The Douglass memorial, one of several in Rochester, New York, was found ripped from its base and disposed in a gorge over the weekend. Countless statues have fallen in recent weeks, but unlike Douglass, they were all men on the opposite side of history.
The incident occurred late July 4 or early July 5, according to Rochester communications director Justin Roj.
In addition to its removal, the statue also suffered damage to Douglass’s hands, Roj said.
Police have not identified who downed the statue, and Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary declined to speculate on a motive.
“Certainly discouraging, either out of sheer boredom or if it was intentional that someone harm a statue that looks like someone important in our country,” Singletary said at a news conference on Monday.
The statue was one of several replicas that were exhibited in the city in 2018 in honor of the bicentennial of Douglass’ birth.
The famous orator moved to Rochester in the 1840s after escaping slavery. There he ran the North Star, an abolitionist newspaper that eventually became Frederick Douglass’s newspaper. He later moved to Washington, DC, after his Rochester home caught fire, according to the records of the West New York suffragettes of the Rochester Regional Council on Libraries.
The vandalism of the statue coincided with the anniversary of Douglass’ famous speech in Rochester on July 5, 1852, entitled “What is Fourth of July for the slave?” In it, he wrote that American blacks were not free and independent like their white neighbors.
Statues fall in the U.S.
Most of the fallen statues in recent weeks have been attacked because they portrayed racists or slave owners. Officials from several cities in the United States have even quietly removed statues overnight to appease protesters, if they have not yet overthrown the monuments.
Protests across the country have rekindled talks about the virtue of naming institutions as slave owners or Confederate leaders. Universities like Princeton and Clemson have had to rename the buildings to remove the names of Woodrow Wilson, now condemned for his racist views, and slave owner John C. Calhoun, respectively.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized protesters calling for the removal of the Confederate monuments and flag. At his June rally in Tulsa, he referred to protesters as a “deranged left-wing mafia” who wanted to “destroy our history.”
“This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans,” he said at the rally. “They want to demolish our inheritance so that they can impose a new oppressive regime in their place.”
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