A statue of George Washington was destroyed and vandalized in Portland, Oregon after weeks of demonstrations and rioting in response to George Floyd’s murder. The incident took place on Juneteenth and ended a peaceful day of demonstrations.
CBS News affiliate KOIN tweeted that the words “Genocidal colonist” & “###” were sprayed on the monument. Rioters have begun to build another autonomous zone nearby.”
Rioters also draped and burned the American flag on the effigy.
America’s first president owned slaves, but there is a lack of proof he was “genocidal.” He first became a slave owner at age 11. When his father, Augustine, died, George received their 280-acre family farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia and was willed 10 slaves.
He was also the only member of America’s founders to make a requirement in his will for the “freeing of the enslaved people on his Mount Vernon plantation,” mountvernon.org reported. Washington released 123 people that he owned. He ordered that executors establish a permanent endowment to provide clothing and food for those too elderly or sick to support themselves, according to Virginia law.
“There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for this abolition of slavery,” Washington said in 1786, “but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority.”
It was President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, who sequentially freed the slaves. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, freeing more than three million black slaves in the Confederate states as a military measure. However, this “didn’t apply to border slave states like Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, all of which were loyal to the Union.”
In conclusion, losing a human at the hands of another is inexcusable, Floyd is an example. However, we are getting nowhere with the destruction property being witnessed across the nation, rioting and the burning of the American flag is just foolishness. Erasing history is not the answer either — or we will never learn from the past and overcome our past transgressions. There needs to be accountability and justice — no question — and change. Are we seeing any answers during the mayhem taking place on our city streets?
No.
–Corine Gatti-Santillo