plaza exploded in conflict.

“Violence first erupted at the Alamo during a confrontation
between members of TITFF and the nearby protesters speaking out
against the police killing of George Floyd,” KSTX reported. “TITFF
was heavily armed, and said their presence was necessary in light
of the recent anti-white-supremacy graffiti protest art that
someone tagged the Alamo Cenotaph with.”

Police formed a circle to shield the Alamo Cenotaph and militia
members from the anti-police-violence demonstrators. Fights broke
out between protesters, militia, police, and Alamo security as the
evening unfolded, according to KSTX. Militia members were
eventually individually escorted by police from the plaza by
SAPD.

Afterwards, police moved in with tear gas as storefronts along
East Houston Street were attacked.

Denver

In Denver, the Colorado Soldiers Monument, which honors the
state’s past military leaders, was defaced. A traffic cone was hung
over the figure’s gun, and pictures show a poster placed at its
base with the faces of black victims of police violence.

“The statue honors past military leaders in Colorado,” Denverite
reported. “It includes
the name of the colonel who led the Sand Creek massacre that killed
an estimated 500 Arapaho and Cheyenne in 1864. The statue lists the
massacre as a ‘battle.’”

Nearby, the Khachkar memorial to the Armenian Genocide at the
state capital, dedicated in 2015, was tagged with black spray
paint, with the ground in front of it scrawled with the words “Cops
Are the Evil.”

The graffiti led to a statement from the
group behind the memorial, Armenians of Colorado: “Protest leaders
have repeatedly denounced violence and vandalism. We do not hold
the peaceful protesters responsible for the behavior of violent
individuals. As Armenian Americans, a community that has survived
genocide and centuries of oppression, we recognize and condemn the
ongoing injustices against our African American community and we
join them in calling for justice for George Floyd.”

 

Washington, DC

In Washington, DC, the Lincoln Memorial and World War II
Memorial were both graffitied amid waves of civil unrest.

The vandalism of one DC statue even threatened to become a minor
diplomatic incident. Polish ambassador Piotr Wilczek took to
Twitter to profess himself “disgusted and appalled” that a
sculpture of Thaddeus Kosciuszko was defaced. “I implore
@WhiteHouse & @NatlParkService to quickly restore the statue to
its original state.”

Kosciuszko, a hero of both the American and Polish independent
movements, was an early abolitionist who famously attempted to
use his American estate to purchase the freedom of Thomas
Jefferson’s slaves and provide for their education—a charge that
Jefferson declined to honor.

 

Louisville

Given the sheer breadth of what is already likely to be the
largest wave of rebellion since the ’60s, many more examples could
be listed, from the University of Mississippi, where a Confederate
monument was branded with the
words “spiritual genocide,” to Nashville, where a sculpture of
the racist politician and newspaper Edward Carmack was toppled.

One notable event took place in Louisville, Kentucky, a city
particularly full of rage given the recent police killing of Breonna
Taylor. During a protest on Friday night, a hand was torn from the
city’s monumental marble statue of Louis XVI.

The statue was originally made in 1829 for the Bourbon king’s
daughter Marie-Thérèse. It was presented to the City of Louisville
in 1967 as a sign of comity with its sister city Montpelier.

The incident briefly became the subject of internet infamy on
Saturday when the 44-year-old Louis de Bourbon, Duke of
Anjou—described by the
Telegraph as “a polo-playing financier with movie-star
looks”—took to social media to use the incident to call attention
to his claim on the French
throne.

“As the heir of Louis XVI, and attached to the defense of his
memory, I do hope that the damage will be repaired and that the
statue will be restored,” the Duke wrote. “I already thank the
Authorities for the measures they will take for that.”

Louis XVI is mainly associated with his lavish and dissolute
lifestyle, and with being beheaded during the French
Revolution.

Whatever levity was to be had by the minor controversy was
drowned out by the force of events unfolding in the city over the
weekend. On Sunday night, some 40 protesters were arrested in
the fourth night of protests. Early Monday morning, police shot and killed a black
restaurant owner, David McAtee, during the protests.

The post Monuments Across the United States Re-Emerged as
Targets of Rage Over a Weekend of Widespread Protest appeared
first on artnet News.