Protesters toppled a statue of Thomas Jefferson in front of a high school Sunday night during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Portland, Oregon.
Demonstrators gathered Sunday night outside Jefferson High School in Northeast Portland to protest the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man whose police-custody death in Minneapolis sparked a wave of national unrest.
According to The Oregonian, more than 1,000 protesters marched to Alberta Park and a smaller group stayed behind and toppled the statue onto the ground.
The words “slave owner” and “George Floyd” were also written on the white marble base where the statue of the Founding Father once stood.
“We’re taking this city back,” one organizer told the crowd, The Oregonian reported. “One school at a time. One racist statue at a time.”
A person’s cellphone footage of the toppling, shared by KPTV, showed protesters pulling the statue off of its base with a rope and then cheering when it crashed to the ground.
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