Protesters in Baltimore, Maryland, on Saturday pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus, local media reported, the latest monument to be toppled in anti-racism demonstrations in the US.
Statues of figures connected to colonialism and slavery have been ripped from their plinths in the US and around the world since Black Lives Matter protests were sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25.
Footage published by the Baltimore Sun showed protesters using ropes to pull down the statue of Columbus near the city’s Little Italy district and rolling it into the Inner Harbor.
Long hailed as the so-called discoverer of “The New World,” Columbus is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas. He is regularly denounced in a similar way to US Civil War generals of the pro-slavery South.
Separately on Saturday, a predominantly black group of heavily armed protesters marched through Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta, Georgia, calling for removal of the giant Confederate rock carving at the site that civil rights advocates consider a monument to racism.
Video footage of the rally posted on social media showed scores of demonstrators dressed in black — many in paramilitary-style clothing and all wearing face scarves — quietly parading several abreast down a sidewalk at the park.
The protesters all carried rifles, including military-type weapons, and some wore ammunition belts slung over their shoulders. Although African-Americans appeared to account for the bulk of the marchers, protesters of various ethnicities, were among the group.
One video clip showed a leader of the demonstrators, who was not identified, shouting into a loudspeaker in a challenge to white supremacists who historically have used Stone Mountain as a rallying spot of their own.
“I don’t see no white militia,” he said. “We’re here. Where ... you at? We’re in your house. Let’s go.”
John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Stone Mountain Memorial Association, said the protesters were peaceful and orderly.
Nine stories high and spanning the length of a football field, the bas-relief Stone Mountain sculpture carved into a granite wall overlooking the Georgia countryside about 40km east of Atlanta remains the largest monument to the US’ Civil War Confederacy.
It features the likenesses of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the 11-state Confederacy, and two of his generals, Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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