NATIONAL — Outrage over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has sparked activism to pull down monuments in the U.S. and around the world.
The campaign to remove Confederate monuments has intensified, an effort that has extended to statues of slave traders, imperialists and explorers globally.
Protests and sometimes acts of vandalism have taken place in such cities as Boston; New York; Paris; Brussels; and Oxford, England. Scholars are divided over whether this amounts to erasing history or updating it.
Targets of recent protests include statues of Christopher Columbus, British imperialist Cecil Rhodes and Belgium’s King Leopold II, who profited from a brutal regime in Congo.
