A statue of Frederick Douglass was torn down over the holiday weekend in Rochester, New York:
The base of a Frederick Douglass statue torn down overnight here in Maplewood Park. Bits of the statue scattered around the area. @News_8 pic.twitter.com/L6qgV7bVH2
— Ben Densieski (@BenDensieski) July 5, 2020
Here’s more from CBS News:
A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester on the anniversary of one of his most famous speeches, delivered in the city in 1852.
Police said the statue was taken on Sunday from Maplewood Park, a site along the Underground Railroad where Douglass 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.
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.”
Carvin Eison, a leader of the project that brought the Douglass statue to the park, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle another statue will take its place because the damage to the one that was pulled down is too significant.
The statue was one of 13 placed throughout the city in 2018, and this was the second monument to be vandalized, WROC notes.
Trump tweeted about this today, saying “This shows that these anarchists have no bounds!” Clearly this is true. These statues coming down aren’t about racism or the confederacy or ‘white supremacy’. It’s about hating America and wanting to tear it down.