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Statue for black abolitionist Frederick Douglass in NY state past restore after ripped down by vandals (PHOTOS)
A statue for Frederick Douglass, a former slave who grew to become a distinguished civil rights advocate, has been torn down from its pedestal in Rochester, New York state. The injury to the monument is reportedly too vital to repair it.
The statue was vandalized over the July 4th weekend, Rochester police informed native media on Sunday.
Images from the scene present an empty spot the place the statue used to face in Maplewood Park, in addition to its particles scattered within the neighborhood. The statue was mendacity some 50 ft from its pedestal, when officers discovered it.
The bottom of a Frederick Douglass statue torn down in a single day right here in Maplewood Park. Bits of the statue scattered across the space. @News_8 pic.twitter.com/L6qgV7bVH2
— Ben Densieski (@BenDensieski) July 5, 2020
The statue “had been positioned over the fence to the gorge and was leaning in opposition to the fence”, police mentioned in an announcement, as cited by The Democrat and Chronicle every day.
Carvin Eison, director of the “Re-Energizing the Legacy of Frederick Douglass” Venture, mentioned the monument was past repairs and can have to be changed with a brand new one.
“It is significantly painful that it occurred at the moment,” he mentioned.
Dozens of statues have been knocked off their pedestals throughout the nation in a monument-toppling spree championed by Black Lives Matter activists, which see it’s a approach of reckoning with the nation’s troubling legacy of slavery. Whereas the preliminary targets of the protesters have been accomplice generals, later vandalism, which met little resistance from regulation enforcement, noticed the statues of Christopher Columbus and different historic figures being eliminated as properly.
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It’s thus far unclear who was behind the Douglass statue incident.
The monument, inaugurated in 2018 to mark Douglass’s 200th birthday, is a part of a city-wide set up consisting of 13 statues – all replicas of a bigger statue of Douglass, which was unveiled in Rochester’s Highland Park neighborhood in 1899. The statues have been put all through the town in locations that bear significance to the abolitionist’s life in a bid to bolster his legacy.
In a speech in 1852, Douglass made a case in opposition to celebrating July 4th by African-Individuals, saying: “The blessings through which you, at the present time, rejoice, usually are not loved in widespread. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You might rejoice, I need to mourn.”
“The wealthy inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The daylight that introduced mild and therapeutic to you, has introduced stripes and demise to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine" -Frederick Douglass, 1852 pic.twitter.com/ba2hPlj2y7
— Nationwide Museum of American Historical past (@amhistorymuseum) July four, 2020
It’s not the primary time the set up has been focused by vandals. In December 2018, two Rochester’s St. John Fisher Faculty college students have been arrested and charged with a misdemeanor after they have been filmed dismantling one of many statues and stealing it. College students claimed they have been drunk and later apologized, calling what that they had achieved to the statue “a horrible factor” and providing assist to restore the monument.
