Alabama's Attorney-General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging they violated the state's law by not seeking his approval. Why Columbus, Andrew Jackson statues should remain standing. "It's not just that the statues represent white supremacy, but the purpose of building the statues was the perpetuation of white supremacy," James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, told TIME Magazine. Why? Protesters have pulled down a statute of Christopher Columbus outside the Minnesota State Capitol. In Richmond, protesters pulled down an eight-foot-tall statue in Byrd Park, carrying it about 200 yards before setting it on fire and throwing it into the nearby Fountain Lake. Fragments were later discovered nearby. It's not just the Confederate luminaries being toppled. But they didn't have a say. Who Was Charles Curtis, the First Vice President of Color? What was happening during these two periods? When statues were first erected honouring Confederate generals or notable slave-owning citizens, the white population in the southern states would, by and large, have nodded with approval. The protesters looped a rope around the statue and pulled it to the ground. But while some want them to stay because they cling to those ideas of white dominance, others feel removing them takes away a piece of real history — however ugly. The statue was built in the early 1920s and was the first Columbus statue in the South. The statue of Christopher Columbus is seen on the ground after it was pulled down by protesters,Richmond, Virginia, U.S., June 9, 2020 Toppled: A Christopher Columbus statue … “Both of them were largely ignored within a decade or so of their deaths. May 31: Charles Linn, Alabama. At the back of everyone's minds are the images of Neo-Nazis marching in the streets in Charlottesville in 2017. When Columbus died in 1506, he was “kind of a forgotten figure, as was John Cabot,” an explorer who also reached North America in the 1490s, University of Bristol historian Evan Jones told Smithsonian in 2015. Some people argue that statues represent our history, and removing them erases our past and the lessons we should learn. 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In St. Paul, where protesters tore Columbus’ likeness down to the sounds of “singing, drumming and joyous chants,” as Jessie Van Berkel writes for the Star Tribune, police informed American Indian Movement activist Mike Forcia that he would be charged with criminal damage to property. Crews were seen taking down the statues in Grant Park and the city's Little Italy neighborhood during the overnight hours. Activists have protested the Roosevelt statue for years. But many are not standing the test of time or changed attitudes — especially after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer last month. This service may include material from Agence France-Presse (AFP), APTN, Reuters, AAP, CNN and the BBC World Service which is copyright and cannot be reproduced. We’re here to stand in solidarity.”. In the UK, a statue of Winston Churchill was defaced with graffiti stating “Churchill was a racist”, following Black Lives Matter protests in London this weekend. As local broadcast station WCVB Boston reports, the Massachusetts statue of Columbus—erected in a historically Italian American neighborhood in 1979—was previously vandalized in 2006, when its head went missing for several days, and 2015, when demonstrators spray-painted it with the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” On Thursday, workers removed the decapitated statue and placed it in storage, according to CBS Boston. 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