List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests

During the civil unrest 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, laws prohibiting the removal of monuments were deliberately broken.
Initially, protesters targeted monuments related to the Confederate States of America. As the scope of the protests broadened to include other forms of systemic racism, many statues of other controversial figures such as Christopher Columbus, 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.. Statues of American slave owners such as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Francis Scott Key were also vandalised or removed. 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.
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. Protestors also tore down a statue titled Forward, by sculptor Jean Pond Miner, which depicts the embodiment of the Wisconsin state motto. In Portland, a statue of an elk was removed after several bonfires lit beneath the statue caused structural damage to the statue's base. A statue of York, a Black slave with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was removed by the University of Portland after it was vandalised.
In the United Kingdom, removal efforts and vandalism focused on memorials to figures involved in the transatlantic slave trade, British colonialism, and eugenics. 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., 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 such as the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, England.
The following monuments and memorials were removed during the George Floyd protests, mainly due to their connections to racism. The majority are in the United States and mostly commemorate the Confederate States of America (CSA), but some monuments were also removed in other countries, for example the statues of slave traders in the United Kingdom.
Notes:
The following monuments and memorials were removed during the George Floyd protests due to their association with racism in the United States. Most commemorated people involved in the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, with others linked to the genocide of Indigenous people, Racial segregation in the United States and also other related issues. In a few instances, like the Montgomery County Confederate Soldiers Monument and the statue of John Mason, the monuments had already been moved from their original location, sometimes more than once, as different venues objected.
The Confederate States of America fought a four-year war (the American Civil War) to preserve the institution of slavery. After its defeat, all enslaved African Americans were freed and became citizens with the same rights as whites. Confederate monuments commemorate politicians, Army officers, and soldiers of the Confederacy. Most are in the former CSA states.
This table does not include Virginia, which is in a second table that follows.
Virginia, where the CSA had its capital in Richmond, has the most Confederate monuments of any U.S. state. A March 2020 change in the law of Virginia had already essentially repealed the statute preventing removal of historical monuments, effective from July 1, 2020. This change became possible when voters, after electing the Democrat Ralph Northam as Governor in 2017, gave the Democrats control of both houses of the Virginia General Assembly from January 2020, for the first time in a generation.
Monuments dedicated to individuals accused of involvement in the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas have been removed.
Juan de Oñate, when governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, was responsible for the 1599 Acoma Massacre. Junípero Serra, a Franciscan friar, was involved in enslaving Chumash people in the 18th century for the building and supplying of the Spanish missions in California. Diego de Vargas, also governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, led the reconquest of the territory in 1692, after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.
A handful of towns in Spain have offered to receive statues of Spaniards unwanted in the U.S.
Several statues of Christopher Columbus, the initiator of the European colonization of the Americas, have been removed because of his alleged enslavement of and systemic violence against the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, including the genocide of the Taíno people.
The Royal African Company, which engaged in African slave trading between 1662 and 1731, enslaved and shipped more Africans to the Americas than any other institution in the history of the Atlantic slave trade.
King Leopold II of Belgium personally ruled the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908, treating it as his personal property. During this period, many well-documented atrocities were perpetrated against the population, including the severing of hands of workers unable to meet a production quota for rubber, and the destruction of entire villages that were unwilling to participate in the forced labour regime. These acts contributed to a genocide during this period, often estimated at between five million and ten million.
Royal Navy officer John Fane Charles Hamilton, after whom the city of Hamilton is named, played a prominent part in the Tauranga campaign of the New Zealand Wars.
Statues that come down in South Africa were preceded by and done in the context of the Rhodes Must Fall movement that resulted in the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town.
On May 22, 2020, before the murder of George Floyd, two statues of Victor Schœlcher were torn down in Martinique, an overseas department of France. Further colonial monuments in the overseas departments were targeted later in the year and in 2021; those which were mutilated in the period after May 25, 2020, are listed here.
The French president Emmanuel Macron declared his opposition to removing statues relating to France's colonial history on June 14, 2020.
In Canada, removed statues were attacked in a general anticolonialist context, rather than being directly linked to the typical BLM targets in Britain or the United States.
Some officials have announced their decisions to remove monuments under their jurisdiction, and are currently working to push through whatever legislative or permission barriers they need to accomplish their goals.
In metropolitan France, one of the few artworks connected to racism removed in this period is a mural paying tribute to George Floyd and Adama Traoré. The death of Adama Traoré in 2016 caused the Justice pour Adama movement against racism and police violence, which was reactivated in 2020, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
The following buildings were destroyed, torn down, or heavily damaged during the George Floyd protests due to their perceived racist heritage: