Posted on June 10, 2020

Christopher Columbus Statues Beheaded in Boston, Attacked in Richmond

Lateshia Beachum and Laura Vozzella, Washington Post, June 10, 2020

Statues honoring Christopher Columbus were destroyed and disfigured in Boston and Richmond overnight Wednesday — the latest in a wave of attacks on historic monuments by George Floyd protesters.

Most of the violence has been aimed at Confederate memorials in cities across the South, including Richmond, Birmingham, Ala., Charleston, S.C., and Raleigh, N.C. But Columbus, once celebrated for “discovering” the New World, is reviled for brutalizing the indigenous people he found there.

On Wednesday at 12:30 a.m., Boston Police Department officers responded to a call about vandalism to the city’s Columbus statue, Sgt. Detective John Boyle told The Washington Post.

A member of the media went to check on the statue and noticed that it had been beheaded, he said. Fragments and pieces of the structure were found nearby.

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In Virginia, a few dozen people gathered in Richmond’s Byrd Park to see a bronze statue of Columbus submerged face down on the edge of Fountain Lake.

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