A group of people in Charlottesville, Virginia has covered up a statue of former President Thomas Jefferson, a U.S. Founding Father.
The Daily Progress reported that the incident occurred Tuesday night on the campus of the University of Virginia. The group of about 100 people – some invoking “Black Lives Matter” chants – included students, faculty and community members.
The protesters gathered at the Rotunda, the same place that just one month ago drew chanting white nationalists with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” .
The group proceeded to cover Jefferson’s statue with a black tarp.
The act mimicked the city’s decision to shroud the statues of Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson after the violent events in the city on Aug. 12.
The university, of which Jefferson was a founder, had not yet responded to the newspaper’s request for comment on the Jefferson statue shrouding by press time.
Jefferson has a complex, well-documented history with slavery. He owned hundreds of slaves, but he also worked to gradually end slavery. Historians now believe the former president had a relationship with his wife’s half-sister, Sally Hemmings, who was a slave at Monticello.
The protest has cleared, but the shroud on the Thomas Jefferson statue at the Rotunda remains. pic.twitter.com/BqYtCEtH5q
— Alexis Gravely (@_AlexisWasHere) September 13, 2017
(YWN / AP)
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One Response
Black Lives Matter is more into expressing hatred towards the whites than it is in promoting blacks to work hard to get ahead.
After 8 years of a black president, who graduated Harvard, the blacks still haven’t figured out that it is hard work and education that is needed for blacks to succeed not calling whitey their problem.