Thomas Jefferson statue toppled after scathing message is written at its base in Oregon

A night of protests in Portland, Oregon, brought down the statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of a local high school Sunday as demonstrators target historical figures related to slavery and oppression nationwide, KOIN News reported.

The words “slave owner” and “George Floyd” were scrawled across the base of the statue before protesters tore it down, according to KATU and other outlets.

While activists have long called for the removal of Confederate monuments across the U.S., demonstrators have recently begun to target non-Confederate monuments that honor figures who took part in slavery or the oppression of people of color, KATU reported. Jefferson, whose statue stood in front of Portland’s Jefferson High School, owned more than 600 slaves over the course of his life, according to The Oregonian.

Several thousand demonstrators gathered at Jefferson High on Sunday to participate in protests against police brutality and systemic racism, KGW reported. The protests were sparked by the death of Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died in police custody on Memorial Day in Minneapolis, according to KGW.

The Black Lives Matter march started at Jefferson High School because it is in a heavily gentrified, predominantly Black neighborhood, The Oregonian reported. Most of the protesters went from there to Alberta Park, but some stayed behind and tore down the statue, according to KOIN.

”We’re taking this city back,” an organizer told a crowd of demonstrators when they returned to the high school and found the statue had been torn down, according to The Oregonian. “One school at a time. One racist statue at a time.”

The Jefferson statue was not the only monument in Oregon to be toppled over the weekend; the Pioneer Mother and the Pioneer Man statues in front of Johnson Hall on the University of Oregon’s campus were also taken down during demonstrations on Saturday, KOIN reported.

The university condemned the action as vandalism, saying in a statement, “Decisions about the future of the Pioneer statues and other monuments should be made by the campus community through an inclusive and deliberative process, not a unilateral act of destruction,” according to KOIN.

This story was originally published June 15, 2020 at 2:16 PM.