Rochester, NY – A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its Rochester base on the anniversary of one of its most famous speeches, delivered in the city in 1852. Police said the statue was taken Sunday from Maplewood Park, a site at along the underground railway. where Douglass and Harriet Tubman helped transport slaves to freedom.
No arrests have been made. In a Monday morning tweet, President Trump blamed “anarchists” for the incident.
The statue was found on the edge 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 delivered the “What the Slave is for the Fourth of July” speech, calling the celebration of freedom a farce in a nation that enslaves and oppresses its black citizens.
Douglass said that for a slave, Independence Day is “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the great injustice and cruelty of which he is a constant victim.”
AP / WROC-TV
Carvin Eison, a project leader who brought the Douglass statue to the park, told the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle that another statue will take its place because the damage it was knocked down is too significant.
Eison and others involved in the creation of the monument believe that the current national focus on race could have played a role in vandalism.
“Is this some kind of retaliation because of the national rush for Confederate monuments right now? Very disappointing, it’s more than disappointing,” Eison told WROC-TV, a CBS Rochester affiliate.
“I am sorry (we should) put a monument here right away, so whoever did this knows that we are not going to be deterred from what our goal is, and our goal is to continually celebrate Frederick Douglass,” Eison said.
The statue was one of 13 placed across the city in 2018, and this was the second monument to be destroyed, WROC notes.
Reverand Julius Jackson Jr. was there for the first incident, which involved drunk college students, and hopes that the last act is also an involuntary prank.
“We have walked this path before speaking to the vandals of the first,” he told WROC. “I would like to believe that it is not that, it was only some children. But I would not be surprised if it is retaliation, something that is happening.”
Eison said: “They can collapse on this monument, they could collapse on all of them, this monument will continue standing because the ideas behind it are bigger than the monument.”
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