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Protesters have pulled down a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Civil War-era president of the Confederacy, amid continuing protests triggered by the police killing of George Floyd and the wider issue of racism in the US.The statue of Jefferson, a Mississippi Democrat who served as the president of the Confederate states from 1861 until 1865, was toppled shortly before 11pm in Richmond, Virginia, the place Davis set up as his capital.
Police were on the scene in Monument Avenue and videos on social media showed the statue being towed away as a crowd cheered.
The toppling of the Davis statue in Virginia came a day after protesters tore down a Christopher Columbus in Richmond which was set on fire before being dumped in a nearby lake. A second statue of Columbus was torn down in Minnesota, while other Columbus statues in Houston and Miami were splattered with red paint.
Among graffiti painted on the Davis monument was the question: “How much more blood?”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has urged Congress to take steps to remove from the US Capitol 11 statues representing Confederate leaders and soldiers from the civil war. “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed,” Pelosi said in a letter to leaders of a congressional committee in charge of managing the statues in the Capitol.
The toppling of Davis’s statue, which depicted him at the moment of his resignation speech, is one of 10 controversial statues to have been removed in recent days. Branches of the US military and the Nascar stock car racing association said they would ban Confederate symbols, including flags.
Protesters in Portsmouth, about 80 miles from Richmond, beheaded and then pulled down four other statues that were part of a Confederate monument on Wednesday, according to media outlets.