List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (June 2020)

Clockwise from top left:

• The J. E. B. Stuart Monument, defaced during protests in Richmond, Virginia, was removed on July 7, 2020.
• The statue of Christopher Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol moments after it was pulled from its pedestal by American Indian Movement protesters.
• The vandalized statue of Robert Milligan outside the Museum of London Docklands before it was removed.
• The Albert Pike Memorial in Washington, D.C., after protesters toppled the statue of Pike.

During the civil unrest^[1] that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, a number of monuments and memorials associated with racial injustice were vandalized, destroyed or removed, or commitments to remove them were announced. This occurred mainly in the United States, but also in several other countries. Some of the monuments in question had been the subject of lengthy, years-long efforts to remove them, sometimes involving legislation and/or court proceedings. In some cases the removal was legal and official; in others, most notably in Alabama and North Carolina,^[2] laws prohibiting the removal of monuments were deliberately broken.

Initially, protesters targeted monuments related to the Confederate States of America^{[citation needed]}. As the scope of the protests broadened to include other forms of systemic racism, many statues of other controversial figures such as Christopher Columbus,^[3][4] Junípero Serra, Juan de Oñate and Kit Carson were torn down or removed. Monuments to many other local figures connected with racism were also targeted by protestors.^{[citation needed][clarification needed]}. Statues of American slave owners such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Francis Scott Key were also vandalised or removed.^[5][6][7] According to the Huffington Post, by October 2020 over a hundred Confederate symbols had been "removed, relocated or renamed", based on data from the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[8]

Some monuments that were not associated with the Confederacy, slavery, or racism were also targeted. In Madison, Wisconsin, the statue of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg, was torn down and thrown into a lake.^[9][10][11] Protestors also tore down a statue titled Forward, by sculptor Jean Pond Miner, which depicts the embodiment of the Wisconsin state motto.^[12] In Portland, a statue of an elk was removed after several bonfires lit beneath the statue caused structural damage to the statue's base.^[13] A statue of York, a Black slave with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was removed by the University of Portland after it was vandalised.^[14]

In the United Kingdom, removal efforts and vandalism focused on memorials to figures involved in the transatlantic slave trade, British colonialism, and eugenics.^[15][16] In Belgium, sculptures of King Leopold II were targeted due to his rule during the atrocities in the Congo Free State. In New Zealand, a statue of a British military officer John Hamilton was removed, and in India another colonial-era statue was relocated. In South Africa, a bust of Cecil Rhodes was decapitated, and a statue of the last president of the Orange Free State was taken down.

This list is limited to successful removals, and instances in which a person or body with authority has committed itself to removal. It does not include the many works that have been the subject of petitions, protests, defacement, or attempted removals, such as the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.,^[17] and many statues of Leopold II in Belgium. It also does not include statues that fell or subject to attempted removals as a result of the Rhodes Must Fall movement that predates Floyd's murder by five years^[18][19] such as the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, England.^[20][21][22]