Anti-racist protesters in Virginia destroyed a statue of Christopher Columbus Tuesday evening in Byrd Park in Richmond, then draped it in a burning flag and threw it into a lake, showed footage of the incident posted on the social media.
A wave of protests swept across the United States and Europe after the death of George Floyd.
Floyd, 46, died after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while he was held face down on a Minneapolis street on May 25.
Part of the civil action has focused on monuments glorifying the imperialist past of the countries, which some consider offensive in today’s multi-ethnic society. The demonstrators destroyed statues linked to the empire and the slave trade.
Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451 and his voyages across the Atlantic paved the way for European colonization of the United States. It first arrived in the Americas on October 12, 1492, a date marked as Columbus Day in the United States, a federal holiday.
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